civil disobedience in manchester against education cuts

Mark Harrison writes his personal recollections of today’s great events in Manchester as part of the national day of action against tuition fees.

Student Protest, scaling new heights.

Fortunately today I slept in and missed my 11am lecture and decided to go to what I expected to be a piddly little demo.

What a pleasant surprise awaited me! By 12:30 approximately 3000 people had gathered at the designated meeting point at the University of Manchester, these were not the usual faces. The vast majority of those present were college and school students playing truant, many had travelled from Cheshire, ‘the left’ was completely swamped, The SWP had made an obvious effort to mobilise all their members, there were a few members of the Revolutionary Communist Group, a guy from the Alliance for Workers’ Liberty and a comrade of the Anarchist Federation distributing Anarchist Student. The militancy on display was inspiring. Despite being promised on social networking websites that we would be marching to the town hall, the consensus loving, ultra democratic officers of the University’s Student Union had apparently decided that we would instead be diverted to the Castlefield arena on the edge of the city, out of harms way. I think ‘health and safety’ was the reason given – political correctness gone mad!

the battle of millbank and occupation at manchester university

The mass media may have already covered yesterday’s demo in London but a personal account can never be a bad thing.

The NUS and police were completely unprepared for the 50,000 angry students who descended on Central London. The demonstration was completely chaotic, people were travelling in all directions, hand made placards ranged from the uninspired ‘keep the cap’, the “hilarious” (David Cameron engaging in anal sex with Nick Clegg), to the visionary “University for Everyone”. Finding the much discussed ‘free education bloc’ was an impossibility, let along finding your own comrades.

occupation at manchester

Personally, direction was only given to the demonstration when a NUS steward said to me, “Don’t go off the right, that’s Tory HQ, carry on forward for the NUS route”. It seems that great minds think alike as most chose to ignore the mind numbing speeches made by NUS and UCU tops and aimed for the headquarters of the traditional party of the bourgeoisie.