Yestersday’s NUS/UCU demo in London against attacks on further education attracted over 50,000 mainly students, who came in their numbers from all over the country. Many of these were young people demonstrating for the first time ever. It will not be the last. As the attacks start to bite, more and more youth will come into activity and draw the political conclusions.
Of course, all the press coverage and political comments from Westminster concentrated on the few who entered the Millbank building (occupied in part by the Tory HQ) and caused some damage. An army of photographers, watched from a distance by a few police, were immediatly on hand to record a lone "rioter" (as they were quickly called) kicking down the main entrance window. If there had been no trouble, would the bosses press have given it the same level of coverage? BBC Breakfast TV talked of "thousands of rioters" even though in truth only a small number were actually causing any damage (hence the low arrest count) with the rest really just looking on. With the bosses openly worried about social unrest in the coming period as the cuts dig in, this sort of "balanced" reporting will be repeated. It should be noted that whilst Tory politicians are quick to complain about a few windows being broken, they have little to say about the millions of lives being wrecked by their programme of austerity cuts.
Here are some photos by Georgios Diakogeorgiou from yesterday. More reports and photos will follow:
