Students hail London protests a 'tremendous success'

Officers “kettled” hundreds of people for over six hours near the Houses of Parliament as tensions ran high, where the Met police defended their tactics used to control demonstrations.

The use of kettling was widely criticised after around 5,000 people were penned in outside the Bank of England during the G20 protests last year.

Student union leaders said the action was "absolutely outrageous" and called on police to change their tactics for future protests.

"From the perspective of the National campaigns against fees and cuts, the demonstration was a tremendous success," said the group's Simon Hardy.

"We saw tens of thousands of school, college and university students across the country walking out of lessons and taking part in political action.

On Wednesday, protesters had planned to march outside the Liberal Democrats' Westminster Headquarters over their broken pledge to scrap tuition fees, but police kept them away.

This came two weeks after the Millibank riot, when some activists attacked the complex of buildings housing the Tory party headquarters.

The Met, which deployed hundreds more officers for this week’s protests, said it was necessary to control the crowd after some demonstrators became violent towards police and property in the administrative heart of the capital.

Westminster Wednesday bore the brunt of the trouble on a mostly peaceful day of nationwide protests, with two police officers and 15 people injured, and 32 arrests in total.

Marches against an increase in tuition fees were also held in other university cities.

Thousands participated in demonstrations in Manchester, Liverpool, Glasgow and Brighton as pupils walked out of school in Winchester, Cambridge and Leeds. Students also occupied buildings in Oxford, Birmingham, Cambridge, Bristol and Plymouth.

They were demonstrating against the coalition government's decision to triple tuition fees to £9,000 a year, which they say will be unaffordable for most young people.

Meanwhile, the coalition has since announced there will be a vote on tuition fees before Christmas.