Britain braces for new student protests

British students are once again expected to join mass protests not seen in two years after their voices against tuition fees hikes were silenced with harsh police tactics including “kettling” in freezing conditions in 2010.

The National Union of Students (NUS) has organized a new wave of protests entitled “Demo 2012” to highlight not only tuition fees and the loss of the educational maintenance allowance (EMA), but the dire employment prospects faced by many young people once they graduate.

Organizers expect at least 10,000 demonstrators to join the mass gathering near the Embankment, on the north side of the Thames on Wednesday morning, before a march past Parliament Square towards Kennington Park, just south of the river, for a rally.

“Demo 2012” enjoys the official slogan ‘Educate, Employ, Empower’, according to Liam Burns, the NUS president.

“We usually have protests that are about stopping a particular act of parliament,” he said.

“This is about setting the agenda for politicians. I don’t think anyone would disagree that we’re bearing the brunt of all sorts of attacks that we certainly didn’t create. This is a different type of protest. It’s about sending a clear message to politicians that it simply isn’t good enough. The demonstration is like a starter gun to the general election, so parliament knows it has to do something to make things different for our generation.”

“But it’s also to say that we’ve not forgotten how they betrayed us in the last general election”, Burns added.

The NUS president said MPs should note that many of those marching past the Commons were from “a generation who have had so many opportunities taken away from them” and would vote for the first time in the next election.

“It’s so frustrating when we see so many other countries investing in education, yet ours insists on this narrative that we must just cut further and further. This protest is a place marker: this has to stop and we need a fundamentally different direction for the next general election”, Burns said.

Police used vigorous tactics including the “kettling” of crowds for hours in freezing conditions in the four successive marches during November and December 2010. Those protests were held to decry the enactment of the law greatly increasing tuition fees.