2010 United Kingdom student protests

The Browne Report and proposed reforms (left) and Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg (right) were at the heart of much student anger In November 2009, the Labour Party government of Prime Minister Gordon Brown commissioned a study into higher education funding in England. Chaired by Lord Browne of Madingley, the former chief executive of BP, the report was to be titled the Browne Review. In the build up to the 2010 general election, the leader of the Liberal Democrats, Nick Clegg, pledged that he would vote against any proposed increase in tuition fees if elected to Parliament. Following the election and resulting hung parliament, Clegg made an agreement with the Conservative Party to form a coalition government in which Conservative leader David Cameron became Prime Minister and Clegg became Deputy Prime Minister. The Browne Review was subsequently published in October 2010, and contained the suggestion that the government should remove outright the existing cap of £3,290 on tuition fees. The government rejected this proposal, instead choosing to keep a cap but increasing it to £9,000. David Willetts, the Minister of State for Universities and Science, stated that the measures were "a very progressive package" and "at the end of this we will have a better university system than we have at the moment". Student opposition Student union leaders were critical of the cuts. The National Union of Students (NUS) feared that the increased cap on tuition fees would prevent potential students from poorer backgrounds from attending university. Many protesters focused in particular on Clegg's campaign promise that he would oppose any rise in tuition fees. David Barclay, the president of the University of Oxford's student union, said: "This is the day a generation of politicians learn that though they might forget their promises, students won't." Two weeks before, on 28 October, a protest was held in the University of Oxford to coincide with a visit from the Liberal Democrat minister and Business Secretary Vince Cable. Cable cancelled his visit after taking advice from the police about the protest. Several days later, on 3 November, there was a student protest in Dublin. The subsequent London protest was described by one Irish reporter as "scenes bizarrely similar" to those in the Irish capital. The initial event was the largest student protest in Britain since the Labour government first proposed the Teaching and Higher Education Act in 1998. == 10 November ==

London march The first major demonstration in protest at the government's proposed reforms was held on 10 November 2010 in central London, jointly organised by the National Union of Students (NUS) and the University and College Union (UCU). This demonstration was officially known as "Fund Our Future: Stop Education Cuts", although also termed "Demo 2010" or "Demo-lition 10.11.10". Arriving from all regions of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, approximately 30,000 to 52,000 protesters attended the demonstration. The demonstration's route was pre-approved with the Metropolitan Police Service, with marchers moving from Whitehall past Downing Street, the home of the Prime Minister, and then past the Houses of Parliament, chanting such slogans as "no ifs, no buts – no education cuts", "they say cut back – we say fight back", "I say Tories – you say scum". Journalist Harry Mount of The Daily Telegraph, said: "Perhaps because their cause was justified, the students I saw had none of the swaggering, self-righteous manner of the student protester of legend." Political groups that sent contingents to take part included the Labour Party, Plaid Cymru, the Green Party, Socialist Workers Party, Socialist Party, Revolution, Young Communist League, Revolutionary Communist Group, and Communist Students. A few members of parliament (MPs) joined the demonstration, among them Labour MP John McDonnell, who told reporters: "This is the biggest workers' and students' demonstration in decades. It just shows what can be done when people get angry. We must build on this". At the end of the march, a rally took place outside Tate Britain where demonstrators were addressed by the UCU general secretary Sally Hunt, who introduced a series of clips displayed on a giant plasma screen featuring Clegg giving a series of promises to the electorate on tuition fees, all of which he had subsequently broken. Forcing their way past the limited police presence, approximately 200 people broke in and occupied the building, whilst a thousand more cheered and supported them from outside. These protesters lit placards on fire, and smashed windows before occupying and vandalising the reception area. Staff working in the building were evacuated by police around 1 pm. One of the protesters on the building's roof, Edward Woolard, threw a fire extinguisher onto the police below. He received instant criticism from some of the protesting crowds, who called on those on the roof to "stop throwing shit". Response to the Millbank occupation Students and unions NUS President Aaron Porter condemned the occupation of 30 Millbank, claiming that it was caused by "those who are here to cause trouble" and that he was "disgusted that the actions of a minority of idiots are trying to undermine 50,000 who came to make a peaceful protest." Contrastingly, other student leaders, trade unionists, and academics expressed support for elements of the occupation of 30 Millbank. Amongst others, the president of University of London Union Clare Solomon, the Education Officer of the London School of Economics, Ashok Kumar, the Education and Campaigns