Save EMA day!


London

Over 100 people protested outside the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills in central London.

Cutting EMA has been one of the coalition’s most vicious attacks and will leave any form of post-16 education completely out of reach for thousands of young people.

The protest was attended by school, college and university students as well as by trade unionists from the teachers’ unions – NUT and UCU.

There was an angry mood on the demonstration where students shouted chants of ‘Take away our EMA – we say no way’ and ‘When I say Tory – you say scum’.

Ridiculously, several thousand police were amassed in central London, many dressed with riot gear at the ready, equipped with hundreds of vans and with a police helicopter hovering over head!

On reaching the department, the protesters were surrounded by police who refused to allow us to protest outside the building and instead, moved us to the other side of the road.

Claire Laker-Mansfield

Nottingham

200 college students and staff joined a ‘Save EMA’ protest at Bilborough College, Nottingham as part of a national day of action on Monday 13 December.

YFE leaflets were enthusiastically snapped up. A-level student Tom Anderton, co-founder of Bilborough Collage Against Cuts, spoke to the crowd about how the scrapping of EMA would keep poorer students out of college.

Ian Pattison from Leeds University also spoke, focusing on the police attempts to trample on the democratic rights of people to protest.

Helen Pattison