Disclaimer: The following blog post is not a reflection of the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s opinion on the below topics.
This is the second part of a four part series exploring England’s Education System.
I will explain the student, faculty and public’s protests to reclaim education in the autumn of 2010 and subsequently, the government and university’s response, understanding how the police and media created a certain narrative of the protest, and how this reflects the concerning delegitimization and criminalization of protest.
On the 10th of November, police expected 5,000 protesters at a central London march.[1] The number of protesters was severely underestimated when 50,000 showed up to demonstrate their dissatisfaction with the proposals. The prepared march went through the Millbank area in London, to finish near the Tate, where a rally was to be held.[2] As demonstrators were approaching Millbank Tower on route, a group split off and rushed towards the building, breaking open the glass and entering. Thomas Barlow, a student from Manchester University, described his experience:
“I pushed my way to the front. There were a few people flinging placards at the windows, and I looked around and realized there were only five or six police there. There were already some people inside Millbank. I thought, ‘Fuck it – let’s go for it, man.’ I turned to face the crowd and said, “Push me!” They pushed me like a spear towards the door. I got punched in the head by a few cops, but then we were inside!”[3]
Millbank, the conservative party headquarters, was the first occupation. The decisions made by this party had caused the current problems for university students, that of losing education maintenance allowance (EMAs) and hiking tuition fees. The choice to occupy this building was crucial to the spirit of the protest; its impact cannot be denied. The events at Millbank would lead to some 50 more occupations at universities all over England such as University College London (UCL), Manchester University, Queen’s University Belfast and Nottingham Trent University.
The occupations focused attention on the issue and the protesters’ demands, most certainly at Millbank, but they also had possibly a greater, more important effect; they created community spaces. In these community spaces, people could imagine and plan alternatives to the austerity regime, a regime that doesn’t necessarily welcome that kind of discussion in its spaces. Sarah Amsler, a UK writer, elaborates on this, “On the one hand, occupiers demanded that vice chancellors oppose the budget cuts, tuition fees, and broader neoliberalization of education. On the other, they cultivated spaces to practice and prefigure radically democratic forms of education and governance within the universities.”[4] At UCL, between 200 to 300 students occupied the Jeremy Bentham room in protest. Rita Issa, at the time a student at UCL, described her experience at the occupation by comparing it to her workplace, “In hospital, I was stuck in a hierarchy where my presence was not only useless but annoying. In occupation, I was witnessed, useful and valued. We were united in our fight to change the world. It felt beautiful and precious.”[5]
Photos taken at UCL during the occupation.[6]
Rita and others were experiencing and realizing the power of people when they come together to form a community that uplifts one another and teaches communal self-reliance or self-sufficiency through occupation. This community can expand outwards from occupations and into outside spaces, as shown when the movement united with unions to pressure the government into listening, not only to students, but to union organizers who could exert more influence on policy making. At Queen’s University Belfast, the students were able to organize a union meeting where over a thousand people showed up to support, the largest at that point since the 80’s.[7] The solidarity is especially evident in ENA’s statement: “Our fight for education is part of a wider fight against austerity which seeks to make ordinary people pay for a crisis not of our making. A victory against tuition fees and to defend EMA would be a victory for all those under attack. It’s a fight that we can win, but not if we are left to fight alone.”
Millbank was also the first time when kettling was used, the police tactic for containing protests. Kettling, simply put, is to push, shove, restrict and beat around protestors in order to confine them to a space particularly unfit for the size of the crowd. Kettling often has the effect of frustrating protestors into committing more strongly to the cause, to prove to the police that their kettling, no matter how brutal, will not succeed in disassembling the protest. The aggravation kettling initiates can push protestors to become violent themselves. Perhaps this is an intentional effect, as this violence is often why protests, even the act of protesting itself, gets condemned by the public. Writer Kat Craig summarizes, “And whilst the state points towards violence amongst protesters, it ignores the fact that kettling and the excessive use of force by police provokes, rather than prevents, violent protest.”[8]
The demonization and humiliation of protests presented as violent or pathetic by the media is a crucial aspect to the increasingly popular criminalization of protest. The majority of the news headlines surrounding the protests focused on “violence”, on November 10, 2010, The New York Times published “London Tuition Hike Protests Turn Violent,” the same day, The Guardian, “Student protest over fees turns violent” on December 9th, Business Insider published “Check Out Photos Of The Insane Student Riots Happening In London.” Ben Smoke reports for Huck magazine: “Overall, 393 people were arrested for their part in the London student demonstrations across November and December 2010, with 109 of those being charged with offences. Of those, 60 percent were charged with violent disorder.”[9] The protest was being transformed into a spectacle instead of being approached as groups of political agents who are legitimately concerned, exercising their right to assemble.
Tina Managhan, lecturer at Oxford Brookes, neatly depicts this spectacle, “The student tuition fees protest event, as (re)staged by police actions and (re)presented in the media, was the story of a group of self-indulgent students who were, at the very least, threatening to disrupt our day-to-day affairs and, at most, causing mayhem – terrorizing innocent Christmas shoppers on the streets.”[10] Managhan describes how seemingly far removed society is from the collective acknowledgement that its preservation is indeed through protest, at least it is represented this way by media and police action. These important figures in the state apparatus are influential and persuasive, asserting their values of christmas consumerism and denouncing anyone who opposes them. She explains how frightening this is, “The danger is that protest increasingly becomes positioned as a mere hindrance to the smooth governing of the public rather than integral to it.[11] Shaking the neoliberal notion that protests are invaluable nuisances and that protestors are detached or uniquely separate from the general public is an important step in assembling.
