Rage of the girl rioters: Britain's students take to the streets again - and this time women are leading the charge

25,000 go on mass nationwide rampage over tuition fees

Teenage pupils protest alongside university pupils

Police face fresh questions about handling of riot



Rioting girls became the disturbing new face of violent protest yesterday.



They threatened to overturn a police riot squad van as they smashed windows, looted riot shields, uniforms and helmets and daubed the sides with graffiti.

Police fled the van as the young demonstrators against university tuition fees yelled obscenities only yards from Downing Street.

Putting the boot in: A girl, her face disguised by a scarf, kicks the abandoned police van during yesterday's riot

Lacking respect: A woman clambers over the smashed windscreen of the van (left) while another kicks the back of the vehicle which has been daubed with obscenities



Flashpoint: A masked yob shatters the police van's windscreen

The nationwide demonstrations were organised using online social networks, with more than 26,000 students signing up to a Facebook page calling for a co-ordinated 'walk-out'

A second wave of truanting schoolgirls who were there for the excitement rather than to cause mayhem then swarmed around the van and posed for photographs taken on friends’ cameras and iPhones.



The disgraceful scenes, which were part of internet-coordinated protests around the country, came despite claims that Metropolitan Police officers were fully prepared this time after violent clashes in Millbank a fortnight ago caused millions of pounds worth of damage.

Scotland Yard deployed more than 1,500 officers – seven times the number on November 10 – to control hordes of students smashing windows of government buildings and scrawling graffiti on the walls.



At least 29 protesters were arrested for theft, violent disorder and criminal damage after a female police officer suffered a broken hand and another officer had to be dragged out from a cordon with leg injuries when violence flared.

Defiant: A protester dons a police helmet next to the wrecked van. Scotland Yard had deployed more than 1,500 officers - seven times the number on November 10 - to control the students

Baton raised: A riot officer mans the barricade against the protesters

Flashpoint: Demonstrators vent their anger by setting a bus shelter alight in London's Whitehall

School's out: Pockets of protesters were still lingering in the capital well into the evening

Paramedics treated 11 people and nine were taken to hospital.



Last night some of the student protesters claimed that the violence was directed by truanting schoolchildren.

Lydia Wright, 22, of the School of Oriental and African Studies, said: ‘It’s all gone terribly wrong. It started off as two small groups from my university and UCL.

‘As soon as we got down to Whitehall, we were joined by some other people, but I think it was mostly the schoolkids who were creating the trouble.

‘They weren’t really supporting the cause. Quite a few of them were just wanting to cause a disturbance.’

It's good to talk: A demonstrator smashes a window of an already-vandalised telephone box outside the HM Treasury building in Whitehall

On call: A worker sets about cleaning up the telephone box that was left looking somewhat out of order

Elsewhere, thousands joined protest marches in Manchester, Liverpool and Brighton as pupils walked out of school in Winchester, Cambridge and Leeds.

Students occupied buildings in Oxford, Birmingham, Cambridge, Plymouth and Bristol, where

fireworks were hurled at police horses.

Two protesters were arrested in Cambridge for obstruction, one in Liverpool for egg throwing and four in Manchester for public order offences and obstruction.



There were also violent clashes with police in Brighton as students tried to storm council and university buildings in the city centre.

But the most disturbing scenes were in London where a largely peaceful demonstration descended into violence. The trigger was a police riot van that had trailed protesters into Whitehall – and stopped between the Houses of Parliament and Downing Street.

Police said the van had been following protesters to gather intelligence about where they were heading, but the vehicle was quickly overwhelmed.

On the run: Demonstrators in the Strand in central London

Destroyed: A vandalised police van is towed away from Westminster, in London, tonight

Fanning the flames: Demonstrators set fire to their placards in London

RIOT NETWORK

The nationwide demonstrations were organised using online social networks, with more than 26,000 students signing up to a Facebook page calling for a co-ordinated ‘walk-out’. Students and schoolchildren, many with iPhones or BlackBerries enabling internet access on the move, posted constant updates on Twitter informing each other of direct action and police movements. Anger was directed against the police for containing a large number of students in Whitehall using the controversial ‘kettling’ technique.

One wrote: ‘Protesters are calling 999 and reporting that they are being held against their will in Whitehall.’ And a furious parent tweeted: ‘You. Yes you lot. You’re illegally detaining our kids. Let them go NOW. And don’t you dare raise a hand to them.’

