Wednesday of this week marked exactly a year since the glorious day in November 2010 when thousands of students charged into and smashed up the Conservative Party headquarters at Millbank. A year on -- and 11 months since Parliament voted through the £9k tuition fee rise -- the student movement was out to prove that it’s still a force to be reckoned with. Despite only token backing from the National Union of Students, upwards of 10,000 students came from across the country to march on London’s financial district in a demo organised by the National Campaign Against Fees and Cuts (NCAFC).

A lot has changed since last November -- from the Arab revolutions to the huge anti-cuts demonstration on March 26th to the riots that hit English cities in August. And you could tell as much from the police presence: while the 50,000 strong ‘Millbank demo’ last year was initially policed by around 250 officers, this week’s demo had the much-vaunted figure of 4,000. Not to mention the horses, armoured vehicles, two helicopters, dogs, FIT teams, rubber bullets, intimidation letters sent the previous day and the thousands of twelve page glossy booklets that the police handed out at the starting point warning everyone not to fuck with them -- as if that much wasn’t obvious from the aforementioned 4000 cops, rubber bullets, cavalry… you get the picture. All justified by a bit of the usual pre-demo hysterics about anarcho-extremist infliltrators intent on causing a riot, nevermind that it was a totally legit demo organised in co-operation with the police, well stewarded and with a planned route ETC ETC.

Normally a demo of this size would barely get a mention from the media -- but Wednesday had it all: rolling news coverage, TV helicopters, hundreds of photographers -- all clamouring for things to kick off. And the police were trying their hardest to make sure things did as well: charging around in full Robocop get-up, shields out, and with plain-clothes occasionally jumping folk and dragging them off just cause they got a bit bored.

Elsewhere in London, thousands of electricians -- currently engaged in a huge struggle against the tearing up of their national pay and conditions agreement -- were at a Unite the Union organised demo, having blockaded building sites earlier in the day. While most then marched to Parliament to lobby MPs, a rank and file break-off of a couple of hundred sparks tried to march to join the student demo. Hundreds of militant private sector workers engaged in a frontline struggle uniting with the big student demo would’ve been a powerful image. With the media all over the student demo this would’ve then been hard to ignore, and something that wouldn’t have fit comfortably with the media narrative of middle class students just out to defend their own interests. And this is precisely why the state were determined to stop it from happening, with the sparks’ batoned and beaten up by the cops until being contained in a kettle away from the student demo. News quickly reached the student demo, and there was a bit of a stand-off  at one street when it was found out that the electricians were being blockaded in that direction. Such were the police numbers though that the demo was more akin to a walking kettle, and any attempt to break-off would’ve been verging towards kamikaze.

Electricians blockading sites before rallying later in the day and getting attacked by cops

The march picked up though, with a massive soundsystem emerging and some innovative chants, ‘You can shove your rubber bullets up your arse’ among them. It was a long route, and eventually wound its way to the end point sometime after 3pm, where the police decided to form an impromptu kettle before letting everyone go in a pretty chaotic fashion. A dispersal order was issued for 5.31pm, but most people were well away by that point.

Moving forward, NCAFC have -- much like last year -- called a follow-up day of action for Wednesday 23 November. While it’s unlikely to get as much momentum behind it as last year, given the totally different circumstances -- the HE White Paper is unlikely to garner as much opposition as the brazen, headline-grabbing £9k fees rise - it can be a way of buildng student and anti-austerity activity ahead of what is looking set to be a mass day of action on November 30, when three million public sector workers will be on strike. On that day, let’s meet “total policing” with total resistance.

The pavement outside the Radisson Hotel on Argyle Street, Glasgow was the setting of a showdown last night between electricians -- currently fighting the tearing up of a national pay agreement that will see wage cuts of up to 35 percent and the wholesale de-skilling of their trade -- and industry bosses, who were arriving for a glitzy awards bash.

Around one hundred electricians and supporters gathered outside the hotel from early evening in a protest organised by Unite, as tuxedo-attired construction chiefs, visibly shaken, sipped champagne within the glass confines of the hotel. Industry bosses were heckled and booed as they entered the hotel, with chants going up of “we’re going to ruin your party” and “we’re coming to get you!”.

