… it read one of the placards in today’s student demonstration in central London. And this short and sharp message not only seems to sum up the feelings of most of the 50,000 people that took to the streets to protest against the Government imposed cuts in education spending, but also the events that unfolded during the massive demonstration.

The crowds started to gather at Horse Guards Avenue at around 11am, and it quickly became obvious that this would be a very large protest. Feeder marches kept arriving to the meeting point, and so the crowds quickly swelled to the tens of thousand of people. At around 12.30pm the front of the march started to move down Whitehall with very loud chanting of “no ifs no buts no education cuts”. The crowd quickly broke through the barriers erected at the middle of Whitehall taking the whole street. As soon as the march arrived in Parliament Square a sit-down protest took place with around 150 people pointing to the Houses of Parliament chanting "That's not what democracy looks like, THIS is what democracy looks like".

Meanwhile the very lively and loud crowds kept passing down Parliament Square towards Millbank, and as the demo arrived at the Tory HQ at number 30 - otherwise known as the ‘Milbank Tower’ - a large crowd of around 3000 people quickly moved into the building’s courtyard and occupied it for the rest of the afternoon. People’s anger at the Tory / Liberals cuts quickly turned into action when the crowds kept pushing forward towards the main entrance of the building trying to storm it. At first, a thin line of police was protecting the front entrance, but the determined crowd kept pushing forward and so some windows got eventually smashed. At this point a large number of protestors stormed the building’s foyer and moved towards the upper the floors, whilst others quickly made it to the roof provoking loud cheers from the crowds at the courtyard. At this point a stronger line of riot police moved in to protect the building’s entrance, but this didn’t prevent people from occupying it for a good few hours of quite surreal images as riot police were ‘protecting’ the front entrance whilst, a few meters away, people were still breaking windows and entering the building. Eventually riot police moved into the building re-taking the foyer, keeping the crowds out.

By late afternoon a crowd of around 2000 people were still at the courtyard, and at around 4.30pm the mobile sound system announced that it was moving away towards the LSE where an ‘after-party’ event was taking place. Around 1000 people followed the sound-system back towards Parliament Square, passing large lines of riot police getting ready for what later turned out to be a kettle of those that stayed behind at the Millbank tower. The latest reports talk of a total number of 32 arrests at the kettle, where people have only been let out after being identified and photographed.

When passing Parliament Square we saw an ‘education camp’ being set up which intends to run a ‘free university’ with plans to hold the space for a period of time “to facilitate free public lectures and open discussion about proactive alternatives for higher education” [report]

All in all it turned out to be a very determined protest, where the anger people feel at the cuts in public and social spending clearly started to manifest itself in the streets of London. A banner hung at the ‘education camp’ reads “This is Only the Beginning”. If that proves to be true, then it seems that the Government’s imposed ‘austerity measures’ will not go down so smoothly and will be resisted in the months to come. Only time will tell.

Here there are some snaps from today’s events:

More reports in the IMC-London newswire:

• student cuts demo - pics from parliament square
• Parliament Square Occupied - Free University open