TENS OF thousands of students at British universities took to the streets again yesterday in protest at plans to raise tuition fees, though the demonstrations were heavily policed following violence at a protest in London earlier this month.
Two police officers were injured, one with a broken arm, during a 10,000-strong demonstration in Whitehall, London, and a police van was damaged. The vast majority of those on the streets were peaceful.
The Metropolitan Police, which was heavily criticised after the National Union of Students’ first demonstration a fortnight ago when the Conservative Party’s office building was attacked, had hundreds of officers on duty, including riot police.
The police force’s Territorial Support Group was drafted after a small number of protesters tried to batter their way into Downing Street using a barrier. Six members of the public were taken to hospital for treatment.
One student, Zoe Williams, criticised those involved: “Some kind of anger and aggressive behaviour can show the government that we are not joking around and will just let them hike fees.
“But showing we’re this violent and ready to take it to this level is detrimental. A lot of people aren’t here to support the cause; they are doing it to have a day off school and be rebellious and burn stuff.
“It really does dampen the efforts of other people,” she told journalists.
Praising the students’ “poll tax spirit”, the newly elected Unite union leader, Len McCluskey, said: “The very fabric of our society is being dismantled before our very eyes and we have a duty to lead a resistance against this attack. It is slaughter by stealth.”
Condemning the Liberal Democrats’ decision to row back on pre-election pledges to freeze tuition fees, the National Union of Students declared: “No amount of twisted reasoning from either you or Vince Cable can hide what everyone can see: you have lied to us.”
University staff, who are faced with major redundancies, staged simultaneous rallies in Birmingham, Glasgow, Manchester and Cambridge, while 50 students stormed the Great Hall at the University of Birmingham and 2,000 marched in Bristol.
In Sheffield, around 1,000 students, including some from secondary schools who were as young as 13 or 14, walked out of their classrooms. Hundreds more gathered in Leeds.
Demonstrators also held protests in Glasgow, though Scotland is unaffected by the fee rise. In Manchester, approximately 3,000 held a demonstration in the city centre, while a similar number did so in Liverpool.
Under the Conservative/Liberal Democrat proposals, tuition fees will be increased to over £6,000 for most courses, but students fear that universities could increase them to the maximum £9,000 a year allowed.
The protests yesterday were not organised by the National Union of Students, though its leader, Aaron Porter, said the numbers showed individual students were “more than capable of organising excellent peaceful protests that bring together their communities”.
Responding to the criticisms, Liberal Democrat leader and deputy prime minister Nick Clegg repeated that he “massively regrets” the rise in fees, but urged students to study the proposal’s fine print. Speaking on BBC radio, Mr Clegg, who said that “sometimes you are not fully in control of all the things you need to deliver those pledges” – because of a shortage of money – told an interviewer: “I’m developing a thick skin. But I nonetheless think that when people look at the detail of these proposals, [they will] realise that all graduates will be paying less per month than they do at the moment ... ”
