Success of fee rise protest marred by violent minority
York students march with an estimated 52,000 through Whitehall. Photo: Sam Newsome
Tens of thousands of students swarmed the streets of central London on Wednesday, in protest against the planned tripling of tuition fees. However, the largely peaceful demonstration was tainted by outbreaks of violence and conflict with the police.
The National Union of Students (NUS) have estimated that 52,000 students and lecturers marched their way down Whitehall in a show of unity against the Coalition’s plans for Higher Education and the way it is paid for.
YUSU sent eight coaches, totalling 400 students, to London to join other institutions in the event. Enthusiastic chants such as “no ifs, no buts, no education cuts” could be heard from a distance, and York waved banners that were made on campus on Saturday.
However, as the march reached the Conservative party headquarters, around 30 participants, including at least one York student, initially stormed the building, breaking windows and then seized the roof, in an act that has been condemned by students and lecturers alike. Aaron Porter, NUS President, distanced himself from these protesters, saying: “it actually undermines our message” and praised the majority of people who marched peacefully.
An approximate 200 people managed to break into ‘Tory HQ’ at around 1:45pm, amidst shouts of “Tory scum”. Reports and Nouse’s eyewitness accounts can confirm that some of these initial protesters were not actually students and the attack had been pre-planned.
One York student, Becky Hemsley, described how she heard a woman warn people of a “delegation” that was coming to break in. She added that once there, “they burnt effigies of Clegg and Cameron and threw them on the fire, hitting them with sticks.”
A lot of the protesters who entered the building were hooded, wearing balaclavas and carried red and black anarchist flags. Outside, placards were burnt and the riot police were called in. An anonymous first year student at York, who participated in the attack, told Nouse that they regretted their actions but added it was hard not to be taken along by the crowd and find yourself in an unintentional situation.
“It didn’t feel threatening, more just fun to take part in the whole rebellious spirit. Looking back now, it seems like a stupid and immature response, just ruining the whole message of the march, but at the time, with hundreds of students egging you on, it seemed like a really fun idea.”
However, many students bemoaned the rioters and one York student, Oliver Wheatley, complained of the bad press courage they were creating. “The violence of the few, although perhaps raising the profile of the march in the media, will only act to ruin the efforts of myself and thousands of others who turned up today to march peacefully.”
Further down Millbank, Porter was delivering a forceful speech directed mainly towards any Liberal Democrats who might break their election pledges of abolishing tuition fees, but also to all MPs.
Porter later commented: “I think it sends a clear message to those parliamentarians in Westminster, this is an unprecedented scale of a student demonstration that we have seen in a generation; and I believe that any politician who wants to try and think they can ignore the student vote – they do so at their peril.”
Tim Ngwena, YUSU President has stated that “it was a hugely successful march for York, including getting there and back safely. A few hundred individuals decided to take action that was not necessarily a fair reflection the mood of the day – it’s a real shame, and I would urge students and members of the public to recognise that these were not actions of all students involved, despite the fact that it reflects badly on all of us.”
In terms of future action Ngwena has said that YUSU are “going to go alongside the NUS, and need to take actions specifically to York will be getting in touch with York Inner and Outer MPS.
We’ll be lobbying the university about fees, engaging with discussions with them and asking questions. We’ve got to involve students with the debate, but it has to be united action across the country.”
In his key-note speech, Porter warned that students would attempt to unseat any Lib Dem MPs reneging on their promise for tuition fees, after Clegg advocated the right for voters to recall their MPs in June.
Speaking to Nouse, Labour MP David Lammy, a former Minister for Higher Education, celebrated the protest and urged others to get involved to stop the fee rise which, “will set us back many, many years”.
Lammy spoke of his Lib Dem colleagues as, “looking very uncomfortable, the pressure must continue” and added: “I want to see more of their [student’s] parents coming out along future marches.”
Daniel Bietler, a first year student at Reading University, shared his sentiment, saying: “I did vote Lib Dem but it has been a real letdown. I came here today to join in and be part of the protest; I want to say I helped changed something.”
