By IRNA,
London : Students in the UK are planning a new wave of protests across the country this weekend against government plans to treble university fees to £9,000 a year and cut Educational Maintenance Allowances.
The National Union of Students (NUS) is embarking on its second national demonstration in Manchester, north-week England, while University College Union in London (UCU) is organising a march upon parliament in the British capital.
On Thursday, president of the Association of Chief Police Officers Sir Hugh Orde warned that the police could be forced to adopt more extreme tactics to counter the threat posed by student protesters and ‘hacktivists’.
The use of text messages, Twitter and Facebook to organise campaigns in record speed had created ‘a whole new dimension to public order’, Orde told Prospect magazine.
He feared protests could become more violent as public anger grew over government cuts.
Trade unionists, backing the student protests, were meeting in London on Friday to discuss their own tactics against government cuts with a mass national march planned for March and some warning of possible coordinated strikes.
The NUS said that it had chosen Manchester, Britain’s third largest city, for the national protest against educational cuts because it has both the largest further education college and higher education institution in the country and sits in a region with the highest rate of youth unemployment.
“It is important to ensure that not all our activity is based in London, and so staging a national action in a region with such high levels of youth unemployment, jointly alongside the TUC (Trades Union Congress) and UCU is a positive and constructive development at this time,” it said.
Students staged four mass protests in London in November and December, including the biggest since the height of opposition to the Iraq war in 2003.
Scores of universities were also occupied, while demonstrations have also been renewed this month.
The rally’s themes in Manchester are the cuts in access to education and its impact on young people as the coalition government’s program of vicious and unnecessary cuts are hitting Britain’s young people hard.
On Thursday, five students, including the son of Pink Floyd guitarist David Gilmour, were charged with alleged offences during London protests against the increase in tuition fees.
Five others aged between 17 and 23 were given police cautions for their actions at protests.
Earlier this month, an 18-year-old student was jailed for two years and eight months after admitting throwing a fire extinguisher from the roof of a central London building, which houses the headquarters of the ruling Conservative Party.