This was the latest in an ongoing series of protests following the decision by eight major firms to pull out of the national JIB agreement, which offers protection on pay and conditions. Already one company has been forced to enter back into the agreement -- the other seven have yet to follow.

This is a vital struggle to protect workers’ rights in the private sector, with the economic crisis being used as a pretext to smash the joint-industry agreement. Further protests are set to be staged over the few next weeks across the country, including at Govan Shipyard this Wednesday 12 October. Unite have told their members to get organised and to get ready for a ballot, as the employers prepare to impose deadlines for signing onto the new terms and conditions.

Turning out to the annual STUC march – held yesterday in Glasgow – I witnessed thousands of people marching in the pouring rain (and it really was monsoon level) for over three hours, and rallying at the end of it. Watching everyone come into the park at the end, and then watching them keep coming and keep coming and keep coming, til even I got bored and went to find somewhere handy to stand, was immense. I got a bit sentimental.

Something is happening in this country at the moment. Ever since the Sheridan debacle everyone who is casually in favour of the Scottish left has dissed us for not being united, and I think this is pish. I’d rather have honest difference than tactical, artificial unity. But at this point in time there is an honest unity, because people are uniting in the face of a common enemy. This enemy isn’t as simple as David Cameron, it’s the threat that he and his ilk represent – the immense threat to the welfare state and the end of a certain way of life, a certain kind of society: a kind of society which many had started to take for granted, and are now turning out to fight for its continued existence. People in Scotland are no longer deciding what kind of country they want to live in; now they know what kind of country they want to live in.

Independence is broadly being discussed as part of the process of achieving this country, but not the way the SNP talk about independence. For us independence is one possible means to a much more important end – not just the right to choose who runs the country without having to vote tactically against the Tories, but the right to choose what kind of a country we live in, what its priorities are, who it values.

The Scottish left have despaired of finding one party behind which to rally, and instead have banded together without one, building coalitions of resistance, new working groups, community groups, and policy-making units as they went. People have organised sporadically and multifariously, have started taking things into their own hands, have started taking responsibility for what is being imposed on their neighbourhoods (Save the Accord Centre campaign, the Save Otago Lane campaign, the Free Hetherington, earlier the Tripping Up Trump campaign). In the face of an overwhelming, despairing feeling that we cannot do anything in the face of the political power that rains down on us, we have decided we’re damn well going to do something anyway.

And I guess that this is the reason that for the first time in my life really I genuinely feel proud to be part of this entity we call Scotland. Here the nation’s history is being rewritten – people are invoking Red Clydeside, the poll tax riots, the shipbuilder work-in and are relating these things to the current uprising in Scotland, in order to construct an alternative historical narrative. This narrative which is the true story of a people who did not need a political party in order to do something. It is a minor narrative – none of these things changed the world, none of these things stopped the onset of neo-liberal capitalism, and we cannot expect the incredible efforts being expended at the moment to stop neo-liberal capitalism. But these efforts are aimed at slowing the imposition on a people of something it did not vote for, of a way of life to which it does not subscribe – a way of life where the only value is monetary, and where only those who have money are entitled to the support and protection of the state.

Something is happening in this country that hasn’t come from nowhere, and that – if this radical history is any indication – isn’t going away. Scotland, no longer proud of its part in the British Empire, of its stake in British wealth and oil, no longer necessarily proud of its industries (although still of its workers) is creating something else to be proud of: a refusal to sit back and watch while the subaltern suffer.

Today saw around 200 mostly young people take to the streets of Glasgow against victim blaming and recent political discourse surrounding the issue of rape, as Slutwalk arrived in Scotland for the first time. The Slutwalk phenomenon began in April this year in Toronto, following remarks made by a senior police officer that women should ‘avoid dressing like sluts’ in order not to be sexually harassed or assaulted. The movement rapidly went global, as women across the world began organising marches both in solidarity with those in Canada, and against a culture of victim blaming which is far from a problem confined to one police officer or one city.