Officer at University College London, Michael Chessum, the National Union of Students' black students' officer Kanjay Sesay, the NUS' LGBT students' officers Vicki Baars and Alan Bailey, the President of the RMT trade union Alex Gordon and the playwright Lee Hall all signed a statement declaring that: We reject any attempt to characterise the Millbank protest as small, "extremist" or unrepresentative of our movement. We celebrate the fact that thousands of students were willing to send a message to the Tories that we will fight to win. Occupations are a long established tradition in the student movement that should be defended. It is this kind of action in France and Greece that has been an inspiration to many workers and students in Britain faced with such a huge assault on jobs, benefits, housing and the public sector. We stand with the protesters, and anyone who is victimised as a result of the protest. Solomon informed the BBC that she had "no problem with direct actions or occupation", and when questioned regarding the damage done to Millbank, responded that "these were a few windows of the Tory Party headquarters – what they're doing to our education is absolutely millions... and they want to complain about a few windows." Meanwhile, various university Conservative societies around London condemned the protests, and criticised students' unions for providing the "false impression that the majority of students are left-wing" and opposed to the governments' proposed reforms. Government and press " next to a penis graffiti — on a wall of 30 Millbank, created during the protest. A spray-painted circle-A symbol can also be seen, along with a poster displaying a skull and crossbones with the words "Don't kill the arts", and discarded placards, one reading "No ifs, no buts" (part of a slogan ending "no Tory cuts"). The Metropolitan Police Service admitted that they were unprepared to deal with the occupation of 30 Millbank, something which they had not been expecting. Sir Paul Stephenson, the Metropolitan Police's Commissioner, told the press that he was "embarrassed" by how police had lost control of the situation, and condemned what he saw as "thuggish, loutish behaviour by criminals". A reporter from The Daily Telegraph commented that the "anarchic behaviour" of those occupying Millbank was "counter-productive" to the students' cause, and that it was the photographs of "a few hundred vicious hotheads" that would "linger" in the public imagination rather than that of the main march. The Financial Times reported that an anonymous vice-chancellor from a London university had told them that the violence would undermine the campaign, and that it "could not have gone better for the government. George Osborne will be delighted." On 11 November, student protesters occupied a building at the University of Manchester for three hours, demanding to see the accounts that discussed how government funding cuts would affect students. Between 60 and 100 students held a peaceful sit-in at Manchester's John Owens Building on Oxford Road after an NUS meeting earlier that day. == 24 November ==

A second significant demonstration took place in London on 24 November, which again led to clashes with police, this time outside Whitehall, after police kettled a large crowd. An organisation known as the National Campaign Against Fees and Cuts (NCAFC) organised a mass national walk-out of education and protest for 24 November. As a part of this, demonstrations were held in London and other locations across the United Kingdom. According to a group on the social networking website Facebook, 25,000 people had signed up to take the day off from studies and protest prior to the actual event, At around 6 pm, mounted police charged at the north end of the crowd to push them back; despite video evidence police denied that this was an actual charge, describing it as crowd control using horses. Roughly 1000 protesters broke free of the police kettle, running throughout central London while pursued by police; The Guardian's Paul Lewis stated that "police were caught in a game of cat and mouse, along Charing Cross, Covent Garden and Piccadilly Circus." That same day, students occupied the Jeremy Bentham Room in University College London, stating that they were protesting against "savage cuts to higher education and government attempts to force society to pay for a crisis it didn't cause." Protesters also occupied the University of East London, demanding that university managers "put pressure on the government on the issue of H[higher] E[ducation] cuts and tuition fee rises". At Manchester's University Place, 3000 students assembled to demonstrate, but several hundred broke away to march towards the town hall. A group of about 100 occupied a lecture theatre in the Roscoe Building. At the University of Oxford, students initially occupied the Radcliffe Camera. At the University of Cambridge, 200 students scaled the fence of Senate House and marched onto the grounds of King's College, then on 26 November students started an 11-day occupation of part of Old Schools, the main administrative block of the university. At the University of Bristol, 2000 protesters clashed with police when they tried to move into the city centre. Four were arrested. In Brighton, 3000 demonstrators marched through the city, with nearly 50 occupying a university building. Hundreds of students from Kingston University and various local schools staged an impromptu march through the town and a sit down protest at College Roundabout, leading to one arrest. In the morning of 24 November, demonstrators at the University of Birmingham occupied the Aston Webb building, the