[Patrick]

Four arrests have been made as several hundred angry students mounted a protest in Belfast city centre Today.



Over 500 students gathered outside the City Hall to voice their anger over the proposed rise in student tuition fees in England and the withdrawal of the education maintenance allowance (EMA).


Three men and one woman were arrested in connection with disorderly behaviour as what began as a peaceful parade began to spiral out of control.

One of the men is in his twenties while the others are in their teens.

The protest was organized to co-incide with the Westminster vote on tuition fees taking place on Thursday evening.

Missiles were also thrown at the PSNI in city centre Belfast as they tried to disperse the crowd which was causing major disruption to the flow of traffic.

Many students carried out a sit-down protest on the streets and roads and traffic diversion signs had to be put in place.



A feeder parade organised by the student campaign group Free Education for Everyone (FEE) assembled outside Queen's University's Student Union at lunchtime and marched
through the city to meet fellow disillusioned students from all over the north outside the City Hall.

Sadie Fulton, of FEE, said the protest was just a flavour of what is to come if tuition fees are raised.

"We're not going to go away quietly. If our fees are going to be tripled then what is a right, our education, is only going to be something that the rich can afford," said the final year Queen's student.

Gareth McGreevy, President of Queen's University's Student Union, said they did not organise the protest which was "mainly attended by secondary school students."

He said: "We do not support any illegal behaviour - we support peaceful, legal protests. We are deeply saddened that the concern of the wider public has escalated into violent behaviour.

"We support peaceful legal protests, and indeed have been engaging in mature, informed debates and we see it as a positive step forward that all Northern Ireland MPs have voted against the fees increase today."


Paint bombs, bricks, glass bottles and other missiles were thrown, as the march, which had been largely peaceful, turned violent.

Quite epic.

A group of 6th years in my school walked out to join this at around 10ish this morning was quite cool.

I had to get out of school early so as I was walking through town and saw this, it actually looked pretty peaceful and rather dull.

I actually at one point said to my mate, 'Why the ****** is their police cars there?' and she was like 'Incase it gets out of hand or something' but I kind of laughed, now it's quite funny at how wrong I was.


I expect there shall be more of these to come and angry students since the fees HAVE been risen.

I also hope more situations like this, happened in England aswell and not just here because the more the better really.