Tina Managhan continues, “What is exceptional, albeit normalized through state paternalism, is the willingness of the police and courts to deny the protester their full status as political citizens with recognizable and inalienable rights: freedom of assembly and basic civil liberties.”[12] She is explaining how it has become normalized for citizens to view the state as a protective, administrative figure. This kind of administrative, bureaucratic governmental structure is prized under neoliberalism, as it is essential to its functioning, making this view of the state as paternal increasingly dangerous because it excuses both the excessive violence used on protesters and the restriction of their rights, therefore allowing the state to physically and psychologically suppress civil disobedience.
There were groups such as Defend The Right To Protest formed after Millbank that brought attention to the harsh charging and sentencing of demonstrators. They actively worked to protect and defend the rights of protestors. They pointed to the example of one 18-year-old female college student who was sentenced to 10 months for “waving a placard stick aggressively at police lines.”[13] Additionally, Green and Black Cross was formed in the direct aftermath of Millbank who now provide legal observers and support at demonstrations and movements across the country like BLM. “The legal observers you see taking notes, handing out bust cards, those outside of police stations waiting to collect those released and those you don’t see, helping people mount defences against erroneous and disproportionate charges, are a direct result of what happened at Millbank.”[14]
The day of the Parliament Square protest was the next very significant day for the movement. It was when the vote was being held in Parliament to decide the tuition fee debate. Dan Hancox, writer for The Guardian described his experience amongst the crowd during the protest,
“One night last December, having already spent five hours trapped by the Metropolitan police in Parliament Square, I was imprisoned on Westminster Bridge along with 1,000 other mostly young protesters, in sub-zero temperatures, for more than two hours. We were held in such a tight space that some suffered respiratory problems and chest pains: the symptoms of severe crushing.”
The vote was decided; tuition fees were now tripled compared to their previous limit.[15] The Liberal Democrats, who had previously signed a pledge with the National Student Union (NSU) not to raise fees, voted mainly in favor.[16] Nick Clegg, the leader of the Liberal Democrats ran on policies of no tuition fees but then completely sided with the conservatives on the vote.[17] The coalition government ended up leaning conservative, following the trajectory set out before them by decades of neoliberal leaders and governments.
In 2010, England became the most expensive place to attend a public university in the world with undergraduate tuition being up to 9,000 pounds.[18] Many students would not be able to afford a university education without undergoing immense debt. There were protesters beaten so badly that day that their brains bled, Alfie Meadows suffered brain damage from a policeman’s baton.[19] The future of education and the rest of England’s public services were at risk of becoming obsolete. Through this, what the UK media seemed to be most concerned with, though, was the royal family’s Rolls Royce that suffered minor damages from getting kicked by protestors as it drove past.
[1] Sirin Kale, “An Oral History of the 2010 Student Protests”, Vice, Dec. 9, 2019.
[2] Ben Smoke, “The untold story of the 2010 student protests”, huck, Nov. 17, 2020.
[3] Thomas Barlow “An Oral History of the 2010 Student Protests”, by Sirin Kale, Vice, Dec. 12, 2019.
[4] Sarah Amsler. ”Spaces of Hope in the Struggle for England’s Universities.” 75-76.
[5] Matt Myers, “‘It Felt Beautiful and Precious’: Reflections on the Student Movement 10 Years On”, Novara Media, Dec. 9, 2020.
[6] UCL Occupation, Flickr, Nov 27, 2010.
[7] Sirin Kale, “An Oral History of the 2010 Student Protests”
[8] Kat Craig. “Kettling and Criminalising Protest: Kat Craig on the Use of Increasingly Violent and Oppressive Tactics by the Police.” Socialist Lawyer, no. 58 (2011): 16.
[9] Ben Smoke, “The untold story of the 2010 student protests”
[10] Tina Managhan, “‘KETTLING AND THE ‘DISTRIBUTION OF THE SENSIBLE’ INVESTIGATING THE LIMINALITY OF THE PROTESTING BODY IN A POST-POLITICAL AGE”, Krisis: Journal for Contemporary Philosophy, 2012, 63.
[11] Ibid. 62.
[12] Ibid. 59.
[13] Ben Smoke, “The untold story of the 2010 student protests”
[14] Ibid.
[15] Jamie Woodcock. “The Trajectory of the 2010 Student Movement in the UK: From Student Activism to Strikes.” In The University and Social Justice: Struggles Across the Globe, Pluto Press, 2020, 32.
[16] Ibid.
[17] Aaron Porter. “The English Gamble with the Future of Higher Education.” 246
[18] Jamie Woodcock. “From Student Activism to Strikes.” 32.
[19] Oliver Slow, “Alfie Meadows: Met agrees payout for man injured at 2010 protest”, BBC, Sept 15, 2023.
[20] Justice for Alfie Meadows, Facebook.
[21] Matt Dunham, AP News