Organised largely via facebook, the march gathered in George Square and took a route to Glasgow Green. Unfortunately, the police had denied the organisers their planned route through the city centre, but given the short notice at which the march had been organised, it was felt necessary to go along with the police’s instructions.

Despite this minor hiccup, the march was a great success, attracting a huge amount of media attention and providing a vital reminder that – as the chant rang out – however we dress, wherever we go, yes means yes and no means no.

Slutwalk is the result of women fighting back against the idea that what you wear will determine whether or not you are raped.

It all started with Toronto Police’s lecture to women, saying that “…women should avoid dressing like sluts” to prevent being raped. Women of Toronto fought back by organising a protest which they named “Slutwalk” as a hit-back to say that it doesn’t matter what you wear – if a man is going to rape you, he will do it regardless of your attire.

The concept is multifaceted and has cause a disturbance with feminists and non-feminists alike with the idea that we are to reclaim the word “slut” in order to take it’s power away as a slur on women. I’m going to discuss fully why I think this is a good and feminist idea, and healthy debate is welcome in the comments. (Misogyny will just be deleted though. So no stupit folk, plx)

Toronto's Slutwalk

Okay. What’s the deal with the event? The even itself is a march. It’s purpose is to all say the same thing, which is to reject the idea that a woman can bring rape upon herself. Particularly through means of the way she dresses, which is one of the most common scapegoats for why rape happens.
Slutwalk aims to bring attention to the fact that men rape because they want power. Sexuality and attraction does not even come into it. A man will rape whomever he feels he needs to teach a lesson to or beat down. It is a tool of war and abuse and should be seen as nothing less.

To call a woman a slut is to imply that she should be ashamed of her sexual behaviour. Why is this an issue to anyone other than her? The simple fact of the matter is that it is not. A woman should be free to have sex with whomever she chooses and not be judged for it. It is a product of nation-wide misogyny that a woman should be “Slut-Shamed” for enjoying sex and having it when she likes. Sex is not a bad thing, and it’s just a way of keeping us miserable that it should ever be deemed a bad thing. But the freedom in it should be choice. Not doing it only a certain way, or with certain numbers or certain people. Slut, and all it’s variations (Whore, ho, cow, slapper, tart…) are words that have been put into play to beat women down. To put a woman lower than all the other woman. Everyone knows that the best way to oppress a group is to make lots of in-fighting happen. Women call other women these names because they have been told to, as a mechanism for creating levels of shamefulness and hatred.

We as women need to see that if you are called a slut, it is because you are a woman who is not living up to the male expectation of how you should live your life. Slutwalk aims to bring women together to say that if someone calls a woman a slut, they are calling all women sluts.

This brings me seamlessly onto the concept that’s got everyone talking – reclaiming the word ’slut’. History has shown success in oppressed groups taking words back off the privileged and robbing them of their power. Black people in America were branded with the word “Nigger” as a way to dehumanise people, and thus making it much easier in people’s minds to treat them less than human. The same goes for the word “slut”. If a woman is thought to be less than a human, someone who makes bad decisions and deliberately puts herself in harm’s way, it makes it easier for people to accept that someone has raped her and that she somehow brought it on herself and to treat her badly.
However, Black Americans took back the word “nigger” and began to use in in their own way, as a word to refer to a peer and thus disabling in in it’s use against them.
The same goes for examples such as the word “queer”, while it’s still early days and there’s a huge amount of work still to be put itno LGBT issues and gay rights, the word “queer” has it’s own meaning within the LGBT community. People use it to in a sense, non-describe their sexuality, to say that they do not conform to straight ideas of a “normal” gender binary.

A lot of people have raised issues about the word “slut” being reclaimed, and this is not to be taken lightly or disregarded. Women have been harmed by this word, their lives destroyed and their reputations been stomped into the gutter by vindictiveness about their sexuality. That is an issue to be respected. However, the reclamation of the word does not mean that we’ll simply use it in the same way, to describe promiscuity or even immediately start using it. The de-powering process is long and will take a lot of work from people who care about women’s rights and want to stand up for those who are oppressed. The starting point for this reclamation can in fact be, the simple act of protesting in Slutwalk. Showing that women cannot be singled out as being shameful, if one of us is a slut, then we sick together and all take the insult.