Meanwhile, not all the protesters came from universities, Antonia Masten, who has just started her first year of A-levels, will be part of the group first hit by the rise in fees and she had come down from Leeds to make herself heard: “I still want to go to university, but it will cripple me for a long time,” and continued: “they can’t just ignore 50,000 people; remember people like me will be able to vote for the first time at the next general election.”
A number of academics had come to voice their concerns and Mark Soye, a Senior Lecturer at Brighton University, stressed: “this will have a massive impact on Higher Education and it is important that we stand up and say no.
“Education is a right for all and what the government is doing is lowering the overall value of the workforce, which will not just impact education, but the whole economy.”
Johnny Bryant, a student at the University of Edinburgh, proclaimed the march to have been a great success, commenting: “the whole atmosphere of this march is amazing. It has genuinely exceeded all my expectations.”
He continued: “at last students are using their democratic rights and making sure our voices are heard. I feel quite proud to be part of this protest, and I think we’ve made sure it won’t be forgotten for a long time.”
Anarchists and political activists joined by students after breaking into the Millbank 'Tory HQ' Center. Photo: Sam Newsome
Three of the protesters who first threw eggs and broke the glass of the Conservative HQ, declared themselves “proud” of their achievements. Another described how they entered the building and proceeded to steal food, set off a red flare, while seeing others throw objects off the roof, which included: bottles, sticks and a fire extinguisher. In order to evade the police, they quickly made their way down the fire escape and through the back door.
After the demonstration, questions over the police response and lack of anticipation emerged, as only two police officers were there as the violence started at the Conservative HQ. Mike Wood, who was there at the scene, judged the mood as “chaotic, though it wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. It seemed like the stewards weren’t expecting that many people to show up.”
Sir Paul Stephenson, Metropolitan Police Chief, has labelled the events as an “embarrassment” and David Cameron, commenting from China, denounced the violent clashes as “unacceptable”.
Luke Sandford and Suzy Dodd, YUSU Campaigns Officers, declared themselves happy despite the violence with the protest went overall and praised the number of York students who came down for the event.
“We are extremely pleased with how the day went for York – we had a phenomenal turnout, especially given how long a trip it was for us. Everyone seemed in high spirits and it was fantastic to be part of such a large student protest movement.”
See more of our photos from the protest here.
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Are you the student Police? You sound like a school milk monitor. Try and think outside of your ‘sheltered’ mindset
@Anon
Vision has an article about the York students causing trouble in the riot and a video of them.
http://www.yorkvision.co.uk/news/york-students-storm-conservative-hq
Honestly, such behaviour is disgusting! It makes me ashamed to be a member of York University, how dare they attack the Tory headquarters? Don’t they know they know how big the deficit is? I wish they would just leave poor Mr Osborne and Mr Cameron alone, they’ll have to dip into the family savings to pay for this; they might not even be able to afford a vacation to Sardinia next year! God forbid they have to go to Corsica. What ignorant scum! I hope they are strung up by their balls.
The video in question is crudely put together with the aim of criminalising students rightfully displaying their anger and discontent at the proposed education cuts alongside a small minority of protesters who were prepared to use vandalism as a form of direct action. It shows them rightfully shouting and protesting, but vandalising? It does not. I am somewhat relieved that Nouse is not capitalising on such unfounded accusations but concentrating on our University’s participation in a largely peaceful and successful protest. It would seem that there are those here prepared to seize upon the hyperbole of certain articles to meet their own political ends. Stop trying to initiate a witch hunt and stop trying to scaremonger.
How many of you were actually there? I was and what I saw was anger being expressed by students and non-students alike. It really discredited the rest of the protest, yes, but it wasn’t an invalid way of expressing discontent. It was not, by far, a clever thing to do.
Not too bothered about the vandalism really, but that mong who threw the fire extinguisher off the roof needs shooting.
tis a pity Charlie Leyland didn’t become NUS VP, when Porter is forced out (i give him 3 days) she’d have been next in line….
If only students would use their “democratic right” when elections come around.
Porter is a genuine disgrace – he can’t motivate the students to vote but he can do riots: great. The NUS are complicit in the violence as they failed to organise this protests safely and there is video footage of NUS officials egging on the violence.
