EIGHT POLICEMEN were injured, one seriously, during violent clashes with students and others over the Conservative /Liberal Democrats’ plans significantly to increase university fees from September 2012.
However, the government, which enjoys an 84-seat Commons majority, won the vote on the controversial issue by 22 votes following the decision of 21 Liberal Democrats to vote against. Eight MPs abstained, including the party’s deputy leader Simon Hughes.
A car carrying Prince Charles and his wife Camilla, the Duchess of Cornwall, was surrounded and attacked on Regent Street by protesters who had split away from the main demonstrations around the Houses of Parliament in Westminster.
The heir to the British throne and his wife were unharmed in the incident. The limousine, bearing the royal coat of arms, had paint thrown at it and a window cracked in the Regent Street area of the West End at around 7:30pm as the couple were heading to the Royal Variety Performance at the London Palladium Theatre.
Camilla later joked about the incident, saying “first time for everything” as she left the theatre.
A branch of Topshop, owned by billionaire Philip Green, who has been targeted for not paying taxes on company dividends in the United Kingdom, was also attacked, while bins were overturned and police were attacked on Oxford Street, causing panic among shoppers.
In all, 37 people, including police, were injured, while 22 people were arrested. Fires were started on the streets, while graffiti was daubed on some shop-fronts.
A minority of the protesters had been “determined to provoke violence, attack the police and cause as much damage to property as possible”, British prime minister David Cameron said, adding: “They must face the full force of the law”.
“It is shocking and regrettable that the car carrying the Prince of Wales and the Duchess of Cornwall was caught up and attacked in the violence,” said Mr Cameron.
Six Conservatives voted against the fees rise, while two more abstained. However, senior government figures were relieved at the size of the victory, though they fear that Liberal Democrats having rebelled once may now do so more frequently.
Under the legislation, fees raised to £3,000 by Labour during Tony Blair’s term as prime minister will jump to £6,000 a year for most courses and £9,000 for more specialised subjects, such as medicine and dentistry.
During an often-bitter five-hour debate, Labour Durham MP Pat Glass said many current and intending students in her constituency are terrified that they will leave college owing the size of a mortgage.
Loans will be given to all students and will not have to be paid back until graduates start to earn more than £21,000 a year, with a graduate earning £25,000 a year paying back £360 a year. “The cost of a good weekend,” declared Welsh Conservative MP Guto Bebb.
Thousands of students had gathered around the Houses of Parliament in the hours before the vote, with police struggling to ensure that they were not allowed to move up Victoria Street or towards Trafalgar Square.
Mounted police repeatedly charged groups of protesters, some of whom wore face-masks and threw metal barricades that had been used to block off Westminster Square to Iraq war protesters in recent weeks.
Northern Irish MPs from the Democratic Unionist Party, the SDLP, Alliance MP Naomi Long and Independent Lady Sylvia Hermon all voted against the measure.
Northern Ireland Minister for Finance and East Antrim MP Sammy Wilson said it “made no economic sense”.
Conservative universities minister David Willetts, who has been responsible for much of the work on the legislation over past months, said the three main parties had now reached the same conclusion when it came to funding universities.
The Conservatives had strongly opposed tuition fees in 2005 by Mr Blair, he readily conceded, because they had been worried that it would keep poorer students out, but the opposite has turned out to be the case.
Eight people, six males and two females, were arrested in Belfast yesterday following student protests outside City Hall.
A small number of police officers, around three in total, received minor injuries after bottle and other missiles were thrown at officers during the protest, however the PSNI described the protest as “largely peaceful”.
