Student protests: national walkout live

Today, thousands of students are expected to take to the streets for the second time in a fortnight in protest at plans to raise tuition fees and scrap the education maintenance allowance.

More than 25,000 college and university students across the UK have signed up to a Facebook page organising a co-ordinated walkout from classes at 11am.

Scores more regional groups have sprung up and are organising their own events, amid signs that the scale of the London protest has emboldened the wider student movement.

Many of the largest demonstrations are expected to take place in cities with big student populations such as Leeds, Liverpool, Manchester and London, but hundreds of students – many of them sixth-formers or in further education – have also organised protests in towns across the UK.

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On Comment is Free, Laurie Pennie has a report from the midst of the protests in London. She writes:

There are no leaders here: the thousands of schoolchildren and young people who streamed into Whitehall three hours ago in protest at the government’s attacks on further and higher education were working completely off script.

A wordless cry went up somewhere in the crowd and they were off, moving as one, with no instructions, towards parliament.

But just because there are no leaders here doesn’t mean there is no purpose. These kids – and most of them are just kids, with no experience of direct action, who walked simultaneously out of lessons across the country just before morning break – want to be heard. “Our votes don’t count,” says one nice young man in a school tie.

I wonder what Gladwell has to say about this wave of civil disobedience, which is based on online networks?