• 35 arrests as 52,000 protest in Westminster over shake-up
  
• Millbank and Tory HQ overrun by rampaging students
  
• Rioters warn: 'This is only the beginning'
  
  
• Eight are treated in hospital, with three police also injured
  
• 'Embarrassed' police admit they were only prepared for peaceful march
  
  
• MI5 HQ sealed with officers guarding exits
  
  
• Clegg defends Lib Dem U-turn on hike at PMQs
  
  
• Cameron: Rise will mean foreign students pay less
  

• 'You're like a Fresher who has met a dodgy bloke': Harman warns Clegg he'll regret tuition fees U-turn
  
• Revealed: Crippling 30-year graduate debt trap that will see students paying off their loans even when their OWN children go to university
  

Meanwhile, David Cameron, on his visit to China, told students there the changes in the UK would mean fees for foreign students won't rise so quickly.

'Foreign students will still pay a significant amount of money but we should be able to keep that growth under control,' he said at Beijing University.

He told students that charges for foreign students had to date been hiked as a way of 'keeping them down on our domestic students'.

• Nicholas Watt, chief political correspondent
  
• guardian.co.uk, Friday 12 November 2010 21.30 GMT In addition to the party's manifesto pledge, Nick Clegg signed an NUS pledge in April to vote against any increase in tuition fees. Photograph: NUS press office The Liberal Democrats were drawing up plans to abandon Nick Clegg's flagship policy to scrap university tuition fees two months before the general election, secret party documents reveal.
  As the Lib Dem leader faces a growing revolt after this week's violent protest against fee rises, internal documents show the party was drawing up proposals for coalition negotiations which contrasted sharply with Clegg's public pronouncements.
  A month before Clegg pledged in April to scrap the "dead weight of debt", a secret team of key Lib Dems made clear that, in the event of a hung parliament, the party would not waste political capital defending its manifesto pledge to abolish university tuition fees within six years.
  In a document marked "confidential" and dated 16 March, the head of the secret pre-election coalition negotiating team, Danny Alexander, wrote: "On tuition fees we should seek agreement on part time students and leave the rest. We will have clear yellow water with the other [parties] on raising the tuition fee cap, so let us not cause ourselves more headaches."
  The document is likely to fuel criticism among Lib Dem backbenchers and in the National Union of Students that the party courted the university vote in the full knowledge that its pledge would have to be abandoned as the party sought to achieve a foot in government. Within a month of the secret document, Clegg recorded a YouTube video for the annual NUS conference on 13 April in which he pledged to abolish fees within six years.
  "You've got people leaving university with this dead weight of debt, around £24,000, round their neck," the future deputy PM said in the video that was screened at the conference on 13 April.
  Clegg also joined all other Lib Dem MPs in signing an NUS pledge to "vote against any increase in fees". The leaked document showed that during the preparations for a hung parliament the Lib Dems still intended to fulfil that commitment.
  The Lib Dems, who are now under intense pressure after agreeing in government that tuition fees should be allowed to rise, said the document was designed to work out how to reach agreement with the Tories and Labour, who were "diametrically" opposed to them.
  As the party was isolated, the negotiators concentrated on trying to win ground where they could find consensus. Source say that, in government, they have succeeded in tackling the discrimination against part-time students identified in the secret document.
  The secret internal Lib Dem document is disclosed in a new book on the coalition negotiations by Rob Wilson, Conservative MP for Reading East. Wilson, who interviewed 60 key figures from the main parties for Five Days to Power, reveals that:
  • The Lib Dems made no attempt to stand by their two key economic election pledges – no deficit reduction this year and opposition to a VAT increase – in the coalition negotiations. A Clegg aide told Wilson: "The thing that changed minds was George Osborne saying that he had seen the figures and it was quite horrific in real life as opposed to spin life."
  • Alexander, appointed by Clegg last year to lead a secret four-strong coalition negotiating team, had thought the Lib Dems would only support a minority Tory government and not a coalition because of a "substantial gulf" between the two parties. In his confidential document on 16 March, Alexander wrote that it "would make it all but impossible for a coalition to be sustainable if it were formed, and extremely difficult to form without splitting the party."
  • Chris Huhne, a member of the secret team, wrote a dissenting report to Clegg insisting that the Lib Dems would have to form a full-blown coalition with the Tories and not prop up a minority government. He warned there was no precedent for a minority government succeeding delivering a fiscal consolidation, raising the prospect both parties would face a backlash. "Financial crises are catastrophic for the political parties that are blamed, and we should avoid this at all costs."
  • George Osborne, who had long feared the Tories would struggle to win an overall parliamentary majority, persuaded David Cameron to allow him to form the Tories' own secret coalition negotiating team two weeks before the election. The Tory leader demanded total secrecy and asked only to be given the barest details for fear that he would blurt it out "unplanned in an interview".
  • David Laws, a member of the secret Lib Dem negotiating team who briefly served in the cabinet, predicted on 24 February 2010 that the Tories would make a "very early offer of co-operation or coalition" in the event of a hung parliament. Laws told Wilson that he has a high regard for Osborne who tried to persuade him to join the Tories in 2006.
  • Gordon Brown was so keen to form a coalition with the Lib Dems that on Monday 10 May, the day before his resignation, he offered to form "a completely new sort of government" in which Clegg would run EU policy. The Lib Dems understood they would take half of the seats in cabinet.
  A Lib Dem spokesman said tonight: "These are selective extracts of documents which discussed a range of options ahead of any possible negotiations. As the Liberal Democrats made clear throughout the election and in negotiations, they had four key priorities which were set out on the front page of the manifesto. All of these priorities were agreed in the coalition document. The nature of the coalition agreement has meant we were able to set the foundations for a stable five-year government that will deliver many of the priorities the Liberal Democrats have long supported."
  Clegg tried to downgrade the pledge to abolish tuition fees at the 2009 conference, prompting a backlash from the left. A plan to abolish them over six years was included in the general election manifesto.
  