Another point made by Slutwalk is that what the Toronto Police Force say and what the opinion of the sexist majority think about rape – it happens late at night in dark alleys. This is a huge misconception. These things do happen, but rape is overwhelmingly happening in people’s families and homes. The statistics show that around 80% of cases are by someone the victim knew well, such as a friend, family member or partner. It is important to highlight this fact and stop dwelling on the idea that rape is something that happens to someone, comitted by a bogey man and start looking up to the reality that men rape. These men are husbands, sons, brothers, uncles, friends, grandfathers etc. Rape is committed by men who want to over power women. The reason that the media portrays rape as a bogey-man is that people raped by men close to them will be less likely to report it for many complicated reasons, and this must be respected.

If you agree with what Slutwalk aims to do, then find out if there is one near you and step up to protest the continuing abuse and oppression of women everywhere. Slutwalk Glasgow will be happening on the 4th of June, from 1pm to 4pm hopefully starting at George Square. Bigger numbers mean louder voices, and we need all the noise we can get to uproot this deep seated hatred of women.

Are you old enough to remember when it was hippies........................hippies everywhere?

Remember those cops dressed as clowns who were kicking about a few years ago? Well it turns out apparently that one of them was….a cop! More details emerge every day in relation to “Lynn Watson,” an undercover cop who infiltrated the Clandestine Insurgent Rebel Clown Army. It comes hot on the heels of the tale of Mark “Stone” Kennedy, another state plant paid to spy on activists.

Let’s be clear. SSY has no gripe with people who want to dress stupidly and/or take direct action against capitalism - particularly given our own penchant for such things. The Clowns occasionally managed to use their incredible irksome behaviour to outsmart the cops and should be admired for that. We did however know that there would be coppers in their midst. No doubt they did too – given that many of them are seasoned activists. There have been a multitude of stories in the press but nothing we don’t all know anyway. But its worth fleshing out some of what has been revealed for the hell of it.

Most of it centres around the actions of Mark “Stone” Kennedy. Mark spent 7 years undercover, spying on environmental, anarchist and left-wing activists. He recorded their meetings using a modified watch containing a micro-chip which were then downloaded onto Inspector Gadgies PCs. Based on information obtained by Kennedy, 114 people were arrested and many put on trial, having done nothing other than talk about occupying the Ratcliffe-on-Soar Power Station. 20 were convicted of various nonsensical charges while the trial of 6 others descended into farce. The trial collapsed because the police withheld tapes that would have cleared the activists and the role of Kennedy was also crucial. It was claimed that Kennedy was prepared to give evidence in favour of the activists thus exposing the state plot to plot against the state. The collapse of the trial has led to no less than 3 totally “independent inquiries” by the Association of Cunto Polis Oligarchs (ACPO), the Independent Piggy Confectionary Convention (IPCC) and Serious & Organised Clown Army (SOCA). No doubt the police will decide that the police are bad and need to be abolished. We won’t hold our breathe.

Kennedy’s revelations in the press since being exposed have including the fact that he was basically paid by taxpayers to have sex with activists – a tactic apparently sanctioned as an acceptable form of “intelligence gathering” by his seniors. This week there was a demonstration in support of women from Reclaim the Streets , a group of London activists, among others who were conned into having sex with cops they thought were friends. The former member of the Special Demonstration Squad stated this week that promiscuity helped them to “blend in” because – you guessed it – we’re all fucking. I’d like to point out before we move on that tricking people into fucking you is not OK and in my insanely monogamous experience crazy lefties are no more or less likely to fuck around than anyone else. Obvious exception aside.

Kennedy confirmed this week that he was far from alone and that there were a network of undercover officers paid for with our dosh to check what we are doing. And more importantly, to first provoke and then fuck up any opposition to the political and economic elite. “Lynn Watson” was an activist outed by Mark Kennedy as a spy. She kicked about the Leeds area spying for a bit. She was involved in the Camp for Climate Action as late as 2008 having previously been involved in Aldermaston Women’s Peace Camp not to mention an being an Action Medic and of course, a clown. Various tit-bits from her bank details to a video of her in Clown make-up dicking around are coming out every day. But again, nothing we wouldn’t have guessed. She basically came in, made a mess and left like thousands before her.