site of the Prime Ministerial debates earlier in the year; they issued a statement in which they declared that "we believe the government's cuts to be economically unnecessary, unfair and ideologically motivated" and that "if [the government] continue to destroy the livelihoods of the majority to benefit the rich and powerful minority, they will face increasingly widespread and radical action." At Cardiff University, around 200 protesters occupied a lecture theatre after failing to gain entry to the vice-chancellor's building. Response During the Whitehall incident, the Metropolitan Police publicly defended their use of kettling, with Chief Inspector Jane Connors claiming that they had only used it as "a last resort". She stated: "it's a valid tactic. Police officers came under attack and we needed to make sure the violence didn't spread out across the London streets." The police came under increasing criticism however, particularly as there were large numbers of children and young teenagers in the crowd, who were held for nearly ten hours in near-zero temperatures. Green Party MP Caroline Lucas brought up the topic in the House of Commons that afternoon, stating: "there are many hundreds of students and school children who have been kettled for over four hours and are going to be out there for another several hours, according to the police, in the freezing cold... whatever one thinks of the student protest, [holding people against their will in the contained crowd was] neither proportionate, nor, indeed, effective." At a meeting of the Metropolitan Police Authority the following day, the Metropolitan Police's Commissioner Sir Paul Stephenson defended the tactics. He condemned the protest. He was criticised by Jenny Jones, a Green Party member of the London Assembly, who told him: "when you imprison thousands of people, which is essentially what you did yesterday, you do have a duty of care to them... You kept people for nine-and-a-half hours. You punished innocent people for going on a protest." A spokesperson for Prime Minister Cameron stated that "people have a right to engage in lawful and peaceful protest, but there is no place for violence or intimidation", while education minister David Willetts responded by claiming that protesting students did not understand the government's plans. Clegg stated on BBC Radio 2 that "I hate in politics, as in life, to make promises that you then find you can't keep. We made a promise we can't deliver – we didn't win the election outright and there are compromises in coalition." Labour Party leader Ed Miliband stated that he would not rule out joining further demonstrations, remarking that "I was quite tempted to go out and talk to them [the protesters]. Peaceful demonstrations are part of our society. As Labour leader I am willing to talk to people who are part of them." == 30 November ==

Central London protests A third central London protest was organised for Tuesday 30 November, a day that saw cold temperatures and snow in the city. Protesters assembled at Trafalgar Square, but a police line prevented their march down Whitehall towards the Houses of Parliament; the NCAFC accused the Police of "pre-emptively block[ing]" the protest route. Fearing that they would be kettled in the Square, protesters dispersed throughout the city center, pursued by police. Other officers stood photographing and filming the students for later identification, while police vans blocked off certain streets. Many protesters ran onto Pall Mall and then past St James's Park. Denied access to Parliament Square by police, they turned around and headed toward Westminster Abbey. Many protesters returned to Trafalgar Square, where they were still unable to march down to Whitehall due to the heavy police line. Seven more had been arrested in central London earlier in the day. Jeremy Burton, the Lewisham Borough Commander, later told press that "unfortunately due to the actions of a minority of people present a number of my officers were injured whilst carrying out their police duties", with 16 officers being treated for minor injuries. Protests elsewhere On the day of the main demonstration, there were also further protests across the United Kingdom, including in Cardiff, Cambridge, Colchester, Newcastle, Bath, Leeds, Sheffield, Edinburgh, Liverpool, Belfast, Brighton, York, Manchester, Plymouth, Scunthorpe and Bristol. About 1,500 students, including school children, took part in the protest in Brighton, whilst protests in Bristol involved police being pelted with mustard and ten demonstrators were arrested. Meanwhile, whilst occupations that had begun the previous week continued at University College London, Newcastle University and the University of Cambridge, a new one began at the University of Nottingham, where 150 protesters occupied a building. The protesters occupying the council chamber in Birmingham left after four hours, with a police spokesperson commending the protesters for their "wholly peaceful" behaviour, and noting that it "couldn't have been more different from the violent clashes seen recently in London". == 9 December ==