  

Quote:The significance of Millbank: British protest begins, Guy Aitchison

from OpenDemocracy - by Guy Aitchison
Two days on from Wednesday’s student demo and debate over the storming of Millbank, the police’s response, the legitimacy of confrontational forms of direct action and protest, and what this means for the Coalition’s programme of cuts, is still raging among many young people in Britain (see my Storify report if you are outside the UK and want to know what happened). It’s perhaps too early to predict with any certainty what the significance of the protest will be, but a number of points are worth making to those on all sides of the debate.
In discussing the events at Millbank, it is important to distinguish between “violence” and direct action. Conflating the invasion and occupation of Millbank, with the idiotic throwing of a fire extinguisher off the roof, confuses a legitimate tool of direct action and protest, with a mindless act of aggression, and is especially unhelpful coming from those, like Will Straw, who are sympathetic to the protesters. It is possible for a protest to be both unlawful and non-violent– traditionally, the police have deliberately confused the two, allowing them to respond in the same manner to acts of civil disobedience as to acts of violence.
Now, clearly there were acts of vandalism that accompanied the occupation of Millbank, but the instinct of the crowd was decisively against violence. When one protester picked up a rock, he was told to stop being an “idiot” and the throwing of the fire extinguisher was greeted by a chorus of booes and a chant of “stop throwing shit”, as this video shows. A 23 year old man from Cambridgeshire has apparently now been arrested over this incident. Good. If it is indeed him who hurled the projectile, he had no support for his actions amongst students at the time, and will have none now.

The occupation of 30 Millbank, on the other hand, certainly did have the support of the crowd. This wasn’t just a minority of hotheads, a rogue gang of “anarchists” and “Trots”, as Caroline Flint put it on Question Time yesterday. These were young, fresh-faced kids of the kind you’d find in any student bar. Disillusioned and enraged by a political elite that has chosen to make their generation pay for a crisis they didn't cause, they saw an opportunity passing Millbank to get involved in a spontaneous direct action against the poorly guarded Tory HQ. And they took it. The hundreds who occupied the building had the support of the thousands who cheered them on outside, and many more no doubt on TV. Many I spoke to, who got involved in the occupation, were 16 and 17 and had taken the day off school, risking the wrath of their teachers, to protest. As John Harris put it:

What happened on Wednesday afternoon was not some meaningless rent-a-mob flare-up, nor an easily-ignored howl of indignation from some of society's more privileged citizens. It was an early sign of people growing anxious and restless, and what a government pledged to such drastic plans should increasingly expect.