Every state monitors and disrupts its enemies. That is in fact the PURPOSE of a state. The Black Panthers were destroyed by the CIA flooding the group with drugs, cops and paranoia. The Democratic Socialist Party in Australia counts among its members a former informant who eventually realised that the people she was spying on made more sense than they people she was spying for (I think it was a woman but my googling fails me). The façade of democracy is destroyed when the state acts to disrupt the forces who fight for a more democratic future. I can only imagine the epic boredom state plants must endure to get sketchy details of the half baked plans made by the left. We must avoid the temptation of spending all day asking where the spy is. In the end crippling paranoia is just as dangerous as the actions of the state. But it confirms that the state does watch us and maybe we should be rather more careful at times rather than blabbering our plans all over facebook or even, quite frankly via phone or email. On a positive note it makes you think that maybe, just maybe we are a threat to those we seek to overthrow. We all know they are watching…except them

In a hilarious twist, the UK’s most senior public order police officer, Bob Broadhurst, told Parliament’s Home Affairs Select Committee in 2009 in relation to the G20 protest in London that:

“The only officers we deploy for intelligence purposes at public order are forward intelligence team officers who are wearing full police uniforms with a yellow jacket with blue shoulders. There were no plain-clothes officers deployed at all.”

This week he scurried back to apologise to MPs for misleading them insisting he…didn’t know. I knew there were undercover cops in London at the G20 and I was sitting behind my desk in Glasgow refreshing the BBC News page at work. The claim that the polis didn’t know where the bacon was is laughable.

In short, the entire saga brings new (although hardly shocking) light on the amount of money and time being spent monitoring what we do. Don’t be paranoid – Don’t be disheartened. I distinctly remember my last encounter with the Clown Army, at Gleneagles at the G8 when they shouting “booo…miserable socialists” at us as they passed by. An older man behind me mumbled “we’re only miserable coz we’re surrounded by cops.” Just remember there are infinitely more clowns in the cops than cops in the Clowns.

SSY apologises for the sweary word in the title, but the above quote was taken from a panicky (hard to say which one tbh) Polis at the demo against tuition fees today arguing wi fellow officers over who was responsible for the titanic fuck up that was the vague attempt at maintaining control over streets in Glasgow.

And what a fuck up; hundreds of school, college and university students had more or less total control of the entire city centre. The demonstration was free at will to blockade/shut down 3 different vodafones, 2 banks and break out of no less than FIVE kettles over a period of roughly 3-4 hours.  This is despite the Polis presence going from a few confused officers to 5 riot vans and a helicopter, a bit like in GTA when you keep going on a continuous rampage and they send the swat team and the army after you.

When the Polis got reinforcements, they tried to force folk into a kettle to “Join your colleagues” – I’m not daft, I’m not walking into a kettle – a couple of teenage girls who were taking pictures of the demo didn’t want to go in and were violently pushed and manhandled by the cops. Fortunately they got their story taken from the Herald, so lets hope there’s an embarrassing story waiting for some of Strathy’s finest tommorow.

Today’s demo stands as an example that Millbank wasn’t a one off, and that there’s nothing the French or Greek can do that we can’t do as well. Seeing these demonstrations it’s clear the Lib Dems will need nothing less than a full scale military escort the next time they want to court student votes on campuses, that is if they even bother next time.

Unfortunately despite today’s massive protests, the numbers on the streets were unable to terrify enough Libdem MP’s into openly rebelling agains the Coalition’s plan. Tuition fees have been introduced into England on 323 votes to 302 – 21 Libdems voted against the proposal, while 8 abstained. If these MP’s had any bottle they would have kept to their pledge and voted against. Obviously they think that abstaining will spare them from losing their seats. Think again.

Tuition fees may have been increased in England, but they have not been introduced Scotland or Wales. What we’ve had a is very effective dress rehearsal for fighting any attempt (which is likely) to introduce tuition fees into Scottish education, and making it clear to the next Holyrood administration the political consequences of doing so. It’s also politicised thousands of young people – who would have imagined this time last year that hundreds of school kids would give the Polis some exercise bolting down Argyle Street to try to shutdown tax evaders Vodafone?

