By IRNA,
London : Home Secretary Theresa May Monday defended police’s controversial tactics during last week’s protests by tens of 1000s of students, saying violence that erupted was “appalling.”
The police acted with “great bravery in the face of provocation,” May said in a statement to parliament. She also praised Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Paul Stephenson, who she said served with “distinction.”
At least four complaints, including the case of a 20-year-old student, who underwent a three-hour operation for bleeding on the brain after allegedly being hit with a truncheon, have been sent to the Independent Police Complaints Commission following last week’s protest.
The IPCC is believed to have received 49 complaints since the first of four mass student demonstrations in London last month over government plans to treble university fees to £9,000 a year.
According to the Sunday Times, Stephenson had offered to resign after Prince Charles’s Rolls Royce was caught up in rioting on Thursday.
May insisted that the eruption of violence was “not by a small minority but by a significant number of trouble makers.”
The blame for the violence must be on “those who carried it out,” she said.
Criticism of police tactics, which included ‘kettling’ thousands of students for up to seven hours outside parliament and charging demonstrators with horses, was “ridiculous as well as unfair,” she said.
More than 43 protesters and 30 police were injured in latest demonstrations that erupted into street battles and rioting, when missiles were hurled, fires started, statues damaged and windows of the Treasury ministry broken.
With regard to the police adopting tougher tactics, the Home Secretary said that she was not suggesting the use of rubber bullets like in Northern Ireland and that she did not think anyone wants to see water cannons deployed on British streets.
The police have agreed to review security for the royal family following the protests but has refused to reconsider its tactics at demonstrations.
Mark Bergfeld, a member of the Education Activist Network who was held in a kettle outside as MPs approved tuition increases, said protesters were ‘treated like animals’ by police.
Thousands of teenagers, college lecturers and teachers taking part in the latest student protests across Britain focused on the abolition of the Education Maintenance Allowance (EMA) at lunchtime Monday.
On Tuesday, the United Campaign Against Police Violence was planning to organise its own ‘kettle’ of the police headquarters at New Scotland Yard in central London.