Student Protests in the U.K. -- Where Is This Headed?

LONDON -- Tens of thousands of students took to the streets across the U.K. Wednesday to protest budget cuts and tuition increases in higher education. It was the second time in two weeks that the Brits have used mass action to voice their opposition to the government's education policies.

The protests were smaller than those two weeks ago and somewhat less violent. One newspaper put the number of protesters at 25,000 (vs. 50,000 two weeks ago). But as the night wore on, fires were started, graffiti was sprayed and windows were broken in Whitehall by demonstrators who were being contained ("kettled") by police. As of this morning, there were 32 arrests and 17 injuries.

While both sets of protests were dominated by students, Wednesday's demonstrations were different -- and in some ways more significant -- than the earlier ones.

For starters, the most recent protests drew heavily on secondary school (high school) pupils. Waving placards that read "Now we can't go to Hogwarts" and "David Cameron is Voldemort," thousands of schoolchildren -- some as young as 13 or 14 -- chose to ditch classes for the day and join the demonstrations.

These youngsters fear that the tuition increases will keep lower-income students from attending university and will leave many of those who do attend mired in debt. Of particular concern is the removal of the Education Maintenance Allowance (EMA), which provides advanced secondary school students from low-income households up to £30 ($47) a week if they remain in school.

A second notable difference from the previous wave of protests was that the students' ire now seems directed at Nick Clegg, the deputy prime minister and leader of the Liberal Democrat Party, rather than at Prime Minister David Cameron (whose Conservative Party headquarters was attacked two weeks ago). During the election last spring, Clegg campaigned on a platform that categorically ruled out tuition increases, only to turn around -- once his party joined the coalition government -- and approve them.

Clegg launched a last-minute appeal earlier this week to save face with university students -- once a major source of support for his party. He implored them to "listen and look before you march and shout," insisting that the government's scheme for securing access to higher education for poor students would actually boost social mobility more in this country than the plan advocated by the National Union of Students.

But that message fell on deaf ears. In many quarters yesterday, images of Clegg were burned in effigy. The National Union of Students has launched a "decapitation" strategy aimed at ousting Clegg and other top Liberal Democrats from parliament in protest over the party's U-turn on student fees. And the newly elected leader of Britain's largest trade union, Unite, has gone so far as to predict that there was "a very, very real possibility" that the Liberal Democrats would implode as a political party.

Finally, the tactics used in yesterday's protests were much broader than those employed two weeks ago. Whereas the previous round mostly entailed marching (and some rioting), yesterday's strategies also encompassed sit-ins, walk-outs and building occupation. As of Thursday, some students were still occupying Oxford's iconic Bodleian library.

It is as yet unclear where all of this is going. One columnist in The Guardian thinks that the student protests are laying the ground work for wider public and industrial campaigns. In the absence of an effective opposition party right now, he writes, the students are acting as the de facto opposition in the U.K., and will ignite a wider, anti-austerity movement.

This view is shared by Unite's new leader, Len McCluskey, who on Wednesday promised "an alliance of resistance" that will rock the establishment and force the coalition government to step back from its plans to "decimate the very fabric of the welfare state." McCluskey says that he plans to launch the campaign next spring.

Others disagree, maintaining that violent protests only help strengthen the resolve of the coalition government by showing that what's being opposed is actually some kind of moral imperative. If history is any guide (see: Iraq war), the government may well get its way regardless of the protests -- or so this argument runs.

Only time will tell which of these two narratives is correct. In the meantime, there's another protest scheduled for Tuesday. Stay tuned.

Follow Delia on Twitter.