United Kingdom student protests, 2010
Back to Britain for the final item on the list, this particular riot was caused by changes to the university system in the UK. Until 1998, it was free to go to university in the UK, but in September of that year it was announced that a fee of up to £1, 000 per year would be payable by students. In 2004, this tripled to £3, 000, and again in 2010 to £9, 000. This latter figure was what inspired students to take to the streets in November 2010, causing widespread mayhem, violence, and great sums of damage.
As well as being exorbitantly high, the 2010 figure was controversial for other reasons. In the 2010 General Election, the Liberal Democrat party had garnered much support amongst students when it promised to oppose any rise in tuition fees for students. When no party got a majority, a coalition was formed between the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats, and the latter instantly dropped their election pledge as part of the power-sharing deal. Yet whilst the fees had tripled, the government simultaneously announced that it would cut its spending on universities, dramatically reducing teaching hours. What were students paying more for?
On November 10th 2010, between 30, 000 and 52, 000 students from across Great Britain and Northern Ireland marched through London in protest at the tuition fee increase and cuts to spending. They were even joined by a few MPs. The National Union of Students (NUS) had urged a peaceful protest, but unfortunately things got terribly out of hand. The police, expecting only 20, 000 protestors, had only deployed 225 officers to maintain order on the march. Thus the limited police presence meant that 200 people were able to break into 30 Millbank, Westminster, the headquarters of the Conservative Party.
The students vandalised the building, setting placards on fire and smashing windows (see above), whilst chanting ‘Tory scum’. When riot police were eventually deployed, they were pelted with eggs, rotten fruit, and broken glass. Many arrests were made as the students were finally persuaded to leave the building, and a miraculously low number of 8 people were injured during the occupation. As well as the vandalism, if you’ve ever had the misfortune to have driven a car through London, you’ll realise the severe impact that thousands of people on the tiny, congested streets caused. The capital was at a standstill.
Protests did not end after the march on November 10th. Across the country, students and even lecturers occupied lecture halls and classrooms for days and staged protests on campuses. Subsequent marches on November 24th and 30th led to more violent clashes with police. A protest at Parliament Square on December 9th saw mounted police charged into the crowd, injuring many students. The riots ended with several hundred arrests, severe damage to buildings in Central London, and no change to the tuition fees. The current £9, 250-a-year tuition fee is set to rise again with inflation, whilst spending has not increased.
Where did we find this stuff? Here are our sources:
“Autherine Lucy”. National Women History Museum.
“The Ghosts of Mexico 1968”. The Economist, 24 April 2008.
Gorgin, Iraj. “Looking Back At Tehran’s 1999 Student Protests”.
Lusher, Adam. “At least 10,000 people died in Tiananmen Square massacre, secret British cable from the time alleged”. The Independent, December 23rd 2017.
Means, Howard. 67 Shots: Kent State and the End of American Innocence. Boston: Da Capo, 2016.
Morris, Jan. The Oxford Book of Oxford. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001.
Siddiqui, Faiz. “The 25 Biggest College Campus Riots of All Time”. Complex.com. January 17, 2013.