Student Protest in London - Nov 9

Last year, as I started making plans to come over to study in London, I heard about the British Government’s plans to cut spending on further education as well as increase the cap for tuition fees of local students.

As someone who had spent a couple of years in Australia as an international student, I knew that spending cuts affect all students, and also that it might have implications on future international student fees. I got a bit worried in terms of how much I might end up having to pay if my plans to come over at some point.

You can read up on it here.

Many students took to the streets last year and today, it was “round two” of the protest. Over 10,000 students were expected to protest and the police were reported to have mobilised over 4,000 personnel onto the streets of London. There was also the Sparks protest and Black Cab protest today.

Another reason for the heavy police presence as well was fears of things going untowardly as the protest route was going past St Paul’s church where the Occupy London Stock Exchange folks were still occupying.

The picture above was one taken of some of the #OccupyLSX folks marching towards Trafalgar Square to join in the student protest to show their support and solidarity.

The protest route was meant to pass by my uni so I spent the better part of the morning at the library (trying) to get some work done. I followed the protest on Twitter and heading out to the main road around the time the protest was due to come by.

There was heavy police presence on Strand, where my university is located, when I first arrived and by the time I got out in the afternoon, helicopters were circling in the sky.

Eventually, the protest showed up “led” by these cops on horses. There were accusations that having cops in front were a tactic the Metropolitan Police were using to scare people, or to start the kettling process, or to control the protest. But I saw this as a wonderful act of allowing protestors to make their stand, yet at the same time, protect citizens – the protestors themselves – from any violence or potential problems by troublemakers.

Even before the protest begun, the Met has issued announcements (via Twitter, no less) that no water canons would be used and warned that rubber guns might be used in the case of any problems. Some people saw this as threats, but I thought it was a fair warning as long as it’s not used inappropriately.

Say what you will but I actually felt like the police were doing their jobs well. I’m not sure about what happened with the arrest and some other reports I read via Twitter (apparently, someone got arrested for being in possession of … marker pens) so I can’t comment on that. But from what I experienced, the cops were pretty decent.

It felt like a safe protest, and from what I experienced and heard later, the protest was mostly peaceful.

The shot above is one of my favourites out of all the pictures I took because of that banner. I have to admit that in anticipation of the protest and today, I couldn’t help but make comparisons to how such activities were dealt with back home.

It has also been a long time since I was in university in Australia, and experiencing such protest back there, for me to remember what it was like to have peaceful protests allowed to happen, with the support of the police.

I also liked this picture because, for one, he was happy to keep posing for people but also because it was made from bottlecaps. I’m assuming he is with the #OccupyLSX group but there were so many people there (by my estimation, more than the 10,000 organisers expected), you can’t really tell who’s with who.

Most people had their face showing, though, but I think it was mostly because the police invoked a law which allowed them to “unmask” anyone who is covering their faces in the vicinity of the protest route. Again, some people were complaining about that but I believe that if you really stand for something, and you want to protest (especially in a country where it is legal!), that you shouldn’t have much (except in exceptional circumstances of course) to hide.

At that stage, however, I had to leave to meet my classmates to discuss a project we’re working on (I was already an hour late!) so I took a detour and headed back to the library.

From there, I managed to see the tail end of the protest walking past from the window. It was quite a walk but I still managed to catch the tail end, which only comes to show how many people were there.

It also makes the police estimation of 2,000 (according to a BBC report) protestors sort of a joke. Oh well, I guess some things are the same in different parts of the world, huh?

12.16am Greenwich Meridian Time

- nikicheong