We didn’t succeed in stopping tuition fees from being increased, but student protests have cut down the government’s majority from 84 to only 21 – if this is the kind of blood that students alone can draw, what happens when the coalition tries to put a million workers on the dole? This coalition is over its head and today shows we have a far better chance of destroying it than we previously imagined.

Camilla is shocked at the terrible revolting students.

Over three hundred people gathered in Glasgow’s George Square earlier today to protest the UK Border Agency’s decision to axe Glasgow City Council’s contract to house hundreds of families seeking asylum in the UK.

This comes after talks broke down between the Border Agency and the council over the grant given to the local authority to accommodate asylum seekers.

Six hundred families – a total of 1300 individuals – have received letters over the past few days containing the following:

We must inform you that as a result of the change of your accommodation provider you may be required to move to alternative accommodation in the Scotland region. Whenever possible, you will be given three to five days’ notice of the
move to give you time to get ready. At the moment we cannot give you an exact date for any potential move. However, it will be sometime within the coming weeks. You will be allowed to take two pieces of luggage per person to your new accommodation.

Glasgow has been a designated “dispersal” area for asylum seekers since 2000, when the council gained a lucrative £10m annual contract to house up to 2000 asylum seekers. Most were put in dilapidated, run-down accommodation which the council already found virtually impossible to let to ordinary residents. But as Scottish housing charity Positive Action in Housing have said:

Refugees have brought a sense of community and vibrance to neighbourhoods where previously there was none. We see no merit in houses being left empty, damp and vandalised when there are people who need and want them. Their unnecessary departure will devastate those communities.

But this is nothing compared to the impact that being uprooted from Glasgow will have for 1300 individuals concerned. Having fled their home countries fearing persecution or worse, many of them will have eventually found a home, and some level of stability, in Glasgow. But due to a whim of the UK Borders Agency they once again face massive upheaval in their lives. To add to this distress, as the above letter states, they will get ‘three to five days notice’ – to wave goodbye to their friends and neighbours, leave their schools and colleges, and pack their belongings into ‘two pieces of luggage per person’. Glasgow City Council are right to condemn this as totally unacceptable – it’s a disgusting way to treat anyone, let alone someone who’s already been through a huge amount of suffering and distress in their lives. UKBA have laid bare their priorities – that saving money is more important than the wellbeing of those they’re legally obliged to look after.

UK Borders Agency will now be looking to tender the contract to house asylum seekers to private companies – as many in Glasgow already are. The idea that asylum seekers will be better looked after in the private sector is madness, where unscrupulous landlords can exploit some of the most vulnerable people in society. Although far from perfect, organisations working with asylum seekers in Glasgow – like the brilliant Unity Centre - describe council run services as ‘the best service provider in our experience’. There’s a number of reasons for this – more accountability and regulation, and greater provision of services through social work, homelessness services, repairs and so on. With the council’s contract terminated, Positive Action in Housing anticipate “an increase in refugee homelessness, complaints about isolation, poor access to statutory services, poor housing, repairs and lack of basic amenities like hot water and electricity, to name a few issues. We also anticipate that there will be more people going undetected who are sick, disabled or traumatised.”

There is now speculation that UKBA may have motives beyond simply financial savings in their attempts to lower the number of asylum seekers living in Glasgow. Asylum seekers have, over the past decade, become an integral part of the fabric of the city. Across the city, those seeking asylum are our friends, our neighbours, our school mates. When asylum seekers have been mistreated, threatened with deportation or locked up, people across Scotland have come to their defence, from the Glasgow Girls and the recent campaign to keep Florence and Precious Mhango, to the hundreds who marched in solidarity with the city’s asylum seekers following the tragic events at the Red Road flats earlier this year. Even the local press, far from playing to the racism and bigotry of the national media, have often been supportive, and backed campaigns to stop deportations. Things have not been made easy for UKBA – it would be no great surprise if this is a deliberate attempt to ‘disperse’ asylum seekers to an area where the authorities think they’ll get less hassle.

