Tens of thousands of students took to the streets of London on Wednesday in a demonstration that spiraled out of control when a fringe group of protesters hurled missiles at police and occupied the building housing the UK’s ruling Conservative party headquarters (HQ).
Both ministers and protesters acknowledged that the demonstration — by far the largest and most dramatic yet in response to the government’s austerity measures — was “just the beginning” of public anger over cuts. Police, meanwhile, were criticized for failing to anticipate the scale of the disorder.
An estimated 52,000 people, according to the National Union of Students (NUS), marched through central London to display their anger over government plans to increase tuition fees while cutting state funding for university teaching. A wing of the protest turned -violent as about 200 people stormed 30 Millbank, the central London building that is home to Tory HQ, where police wielding batons clashed with a crowd hurling placard sticks, eggs and some bottles. Demonstrators shattered windows and waved anarchist flags from the roof of the building, while masked activists traded punches with police to chants of “Tory scum.”
Police conceded last night that they had failed to anticipate the level of violence from protesters who trashed the lobby of the Millbank building. Missiles including a fire extinguisher were thrown at police from the roof and clashes saw 14 people — a mix of officers and protesters — taken to hospital. Met police commissioner Sir Paul Stephenson said the force should have anticipated the level of violence better.
“It’s not acceptable. It’s an embarrassment for London and for us,” he said.
While Tory headquarters -suffered the brunt of the violence, the coalition government’s junior partner, the Liberal Democrat (Lib Dem) headquarters in nearby Cowley Street, were not targeted.
“This is not what we pay the Met [police] commissioner to do,” one senior Conservative told reporters. “It looks like they put heavy security around Lib Dem HQ, but completely forgot about our party HQ.”
Lady Warsi, the Tory party chair, was in her office when protesters broke in. She initially had no police protection as the protesters made their way up the fire stairs to the roof. Police who eventually made it to Tory HQ decided not to evacuate staff from the building, but to concentrate on removing the demonstrators.
NUS president Aaron Porter condemned the actions of “a minority of idiots,” but hailed the turnout as the biggest student demonstration in generations.
The largely good-natured -protest was organized by the NUS and the lecturers’ union the UCU, who have attacked coalition plans to raise tuition fees as high as £9,000 (US$14,535) while making 40 percent cuts to university teaching budgets. The higher fees will be introduced for undergraduates starting in 2012, if the proposals are sanctioned by the Commons in a vote due before Christmas.
“We’re in the fight of our lives. We face an unprecedented attack on our future before it has even begun. They’re proposing barbaric cuts that would brutalize our colleges and universities,” the NUS president told protesters.
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