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Riots, fire, anger at tuition fees protest
Sarah Lucas, a teacher from Hove in Sussex, watched the images flash onto her television screen: flames licking up in front of Big Ben; fireworks bursting in the air; eggs hurled by teenagers; masked youths charging at police officers.
It was Thursday night, and the news had seeped out into Parliament Square that the vote in the Commons, which would allow universities to almost treble tuition fees to £9,000 a year, had been won. It spread through the thousands of cold and tired protesters: students, lecturers, schoolchildren, parents, trade unionists and anarchists.
Lucas watched angrily. Before the election she had worked hard trying to persuade friends to back the Liberal Democrats. At 26, still paying off student debt, unable to get onto the housing ladder, she had thought the Lib Dems offered hope. "I saw them as the party for the young," she said. To her, the vote on fees was a broken promise.
Almost 60 miles to the north, the chants booming through Westminster grew louder as plumes of red-tinged smoke rose into the air and drifted towards the Houses of Parliament.
It was the perceived assault on university education that brought thousands of young people to the streets of the capital on Thursday. On previous days it had been economic policy. Tomorrow, it will be the decision to abolish the education maintenance allowance (EMA) for teenagers from poor backgrounds.