The National Campaign Against Fees and Cuts (NCAFC) called for a mass walk-out and demonstration on 24 November, with occupations taking place at campuses throughout the UK.

"[9] Two weeks before, on 28 October, a protest was held in the University of Oxford to coincide with a visit from the Liberal Democrat minister and Business Secretary Vince Cable.

[19] Representatives of the National Pensioners Convention also took part, with the group's banner carrier, Janet Shapiro, stating that: "We're here because we believe education should be free, funded by the taxpayer.

[22] Hunt stated that making the public university system in Britain "the most expensive in the world" was unfair, that discouraging young people from going to college was not progressive, and that the increase in tuition fees represented further debts for students.

[16] In the afternoon, as protesters passed the Houses of Parliament and moved towards Tate Britain for the rally, several thousand surrounded 30 Millbank in Westminster, campaign headquarters of the Conservative Party, despite attempts by NUS organisers to stop them.

"[18] Alongside the occupation of Millbank, a smaller number of protesters had travelled to the headquarters of the Liberal Democrats in Cowley Street, where a car window was smashed.

"[15] General Secretary of UCU Sally Hunt also condemned the occupation, declaring that "the overwhelming majority of staff and students on the march came here to send a clear and peaceful message to the politicians....

It is this kind of action in France and Greece that has been an inspiration to many workers and students in Britain faced with such a huge assault on jobs, benefits, housing and the public sector.

"[25] His views were echoed by Mayor of London Boris Johnson, who stated: "This is intolerable and all those involved will be pursued and they will face the full force of the law… The Metropolitan Police commissioner has assured me that there will be a vigorous post-incident investigation.

[8] The following morning, Clegg went on ITV's Daybreak to state: "I should have been more careful perhaps in signing that pledge [to not increase tuition fees]... At the time [prior to his election] I really thought we could do it.

"[35] A reporter from The Daily Telegraph commented that the "anarchic behaviour" of those occupying Millbank was "counter-productive" to the students' cause, and that it was the photographs of "a few hundred vicious hotheads" that would "linger" in the public imagination rather than that of the main march.

[37] Representing this group, protester Jeremy Buck said: "This is just what a few students who had the energy left after the London demo managed to achieve… Imagine what will happen when they have enough time to organise properly for the 24th.

An unoccupied police van which had been left in the midst of the crowd was vandalised; protesters rocked it back and forth, climbed on its roof, smashed its windows, wrote graffiti on it and threw a smoke bomb inside.

"[41] Some of these protesters committed acts of vandalism along the side streets, including knocking over rubbish bins and throwing traffic cones into the road.

Police falsely informed press that the crowd were provided with toilet facilities and water; protesters disputed these claims on social media, with ULU President Clare Solomon commenting on Facebook: "we're still illegally kettled in the freezing cold on Whitehall.

[46] That same day, students occupied the Jeremy Bentham Room in University College London, stating that they were protesting against "savage cuts to higher education and government attempts to force society to pay for a crisis it didn't cause.

[51] Hundreds of students from Kingston University and various local schools staged an impromptu march through the town and a sit down protest at College Roundabout, leading to one arrest.

In the morning of 24 November, demonstrators at the University of Birmingham occupied the Aston Webb building, the site of the Prime Ministerial debates earlier in the year; they issued a statement in which they declared that "we believe the government's cuts to be economically unnecessary, unfair and ideologically motivated" and that "if [the government] continue to destroy the livelihoods of the majority to benefit the rich and powerful minority, they will face increasingly widespread and radical action.

Hundreds of them had walked out of the local Allerton Grange High School to join the demonstration, and later occupied the Michael Sadler lecture theatre and a room at Leeds Metropolitan University.

[41] The great majority of protests across the country [on Wednesday] passed off peacefully… The police let the demonstrators march through town centres and take part in some direct action.

It's a real scandal that the Met has taken these actions and we would urge them to change their tactics for further demonstrations.During the Whitehall incident, the Metropolitan Police publicly defended their use of kettling, with Chief Inspector Jane Connors claiming that they had only used it as "a last resort".

Others threw plastic bottles and fireworks at police lines, and at one point there "was a scuffle as a knot of policemen rushed one of the protesters, grabbing him to arrest him, and the crowd flocked angrily to the area.

"[57] At another time, a group of riot police moved into the crowd of protesters to attempt to secure Nelson's Column, only to be surrounded by demonstrators shouting "Who's kettling who?

Demonstrators, playing music and political slogans from boomboxes forced their way into the building, where a smoke bomb was let off, while another protester climbed onto the roof and unfurled a banner.

[59][60][61] One of the protesters, Sue Luxton, a former Green Party councillor who had subsequently become a teacher, told the press that "I wanted to peacefully express my anger at the cuts... People were angry that they couldn't get in.

[59] On the day of the main demonstration, there were also further protests across the United Kingdom, including in Cardiff, Cambridge, Colchester, Newcastle, Bath, Leeds, Sheffield, Edinburgh, Liverpool, Belfast, Brighton, York, Manchester, Plymouth, Scunthorpe and Bristol.

[63] The British protests coincided with those in Italy, where demonstrations occurred in Milan, Turin, Naples, Venice, Palermo, Bari, Genoa, and Rome where riot police were called in to prevent students from gaining access to the parliament building.

[90] After a five-day trial in the High Court in June 2012, 27-year-old assistant tutor Luke Cooper, reported to be completing a PhD in international relations at the University of Sussex, was awarded £35,000 over a front page Evening Standard article and £25,000 over a follow-up piece in the Daily Mail that implied he was the "ringleader" of the protesters who invaded the Conservative Party's headquarters.

In 2014 the NUS Conference voted in support of free education, reversing the union's previous policy of advocating a graduate tax as a replacement for tuition fees, which it had adopted in the late 2000s.

Participants in the protests went on to be involved in a number of left-wing causes, such as the trade union movement, the climate movement, Palestinian and Kurdish solidarity, alternative media (such as Aaron Bastani, co-founder of Novara Media), migrant and refugee solidarity campaigns, and Momentum and the Labour Party under the leadership of Jeremy Corbyn (such as James Schneider, who served as Corbyn's head of strategic communications).