Parliament Square protest On Thursday 9 December, the day of the scheduled vote on education reform in the Houses of Parliament, two separate protests were organised in central London; one led by the National Union of Students (NUS), the other jointly by the University of London Union (ULU) and the NCAFC, with an expected 40,000 people attending. ULU members handed out green hard hats with the words "Tax the banks, not the students" on them, whilst a rally was held in Bloomsbury at midday, where ULU President Solomon addressed the crowd. Police used batons to hit protesters, and a St John Ambulance member told press that he had treated ten protesters for head injuries from being struck by police batons by 4.30 pm. Reporter Jonathan Haynes of The Guardian, who was present, characterised the police tactics as "very heavy handed". At 21:15, the protest was forced onto Westminster Bridge where it was kettled until approximately 23:30. Protests elsewhere in central London officer deployed in riot gear on 9 December 2010 Due to the Parliament Square protest being kettled, many other demonstrators could not enter the Square and so disseminated across much of the rest of central London. Some were separately kettled around The Cenotaph, where Charlie Gilmour, the adopted son of Pink Floyd guitarist David Gilmour and a student at Girton College, Cambridge, was pictured swinging from a Union Flag on the memorial; he later apologised, claiming that he "did not realise" it was the Cenotaph. Meanwhile, many of those students who remained around the area of Trafalgar Square continued to protest, with about 150 holding a sit-in in the adjacent National Gallery, while others attempted to set fire to the Trafalgar Square Christmas tree. During the protests, a car taking The Prince of Wales and The Duchess of Cornwall to the evening's Royal Variety Performance at the London Palladium was attacked on Regent Street and Home Secretary Theresa May confirmed a protester 'made contact' with Camilla. In Oxford Street, Topshop was damaged, as rioters sprayed "pay your tax" on the building and broke windows. Response Home Secretary Theresa May issued a statement in which she "utterly condemned" the actions of the protesters, and declared that "What we are seeing in London tonight, the wanton vandalism, smashing of windows, has nothing to do with peaceful protest... Attacks on police officers and property show that some of the protesters have no respect for London or its citizens." Following the protests, video footage posted on YouTube showed Jody McIntyre, a protester with cerebral palsy, involved in an altercation with police. The footage showed McIntyre, who had positioned himself in the front line facing police, being pulled out of his wheelchair and dragged across the ground by Metropolitan Police officers. While McIntyre later said he had been pulled out of the wheelchair twice, only one incident is shown in the video. On 13 December, he was interviewed about the incident by BBC journalist Ben Brown, an interview later described by The Guardian newspaper as "having a distinct lack of sympathy from the BBC" and it was noted that the incident had "attracted thousands of complaints". McIntyre's complaint was later rejected by Scotland Yard. His subsequent appeal was partly upheld by the IPCC. Street medics treated student protesters during the parliament square protest on Thursday 9 December, the day of the scheduled vote to raise university tuition fees. A field tent was set up on the green providing emergency first aid to protesters as well as tea and food within the containment area. Around 30 protesters were treated, most for head injuries. In September 2023 the Metropolitan Police apologised to him and agreed a financial settlement. ==Influence==

On 30 November, following the third main day of protesting, the Welsh Assembly announced that it would not permit an increase in fees for Welsh students. A reporter from the BBC noted that this meant that if the plans went through in England, "it would mean that an English student at a university in England could pay more than £17,000 more for a three-year degree than a Welsh student on the same course." In September 2011, students in Northern Ireland succeeded in getting the Northern Ireland Assembly to freeze tuition fees, avoiding the large fee increases in England. Student leaders in Northern Ireland cited the wider protests across the UK as one reason for their success. As of 2020, this has saved Northern Ireland university students £1 billion in tuition fees compared to English students. In November 2012, two years after the 2010 demonstrations, protests ignited again from the student movement. Organised by the NUS, around 10,000 demonstrators marched in central London. After a five-day trial in the High Court in June 2012, 27-year-old assistant tutor Luke Cooper, reported to be completing a PhD in international relations at the University of Sussex, was awarded £35,000 over a front page Evening Standard article and £25,000 over a follow-up piece in the Daily Mail that implied he was the "ringleader" of the protesters who invaded the Conservative Party's headquarters. Cooper complained that the allegations were untrue, threatened his future academic prospects and left his reputation "as badly trashed" as the Millbank Tower. The years following the student protests saw a leftward shift in the politics of the NUS. In 2014 the NUS Conference voted in support of free education, reversing the union's previous policy of advocating a graduate tax as a replacement for tuition fees, which it had adopted in the late 2000s. The Student Broad Left made progressive gains in the mid-2010s, culminating in the election of SBL candidate Malia Bouattia as NUS President. Participants in the protests went on to be involved in a number of left-wing causes, such as the trade union movement, the climate movement, Palestinian and Kurdish solidarity, alternative media (such as Aaron Bastani, co-founder of Novara Media), migrant and refugee solidarity campaigns, and Momentum and the Labour Party under the leadership of Jeremy Corbyn (such as James Schneider, who served as Corbyn's head of strategic communications). ==See also==