Mounted Police Charge Student Protesters - UK

Video footage has emerged showing mounted police charging a crowd of protesters during this weekapos;s tuition fees demonstrations, the day after the Metropolitan police said tactics quot;did not involve charging the crowdquot;. Tens of thousands of school and college pupils and university students demonstrated in largely peaceful protests across the country against government plans to increase tuition fees and scrap the education maintenance allowance, but there were violent scenes at the central London protests. Hundreds of protesters were corralled or quot;kettledquot; by police, and later advanced upon by mounted officers. Many who were in the crowd complained of being charged by police on horseback. Police have denied that mounted officers charged at protesters; however, a five-minute video posted on YouTube last night shows a number of officers on horseback advancing at speed through a crowd of people. Jenny Love, 22, who graduated from Bath University in July, said mounted officers quot;charged without warningquot;. quot;When the horses charged I was fairly near the front of the demo, where we were very tightly packed in, and found myself very quickly on the floor where I assumed the foetal position and covered my head while people simply ran over me,quot; she said. quot;Thankfully another protester picked me up before I could suffer any serious damage.quot; Love described the charge quot;as pretty terrifyingquot; and said she suffered bruising during the ordeal. quot;Iapos;m very angry that the mounted police were ordered to charge on a crowd containing many people like me who were only interested in peaceful protest,quot; she said. quot;Police chiefs should think themselves lucky that no one was more seriously injured.quot; Naomi Bain, a member of support staff at Birkbeck University, was at Whitehall on Wednesday to protest against the government cuts. She said: quot;We were right at the front of the crowd. Iapos;ve been in a lot of protests before, so we werenapos;t particularly scared of police shouting at us and telling us to move. We were standing our ground – until the horse charge.