The other important point to recognise is that this wasn’t a purely self-interested protest about fees by a privileged few. The majority of those protesting won’t be affected by the hike in fees, and in any case students were keen to show solidarity with other victims of the coalition’s austerity agenda. The slogans and statement by those on the roof of Millbank make this clear. As Richard Seymour points out, it is patronising and untrue, to imply, as Polly Toynbee does, that only the middle class care about defending university education – many students come from working class families, live in poor quality accommodation and struggle to get by on low paid jobs. The benefit of accessible higher education to the individual and society is recognised across all social classes.
Encouragingly, a number of solidarity campaigns have been set up to provide advice and support to those who took part in the Millbank occupation. David Cameron has called for the “full weight of the law” to be brought to bear on those involved, raising the possibility of draconian punishments of the kind handed down to Gaza protesters who received up to two and a half year sentences, explicitly referred to by the judge as a deterrent. A Statement of Unity to “stand with the protesters, and anyone who is victimised as a result of the protest” has gathered over 3,000 signatures, including Naomi Klein, Billy Bragg and several dissident members of the NUS executive committee. A legal support group has also been setup with helpful advice for those who fear they may be scooped up by police – FIT Watch too have some useful tips. The shrill and distasteful witch hunt being ran by the Telegraph and the Sun, encouraging their readers to inform on the protesters depicted in their photos, has provoked an online campaign to thwart and frustrate them with members of the “Stop the hunt of the Millbank protesters” Facebook group encouraged to email creative responses and alternatives to the newspapers.
After months of rumbling discontent in anticipation of the pain that was about to be inflicted, the potential for determined and organised resistance to the cuts is clear. Emboldened by the scale and energy of Wednesday’s protest, trade unionists and other anti-cuts campaigners are already stepping up their activities. Campaigners behind the Vodafone block outs last month have announced they are planning "a day of mass civil disobedience against tax avoidance" on 4 December targeting other high street names, pointing out that Wednesday’s events showed a “real anger among a huge section of the population and this is not just the old faces and usual suspects”
No doubt, the line that the Millbank occupation was a “distraction” and a “failure” which has alienated public sympathy for the students’ cause will persist. It is, of course, the only acceptable line to take amongst those who wish to be taken seriously within the confines of official debate - and it is the line Aaron Porter has stuck to. The NUS president did a fantastic job of mobilising so many people, where his predecessors had been timid and ineffectual in opposing fees. But he should be careful not to sacrifice the unity of the student movement with blanket condemnation of those who took part in the Millbank occupation. He was right to haveendorsed, as Jess Worth reports, direct action against the cuts at the People and Planet conference last week , so it would be disappointing if, having been cowed by a right-wing attack campaign, the NUS chose to distance itself from the coming wave of occupations and sit ins planned by students on campuses across the UK. What is at stake is huge. They should put aside their fears of not being able to control the movement, and instead seek to maintain unity by encouraging the energy and anger out there, channelling it into creative, rather than destructive, ways.
It is a simplistic reading that sees Demolition 2010 as a failure, one which takes the media coverage at face value – activists concerned with galvanizing popular resistance to the cuts should recognise this. As Jess Worth puts it on the New Internationalist blog:

What would have been a 30-second news clip of just another march through London has become the top story in all major UKnews outlets and has picked up by the international press. Media commentators, whilst disapproving of the protest, are calling it a “wake-up call” for the government and a serious blow to the unity of the ruling coalition, while the bookies have slashed the odds of a dramatic political U-turn on student fees. A whole new generation has tasted the power and energy that comes with effective rebellion and we can expect to see resistance snowball.

And if you remain unconvinced, perhaps I can point you to a striking article by the Evening Standard’s City Editor – a weather-vain of establishment opinion if ever there was one. Echoing a prescient column by the Daily Telegraph’s political editor, Peter Oborne, he predicts that we can “Expect more rage if the rich and poor divide gets bigger”

The temperature is rising all the time. Already, we've had strikes from the Tube drivers and firefighters, and now students are taking to the streets. More groups are likely to follow suit.

“We have”, he says, “been warned”.