It’s typical of recent governments’ attitudes towards asylum seekers that they can be uprooted from their homes and lives at barely a week’s notice. Speakers at today’s demonstration made clear that those wishing to stay in Glasgow would receive all the support they need in their battle to stay in the city they now consider home, with the fight continuing this Saturday, when another protest has been called outside the UK Borders Agency office at 200 Brand Street, Govan, from 10.30am.

Scottish students assemble at ULU

If you’re reading this blog, you’re probably already well aware of Wednesday’s huge demonstration against education cuts that took place in London. Over the past few days a massive amount has already been written about it, both in the mainstream press and all over the internet and social media.

It was a brilliant demonstration. Myself and a few other SSYers attended along with the 1500 or so other Scottish students who took the gruelling 18+ hour round trip to London. Dropped off at the University of London Union early on Wednesday morning, after breakfast the Scottish contingent grouped and set off on an impromptu feeder march through the streets of central London. The fact that no police showed up during the feeder demo, not even to direct traffic, was a bit of a surprise -- and would turn out to be a forbearer of the events of later on.

Arriving at Horse Guards Avenue -- in Whitehall, surrounded by government departments -- at 11am, there was already thousands of students assembled, and an immediate sense that this would be a very angry, and very big, demo. And this was a whole hour and a half before the official marching off time. As more and more students piled in, it became impossible to tell how many were there -- estimates of 50,000+, more than double what march organisers the National Union of Students had been predicting, seem reasonable.

What was on display was a very palpable rage -- in particular at Nick Clegg and the Liberal Democrats, with the most popular chant of the march turning out to be ‘Nick Clegg we know you, you’re a fucking Tory too!’. Coach loads of students came from across the country -- from probably every university in Britian and hundreds of colleges. For many, or even the majority, of those attending, it was their first demonstration. The grounds have hopefully now been laid for a mass struggle against the imposition of the fee rises and drastic cuts to the higher education budget over the coming months.

The demo set off at 12.30pm, passing through Whitehall, Big Ben and the Parliament. In theory, the march was divided into different sections by region, with Scotland coming nearer the front of the march. A lively section, complete with smoke flares and constant chanting ,centred around the Glasgow and Strathclyde Uni Anti-Cuts Action Network banners, drew in several hundred students. This then provided a critical mass of people that, when the demonstration passed the Conservative headquarters, in Millbank towers on the banks of the Thames, was able to charge in the direction of the building and successfully break through the doors.

What happened next, over the course of a few hours, has dominated almost all the media coverage of the demo. Initially around sixty protesters broke through the locked doors of the building and entered the foyer, at about 1.30pm. At this stage there was no police around, but when a few cops showed up, half the students inside the building panicked and ran back out, leaving about 30 inside. Hundreds, however, began to gather around the building, laying siege to the glass panelled walls and putting 10-15 police in the position of holding back hundreds of protesters. Over the next half hour, a few people did succeed in breaking through the police line, but with our numbers still pretty low, we decided to leave the building in victory rather than risk arrest.

But this was far from the end of it. Numbers continued to swell outside of Millbank, and hundreds more began pushing to enter the building. It was at this stage that missiles began to be thrown, and before long, the windows were broken, one by one, as over a hundred students stormed the building once again, with a smaller group gaining access to its roof. At the pictures illustrate, thousands were now gathered outside. I had to go and get my bus back to Glasgow at this point -- and pushing my way through the assembled masses was a tough job in itself.

The march organisers, aided by the media, have gone out of their way to condemn these actions as those of a small minority of ‘idiots’ and ‘violent anarchists’, the implication being that those carrying out these ‘violent’ acts weren’t even students. This flies in the face of the facts -- thousands of students taking part in a spontaneous act of civil disobedience. When things did get taken too far -- like the now infamous fire extinguisher incident, they were shouted down by the mass of the protest. When someone was about to throw a paving slab at a line of police, it’s reported that other protesters stepped in to stop them. Endangering peoples’ lives cannot be condoned -- but it’s important to point out that it was isolated to a few tiny actions, which pale against the wider picture of the Millbank occupation, let alone the march of 52,000 students.