If only the police were there to stick the boot in and teach these idiots a thing or two
“If only students would use their “democratic right” when elections come around.”
most of us did! did you not see the queues in vanbrugh to vote? you’re implying it was desolate, i know i waited half an hour to vote. and that every time i walked past that day, there were solid queues. so yeah, a hell of a lot of us exercised our democratic right to vote!
the problem you’ll find is that most of us voted lib dem. not gonna lie, at a uni like york a lot of students probably did vote tory (i find it hilarious a lot of you tories went on the march, by the way! certain blues who probably did it just to fit into their YUSU busy body love & peace for all life style…looking at you!) but the lib dems had huge student support. then they form a (ridiculous) coalition government, and fuck over the very people that voted for them. if you watched the footage from parliament, even when nick clegg was questioned (by a female lib dem, i can’t remember her name) he couldn’t even defend himself. cameron had to talk for him, and rightly so the man should be ashamed of himself.
a lot of us were mislead. i’m ashamed to have voted lib dem, especially wasting my first vote on them. they’ve let us all down, clegg seems to be a clump of flesh (waste of flesh, oxygen, and life tbh) for cameron to drag about on special occasions. this is a fucking joke.
“it wasn’t an invalid way of expressing discontent.” (Earl Gray).
Yes it was. It was illegal. It was harmful to those who want to engage in legitimate protest.
If like me you were at the G20 protests and watched the Met’s attrocities – from killing an innocent passer-by to attacking and detaining genuinely peaceful protesters – you’d understand why the sort of thuggish behaviour we saw last week is harmful to democratic protest.
After G20, there was pressure on the Met (and City Police) from all across the political spectrum. That’s why they couldn’t go in heavy-handed against students and public sector workers. Had this demo remained peaceful as the NUS had wanted, that would have remained the situation…
…instead we now have the Police under pressure from the usual suspects: “Why were there too few of them?”, “Why didn’t they use water cannon?” and all the usual stupid comments.
So next time we want to protest, we’ll be back to the Met killing protesters or passers-by with impunity. Thanks a million.
‘If only students would use their “democratic right” when elections come around.’
I’d venture that a good proportion of those voting at my local polling station (in the Hull Road ward) were students. Unfortunately many of them are thick and voted for the Lib Dumbs. So cheers for that students.
You guys are right that York has one of the biggest student turnouts in the country but as a general voting block students have awful turnout rates.
The true tragedy is how many students simply don’t understand the issues when it comes to politics. They run along to these marches driven by Marxists without understanding how real politics or economics works.
You don’t need 50% of people going to university
The higher education budget needs to be cut and has to raise its own funds.
Poor pupils will not have to pay upfront fees and any pupil will only start paying after they earn 21k.
They should let uni’s charge unlimited fees and create bursaries for talented poor applicants. Bigger fees force ppl to calculate whether uni is worthwhile for them – if they are genuinely clever then it will be and they should go – if they aren’t then 30k debt is not worth it.
It’s a great idea and wil lget rid of all the joke subjects and unis so that getting a degree is an achievement in its own right again
@LJR
No. Please pay attention to my wording. Illegal does not equate invalid. Just because a government prescribes an illegal act does not make it an invalid act, for example protesting in Burma is illegal but not invalid as an act. In this case the violence was a valid way of showing anger, discontent and unrest, but illegal regardless.
Secondly, You say that Police are wrong to use heavy-handed treatment but they will if we continue to act violently. This is accepting that the police must use violence to counter violence! There is no neccesary connection between them – You are thinking in extremes.
What should have happened is that the Police should have been present in the Millbank at the first place! Not a single police officer was on patrol by Tory HQ when 52,000 students marched past on an anti-Tory march. Regarldess, they then reacted to the protesters with the correct force – rather than turning up in more than small squads two to three hours later.
This isn’t a case of limp-handed police action versus violent police action – Rather the correct type and amount of police action. These trained professionals should be able to do this in any situation. No matter what protesters too, they should be safe in the knowledge that the police will use the correct amount of force.