A protest against privatisation of student load debt and cuts to education spending took place outside St Mary’s Church on King’s Parade this afternoon. It was organised by Cambridge Defend Education and around 30 students were in attendance.

The protest was part of a nationally-coordinated week of university action against government cuts to Higher Education organised by the Student Assembly Against Austerity. The National Union of Students (NUS) voted to endorse this national week of action.

Holly Higgins, a first-year MML student at Girton who attended the protest, explained that she was “angry at the current government’s attack on education.”  Another protester, who refused to reveal her name, was outraged at the “sneaking backdoor privatisation” taking place under this government.

Daisy Hughes, who is active in the Cambridge Living Wage campaign, was hopeful that “if enough students stand up and say we’re not going to take [educations cuts] anymore, then the government should notice and change.

“I think there’s a perception that students are quite easy to target because they’re less likely to vote, but we want to show that we won’t stand for it.”

Students chanted and held banners.  The chats included: “Build a bonfire, Build a bonfire, Put Willetts on the top.  Put Gove in the middle and we’ll burn the fucking lot.” 

Some tour guides in the vicinity were upset by the protest.  One guide confronted protesters, shouting, “We’re trying to run a business here!”  A student replied: “We’re trying to stop our university becoming a business.” 

Speaking to Varsity, a tour guide branded the protesters “bourgeois bohemians”.  He explained that “[the protesters] are not going to achieve anything or get anywhere.  The ironic thing is, they are going to be running the country in a few years’ time, being forced to make the same decisions.”

Another disapproved of the protesters’ chanting: “Their language is below the belt.  Saying fuck every two words isn’t going to get you anywhere.  There are other ways to get the message across and not piss everyone off.”

Speaking under a pseudonym, Rachel Young defended the action: “We’re in a public space.  Protest is disruptive.  It’s unfortunate that they [the walking guides] feel that way.

She continued, “The government is not content with just tripling university fees.  Education is a right and should be free…There’s been a resurgence in student activism recently, but that has been accompanied by a resurgence in police repression, as we saw in Birmingham last week.”

CDE will be supporting strike action this Thursday, the fourth walkout by university staff this year in a dispute over a real terms pay decrease of 13% over the last five years.