One thing is certain -- the smashing up of Tory HQ was significant. A glance at any of the coverage of the demo proves as much. It gave the march maximum media exposure, meaning it entered public consciousness in the way that the it would, in all likelihood, otherwise not have. For evidence of this, look no further than Paul O’Grady, fast becoming Britain’s best populist agitator against the cuts, who while talking about ‘the riots’, said on his teatime show yesterday that ‘education should be for everybody, not just for those who can afford it’.

I’ve seen it myself: the aftermath of the demo has led to students up and down the country talking about fees, cuts and the fightback in a way that would have been unimaginable even a week ago. As a whole, the march has given a huge confidence boost to workers and students across the UK. It was a timely display of the anger that exists, and will continue to grow, in large swathes of the population.

The question now is: where next? The NUS, taking a break from shamelessly attacking the people they’re supposed to represent, have said that they’ll be ‘lobbying Lib Dem MPs’, and working out more ways to attack the left. The momentum that has been built up over the past few days needs to be maintained. Grassroots student groups are calling for a nationwide day of action on Wednesday 24 November -- of occupations, strikes and walk-outs. Students across Scotland are expected to organise demonstrations on this day, reportedly the same day on which the government will vote on their plans to raise tuition fees. The SSY site will bring you all the details as we get them -- for the moment, students in Glasgow will be meeting both at their own unis and colleges next week, and then for a city-wide meeting at the Art School on Thursday 18 November to finalise their plans.

The student movement must also strive to build up links with wider layers of society facing the same government attacks -- the labour movement, claimants, pensioners and school students among them. While HE students may have set the ball rolling, the struggle against cuts and austerity cannot be won by students alone -- the fight is on to build a unified movement that can overthrow the Coalition.

For more on the government’s proposals for Higher Education & fees, read here.

LIAR: nick clegg promises to vote against fee increases.

If last month’s Browne Review was the warning shot, today’s announcement that the government intend to treble the cap on fees for higher education in England to an astounding £9,000 a year, is the declaration of war.

All universities will be able to charge up to £6,000 a year, double the current rate of £3,290. However, if certain conditions are met in relation to admitting students from ‘poorer backgrounds’, the top-level that universities will be able to charge will jump to £9,000. This is nothing more than an attempt to create a two-tier education system, where top universities are able to charge more and price out anyone but the richest. The measure to allow  some students from ‘economically disadvantaged’ background is sheer tokenism and will do nothing to redress the already overwhelming inequality in access to higher education.

The vast majority of students will be forced to take out astronomical student loans to cover their fees -- and proposals are afoot to raise the level of interest to well-above inflation. The huge rises in fees are to make up for the, in some cases, total departure by the state in funding for higher education. Indeed, in humanities, arts and social sciences, the teaching budget at English unis is facing a cut of 100% -- the shortfall will be made up by students paying for it.

What’s all the more shocking about this is that if the proposals pass, it will be with the backing of Lib Dem MPs. The same Lib Dem MPs who stood for election on the basis of opposing rises in tuition fees -- 57 of whom even signed an NUS pledge to vote against any rise in the cost of tuition. In fact, they went further than that -- the Lib Dems said that they would scrap tuition fees altogether! But as we’ve come to expect from Clegg and pals, any principles they once pretended to hold went straight out the window when some shiny ministerial cars and cabinet jobs came along.

With the huge rise in fees down south, it wont take long for university principals in Scotland to begin ratcheting up the pressure on the Scottish Government to reintroduce some form of fees in order that they’re ‘not left behind’. But the fees increase in England can be defeated -- last week’s militant demonstration in Oxford showed the level of anger among students at the government’s plans to wreck education as we know it. The campaign needs to be stepped up nationwide, and there’s calls for a national day of action on the 24 November, involving walk-outs, sit-ins and demonstrations. Next week, tens of thousands of students from all over the UK are expected to take to the streets for the join NUS/UCU demo against education cuts in London, in a huge show of force against the attacks on education. The government needs to be made to listen -- and if enough Lib Dem MPs can be forced to abide by their election pledges by voting against, rather than just abstaining, the rise in fees, it will fall.

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