student march or student riot?

There has been a series of student marches in London recently to protest the increase of the capping of university tuition fees from £3290 to £9000. This is a maximum amount to charge local students. If you’re wondering what this is all about, here’s a good page for some Q&A info. For international students, there are no caps, so it’s hugely expensive to get a degree here in the UK for non-European students.

Anyway, back to the topic. Protests are okay if they are peaceful ones. There was a march at around noon that passed by the office and it was quite peaceful. Some police officers were flanking the march and there were several police vans at the end of it. It caused a little bit of a traffic jam later on but it was quite peaceful.

However, it became worse as the sun went down. Many students were protesting near parliament. When it got a bit out of hand, police started ‘kettling’ to one place in order to control them easier.

Even Prince Charles and Camilla didn’t escape the violence. They were on their way to the Royal Variety Show when protestors chased their car and threw paint on it. They even attempted to smash one of the windows.

This has gone a bit too far. If they want to protest, then please do so, but peacefully, not with violence. It seems that there were some of them who intended to cause problems.

Videos of the march/riot showed that it was a real mess. Protestors vandalised public property and were violent to police, while the police were hitting some protestors with their batons. Click here for a page with many photos of the day.

I’ve always thought protests in the UK were exemplary as they were always peaceful ones. People would march on the streets with their protest banners, and the police will watch over, making sure there were no funny business.

But these student protests are getting out of hand. Too any damages to public property and injuries to people. It’s worse than other countries where the police will just spray water to protestors.

Protests and marches usually will only have a small probability of changing things, but the violence will certainly not help them to achieve their cause.