Students clashed with police at a protest in Birmingham last night, which led to 14 arrests. Nine men and five women, all aged under 24 and from across the country, were arrested on suspicion of offences including aggravated trespass, assault and criminal damage.
Students had gathered on Wednesday in a national demonstration, to discuss the future for student protest. Later on, the atmosphere turned tense as students clashed with security staff and police.
Protesters from over 10 universities unveiled banners and chanted campaign slogans. Some managed to break into the Aston Webb building and the clock tower to hang banners and shout anti-police chants.
The University of Birmingham has said that smoke bombs and fireworks were thrown, doors smashed down and staff injured.
Birmingham police superintendent Lee Kendrick, who was at the university site last night, said: “This may well have been billed as a peaceful protest but it escalated into a serious public order incident – a criminal investigation has been launched and anyone found to have acted unlawfully will be punished.”
A spokesperson for the University of Birmingham said: “While peaceful protest is part of university life, the university will not tolerate behaviour that causes harm to individuals, damage to property or significant disruption to our university community.”
The National Campaign Against Cuts and Fees (NCACAF) have complained that the police kettled students for “hours”. Kirsty Haigh, of the NCAFC, said: “What we saw from management and police today was utterly disgraceful.
“As far as we know the arrests were all for refusing to give their names to the police. Universities everywhere are losing the argument on staff exploitation and privatisation – and the only argument we saw from them today was brute force.”
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