On the 24th November 2010 I attended a student lead demonstration against education cuts and tuition fees.
This protest took place as part of a wider series of national demonstrations sparked by the planned spending cuts to further education by David Cameron’s Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition government with Nick Clegg as his deputy Prime Minister.
During the 2010 General Election campaign, Nick Clegg the leader of the Liberal Democrats, pledged he would vote against any proposed increase in tuition fees if elected to Parliament.
The election resulted in a hung parliament and Clegg went on to support Cameron by reneging on this flagship policy that had seen all Lib Dem MPs signing the Vote for Students pledge to oppose any increase in student tuition fees. Clegg himself gained permission to abstain on any vote relating to the matter, but went on to advocate for austerity for the rest of his leadership.
The Coalition was successful in achieving it’s objectives, but ultimately Clegg had to resign following the 2015 general election when the Liberal Democrats were reduced from 57 seats to 8 and they were no longer useful to the Tories. Two years later he lost his own seat to Labour. He did however get a nice shiny gong in 2018.
For more images taken that day, have a look at my flickr album.