Lee Durant

Student anarchy on the streets of London

Last Thursday I found myself amongst the chaos in the heart of Westminster as the student protest march turned from a peaceful one into one of violence and anarchy. The coalition government decided, by a narrow majority, to vote for an increase in the maximum threshold universities can charge for tuition fees from £3,000 to £9,000. The result means that some students may complete their education with at least £27,000 of debt hanging over their heads.

Police in Riot gear arrest two student protestors who helped un-saddle one of the mounted officers during the violence.

The moment the police rider was pulled from his horse.

Even before the vote was passed in the House of Commons violence had broken out around Parliament Green as students were guided into a barricaded area to make their stand. A portion of the crowd seemed focused on causing trouble from the start, donning masks to hide their identity and goading the police into confrontation.

There were some great shots published the day after in the papers, and its so easy to see what you’ve missed from an event like that, but it is all about being in the right place at the right time and beating everyone every other photographer to the pages of the papers….

The barriers that were set in place to prevent the students from violence were picked up and thrown against the Police lines.

As the darkness closed in the voilence increased with masked groups trying to single out officers and trying to provike the police.

Several officers were injured through the day.

Tags: Demonstration, Riots

This entry was posted on Monday, December 13th, 2010 at 8:14 pm and is filed under Editorial. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.