Quote:No tuition fees! No to Workfare!
The Lucy Young and the Scott Trust, in association with Unlock Democracy, will host Nick Clegg at the Hugo Young Lecture on the 23rd November.
The event has been advertised on the basis that it will be “an excellent chance for members to quiz the Deputy Prime Minister”.
Right to Work will be there to make sure Nick Clegg can hear loud and clear what we think of him.
The Con-Dems are launching an onslaught of cuts and privatisation and a vicious ideological attack on our welfare state.
It is vital that wherever the Tories and their Lib-Dem lapdogs go, they are hounded and forced to face up to the widespread rage at their blanket attack on the working class movement.
Yesterday Iain Duncan Smith was held back for an hour after speaking in Camden by a protest of local residents, Right to Work and London Campaign Against Poverty campaigners, enraged at the Con-Dems’ attempts to make the unemployed work for free.
Come along to the protest against Clegg and join the fightback!

Quote:Stick-wielding Leftie yobs? Not the lovely boys I met at the pub


Last updated at 12:56 PM on 14th November 2010

Are our students taught how to demonstrate properly? Do they understand what a riot is? Do they know the historical context of this British tradition?
I do hope so – and, indeed, if they are ALL doing media studies they will find that every cliche in the book has been mindlessly lobbed at them.
What happened on Wednesday has been *spoken of breathlessly as both the beginning of the revolution and the collapse of Western civilisation.

The cost of education: The demonstration was not only about fees for posh kids, it was about a future in which we know only the price of education, not its value

All rather thrilling: fire and broken glass and smirking boy-band faces uncovered because they hadn’t really planned this opportunistic rampage. Pull the camera back *further and one sees lots of people unsure but watching a few others do the bad stuff.
Having failed to predict a riot, we now have a lot of blather about the full force of the law being brought down on these ‘seasoned anarchists’. This from Bullingdon boys who used to leave huge tips because of the damage they caused.
The full force of the law did not look that impressive on the day and is, indeed, itself subject to cuts. Perhaps the police are like the rest of us and have bought the myth that all students are middle-class and the middle class don’t do this.
Perhaps they believe we have been so groomed for austerity that we will go quietly. Perhaps they did actually learn a *lesson from the G20 protests when a man died after being struck by an officer.
Certainly, since the Tory coup there has been fuzzy talk of unrest. Why is it a shock it should come from students? They are mobile and able to organise as a group unlike, say, defenders of council housing or the ‘workshy’. They could wait until the next Election to show their dismay, but in the meantime they don’t have a lot to lose.
Financial independence, decent housing and employment are being taken away from all but the very privileged. Tertiary education is no longer a right but a purchase. As Labour intro*duced tuition fees and would also have increased them, this leaves little opposition to coalesce around.

Outrage: Financial independence, decent housing and employment are being taken away from all but the very privileged

As I like a drink with ‘stick-wielding Leftie yobs’, I found myself with some students on their way home. These nice boys were mostly taking pictures of themselves and their placards in the pub. They were as high as kites – as you can be when you think you have achieved something but don’t know what it is.
A peaceful demo is a long, slow trudge and these boys were ambivalent but excited about the violence. One told me he had been chanting ‘Idiots’ at those shoving their way into Millbank, and then found himself inside ‘going for it’.
They all felt deeply betrayed by Nick Clegg even though they had not voted for him. They were all concerned about whether they would be on the telly. They are not entirely stupid.
If this protest had not erupted it would not be front-page news and all sides know this, really. Protest is a game of push and shove with the media, as well as the police and the politicians.
The Right are barking on about organised activists and the NUS. Look at the real story. At least ten of those arrested were under 18. Lots of the kids who swelled the numbers were bunking off from the sixth form and have not even got to university.
The removal of the Education Maintenance Allowance and cuts to Further Education actually will do real damage to the life chances of those from poorer families. These are your actual apprentices.
The demonstration was not only about fees for posh kids. It was about a future in which we know only the price of education, not its value. And the protest was made by those who know that education remains the key motor of their own social mobility.
There will be more protests because neither Clegg nor Cameron has the mandate needed to make such huge changes. Their support is tentative. Those in power, who have had the very best start, look ever more distant from those who are asked to bear the brunt of this crisis.
When the demonstrators got near Millbank and the distance closed, the result was anger. Mob violence is neither pretty nor planned: a smash and grab at power. But I ask you to look, properly look, at the faces of some of these 50,000 kids. Do I see a mob infiltrated by evil?
No. I see our children.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-1329466/Student-fees-protest-Stick-wielding-yobs-Not-nice-boys-I-met-pub.html

Quote:12 November 2010 Last updated at 16:46

Student protests: Downing Street condemns lecturers


A demonstrator aims a kick at a window in Tory Party HQ

Downing Street has criticised "irresponsible" lecturers in London who praised protesters who stormed the building which houses Conservative HQ.

