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Students march against police

Peaceful protest staged in response to Met crackdown on occupation

Thousands of students demonstrated at the University of London yesterday to demand cops stay off campus in response to a violent police crackdown on a recent occupation.

Gates were torn down, a window was broken and a bin set alight but the police stayed away until students began blocking busy central London roads.

Rallies against police intimidation were also staged in Leeds, Leicester, Cardiff, Sheffield, Aberdeen and Manchester, where students occupied a university building.

University of London Union (ULU) president Michael Chessum said the wave of action was in response to a "concerted crackdown" on a student movement growing in confidence.

Forty-one people were arrested last Thursday after the police broke up the occupation of the University of London's Senate House.

An injunction has been served making sit-ins on the campus illegal.

Mr Chessum, who was arrested seperately last month, said: "The managers are losing - they are calling in the cops but we're not having it.

"People are beginning to ask: 'Who are the police and what are their real intentions?'

"We are not simply witnessing an anti-police narrative, we are witnessing a campaign with growing support against the privatisation of education.

"There is something brewing on a level the likes of which we haven't seen for many years."

Mr Chessum was among student leaders who condemned police violence in an afternoon rally on the ULU steps.

A samba band then led a peaceful march through the university, as students chanted: "Cops off campus."

The Network for Police Monitoring reported that 19 riot vans, around 160 officers and police horses were waiting at nearby Holborn police station.

But officers did not descend on the protest even as some students ripped down the heavy gates leading to Senate House.

A few protesters dressed all in black and wearing masks broke the glass on a door and one wheelie bin was set on fire.

Thousands more continued their march and university bosses accepted that it was "largely peaceful."

Chief operating officer Chris Cobb said: "I appreciate that the vast majority of protesters acted in an orderly way, but it was a shame that a few were intent on causing trouble."

Some protesters carried placards bearing the name of Mark Duggan, whose fatal shooting by the police in 2011 sparked riots across London.

Hundreds marched to the Royal Courts - where Mr Duggan's inquest is taking place - before confronting politicians in Westminster.

Sophie Hope of lecturers' union UCU insisted student protest is "something to embrace and encourage rather than arrest and criminalise."

She said: "What kind of institutions are we creating by policing, surveying and arresting the very people that make the places intellectually stimulating and economically viable?"

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