Scuffles in London as students demand free education

Thousands of students demonstrated in London on Wednesday against university tuition fees, in the largest student protest action in the UK since a lengthy November-December campaign in 2010 that turned violent.

Police said some 5,000 demonstrators marched to Parliament Square where a small group broke away and breached temporary barriers to confront police outside of Conservative Party headquarters.

"Various missiles were thrown at the officers," Scotland Yard said in a statement, which also said three officers had suffered minor injuries. London's Metropolitan Police said 11 people had been arrested for offenses that included assault, criminal damage and violent disorder. Hundreds of police and riot officers were deployed.

The demonstration started peacefully and in a party mood around midday, with students marching towards the Houses of Parliament, carrying signs donning adages critical of fees for higher learning.

"Education is a right, not a commodity," read one poster held up by students. "Tuition fees? No way! Tax the rich and make them pay!" the students chanted as they marched.

Another poster, marked in pencil, read: "I can't even afford a pen," in a show of humor illustrating the financial basis of Wednesday's protest.

New era?

"Today we marched through London in the biggest demonstration in several years," said the National Campaign Against Fees and Cuts (NCAFS), a student group that organized Wednesday's rally.

The NCAFS boasted of a "new era of student activism," with organizer Aaron Kiely saying this protest was the start of a "major wave of action" heading into next year's general election in the UK.

The campaign is looking to abolish tuition fees for all students in the UK; currently, universities in England charge between 3,000 and 9,000 pounds per year, although Scottish university students receive free higher education. Until the late 1990s, British universities did not charge for tuition; when first introduced, fees were capped nationwide at roughly 1,000 pounds per year.

Wednesday's student protest was nowhere near as large as anti-austerity rallies in 2010, when the current pricing system for British universities was first introduced, which saw around 50,000 people take to the streets in London.

Protests against Prime Minister David Cameron's government, shortly after he came to power, led to clashes with police, assaults on public buildings including the headquarters of Cameron's Conservative Party, and almost 400 arrests. The protests also angrily focused on Cameron's junior coalition partners, the Liberal Democrats, who had campaigned on a 2010 platform of abolishing tuition fees before agreeing to join with the Conservatives.

glb/msh (Reuters, AFP)