Windows were smashed and police officers were among those hurt when a minority of protesters turned violent.

Lecturers at Goldsmiths criticised unions for distancing themselves from the occupation of Millbank Tower.

They said the "real violence" was the cuts. However Goldsmiths "completely disassociates" itself from the remarks.

Meanwhile the Metropolitan Police have confirmed that 54 people have now been arrested over the demonstration, of which "the majority" described themselves as "students or a variation thereof". The oldest is in their early thirties and 10 were under 18.

A 23-year-old man suspected of throwing a fire extinguisher at police from the roof of the building has been arrested in Cambridgeshire.

The National Union of Students, which organised the march, has condemned the violence as "shameful, dangerous and counterproductive" and the UCU lecturers' union said it was the "actions of a mindless and totally unrepresentative minority".

But a statement from the president of the lecturers' union at Goldsmiths, part of the University of London, congratulated staff and students "on the magnificent anti-cuts demonstration" adding: "We also wish to condemn and distance ourselves from the divisive and, in our view, counterproductive statements issued by the UCU and NUS leadership concerning the occupation of the Conservative Party HQ.

"The real violence in this situation relates not to a smashed window but to the destructive impact of the cuts and privatisation that will follow if tuition fees are increased and if massive reductions in higher education funding are implemented."

Those remarks were criticised by Conservative peer Lord Tebbit, who said: "I can imagine what they would say were a group from the TaxPayers' Alliance to turn up at their homes and vandalise them in protest at the way these lecturers are leeching the taxpayer and failing to discipline their students."

'Frankly irresponsible'
And a Downing Street spokesman said: ''Praising violence over peaceful protest is frankly irresponsible.''

Authorities at Goldsmiths also distanced themselves from the comments.

"This statement in no way reflects the views of Goldsmiths, University of London. We completely disassociate ourselves from what has been reported.

"Our position echoes that of the University and College Union and of the National Union of Students in that it was deeply saddening to see a peaceful protest tarnished by utterly unacceptable behaviour."


Windows were smashed and fires were lit at the Conservative headquarters in Westminster
The Conservative MP Greg Hands called on Labour deputy Harriet Harman to discipline some Labour MPs, after a Daily Mail article claimed they had "cheered on student vandals".

But the MPs in question rejected suggestions their comments on the micro-blogging site Twitter amounted to encouraging the violence.

Tom Blenkinsop, who quoted Nick Clegg as having warned of "riots" if extreme cuts were introduced, wrote: "Daily Mail say I was gleeful over the student riots. I wasn't. Am I surprised that Lab MPs are being attacked for defending the NUS? Not at all." He had also "tweeted": "Anyone involved in the violence should realise that by attacking police you are attacking allies in the public sector."

The Metropolitan Police has begun an inquiry into the handling of the student march. Those arrested - mostly for criminal damage and aggravated trespass - have been released on police bail until February.

The violence overshadowed the largely peaceful protests against the plan to lift the annual cap on university tuition fees in England from the current £3,290, to up to £9,000 a year for some institutions. They were also protesting against plans to cut higher education funding and teaching grants.

About 2,000 split from the main march to gather outside 30 Millbank, a building which includes the offices of the Conservative headquarters, where windows were smashed, fires lit and missiles thrown at police.

Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Paul Stephenson has said the police should have better prepared and called Wednesday's events "an embarrassment".

Policing minister Nick Herbert said police had "struck the wrong balance" when preparing for the protests.

About 225 officers had originally been deployed to police the march, the minister said, although a further 225 were called in as the situation developed.

Hundreds of coachloads of students and lecturers travelled to London from across England, Wales and Scotland for the demonstration in Whitehall.

Under the coalition's plans, students would not have to pay anything "up front" and as graduates, would only have to pay back their tuition fee loans once they were earning £21,000 or more.

But the NUS and other opponents say the prospect of such large debts will deter young people from poorer backgrounds from going to university.

Quote:Those remarks were criticised by Conservative peer Lord Tebbit, who said: "I can imagine what they would say were a group from the TaxPayers' Alliance to turn up at their homes and vandalise them in protest at the way these lecturers are leeching the taxpayer and failing to discipline their students."