Within hours, the van was left to be stripped by masked protesters who even attempted to start the engine, turning on blue lights and sirens before it was reclaimed hours later.



Windows were smashed in the Treasury and fires lit.

Unemployed Louise Malone, 25, from Camden, North London, who took the wheel of the police van, told the Mail she broke in ‘because I felt like it’.



She added: ‘I’m supporting the students. There needs to be free education for all.’

Among the protesters was 17-year-old Ali Choan, from Enfield, North London, who was seen throwing at least two missiles at police lines.

He told the Mail: ‘I’m here because the government have stopped my EMA (Educational Maintenance Allowance) – that’s money they give me to go to college.’



Riot police responded with baton charges, pushing back protesters ten feet at a time as they threw shoes and stones at officers.

As tensions ran high, police were forced to ‘kettle’ 5,000 protesters for hours just a short distance from the Houses of Parliament.

Extra reserves of riot police and vans hemmed in the protesters following a surge during which the crowd hurled wooden stakes, bottles and rocks.



Light relief: A demonstrator dances on a police van while another urinates against it



Pursuit: A female protester sits at the wheel of a police van during the protests

Kicking off: A protester attacks a police van in central London today

CLEGG REGRETS

As the student protests erupted, Nick Clegg said he ‘massively regrets’ being unable to deliver on his pledge to abolish tuition fees. But the Lib Dem leader claimed the coalition’s proposals were fairer than the graduate tax his party used to support. Liberal Democrats have become a focus for student anger over tuition fees, so much so that the Deputy Prime Minister was told this week not to cycle into work over fears for his safety. On Tuesday, protesters burned an effigy of him. Yesterday Mr Clegg pleaded with protesters to look at the details of the Government’s proposals, which he insisted were fairer than either the existing regime or the graduate tax backed by the National Union of Students.

As darkness fell and temperatures dipped, bonfires were lit using the stolen riot shields and uniforms as students and schoolchildren danced in the streets to sound systems.

Some schoolchildren were seen ripping pages from their schoolbooks to burn while others did their homework, complaining that they were cold, tired and hungry.

At least one demonstrator inside the cordon needed hospital treatment after she was hit on the head by a flying glass bottle.

Beth Deacon, 16, from Billericay, Essex, was carried out of the cordon by police and given urgent medical attention. Police defended the tactic of containment which proved so controversial during the G20 protests.

Chief Inspector Jane Connors of the Metropolitan Police said: ‘It’s a valid tactic. Police officers came under attack and we needed to make sure the violence didn’t spread out across the London streets.

‘In these circumstances containment was necessary to ensure that the protest was peacefully managed. We made sure that we had a flexible plan with sufficient reserves and resources to deal with the different issues.’





Hundreds more took action in Leeds, attacking Nick Clegg for 'turning blue'

Fury at Lib Dems: Protesters in Nick Clegg's home town today

Students expressing their anger in Newcastle and attacking wealthy Cabinet ministers

She added: ‘It would have been disproportionate of us to put in place a large police presence and use force to recover the van.’

Shortly before the violence erupted police had been confidently predicting they had the resources ‘to ensure that we don’t have the same activity that we had last time.’





The girl who stood up to the mob

A teenage girl risked life and limb to confront protesters intent on smashing up a police van.

Zoe Williams, 19, fearlessly put herself between the angry mob and the abandoned vehicle in Whitehall.

Despite her efforts, rioters leapt on to the roof of the van before smashing its windows, ransacking it for ‘trophies’, ripping off wing mirrors and daubing it with graffiti. One balaclava-wearing thug urinated on the front wheel.

Fearless: Zoe Williams tried to make the troublemakers see sense

Zoe shouted: ‘It’s not going to help our cause’ and ‘you don’t need to do this’ before asking them to ‘calm down’ as they hurled abuse at her.

The teenager, a first-year History of Art student at the Courtauld Institute of Art, previously attended the £12,500-a-year Colfe’s School in south-east London where she left with four A grades at A-level.

Last night she said she was ‘just trying to calm everything down’.

‘I was frustrated and disappointed that people were smashing things again. I am angry about cuts as well but smashing things is not going to help.

Stop: Protester Zoe demands demonstrators do not overturn the police van

‘Some of them listened to what I was saying but some of them were just plain rude and started shouting abuse. It was quite daunting.

‘Some of them were just sixth-form or school students coming down for a free day off. I didn’t want the protest to be labelled as a load of student yobs again.’