Thousands of students rallied in London on Thursday for a common purpose, but not necessarily under a common banner. Instead of the more established bodies, such as the National Union of Students, being the driving force, it was several less high-profile groups, some assembled within the past few months, which have caught the attention and encouraged people to turn to direct action.

While some at the protest will have digested the message given out by these groups and then decided to act, others were there out of pure fury and disillusion. Some of the younger people on the march were among the most angry, with some pupils from schools in deprived areas of London who appeared on television presenting a different picture of the protesters from some of those children seen on earlier demonstrations .

The NUS, which has faced criticism from some students groups for not being more supportive of the direct action protests, organised its own rally near Parliament on Thursday, but the event was mostly overlooked.

The National Campaign against Fees and Cuts (NCAFC) was formed on 6 February this year after a conference in London of 170 university students who were engaged in activism on their campuses. "At that point anti-cuts movements hadn't really been founded because it was before the election," said Simon Hardy, 21, a student at the University of Westminster and a prominent figure within Ncafc.

"It was student activists who'd been active around Gaza, active in progressive issues on their campuses like the London living wage campaign and things like that."NCAFC is supportive of non-violent direct action – such as marches or occupations of government or council buildings, but had not called for violence on Thursday. It advertises its protests on Facebook and inevitably those who want to come to cause violence are able to see what its plans are.

It organised the national day of action on 24 November, encouraging students and pupils to walk out of school, college and universities in protest against government plans. It is one of the groups that has raised awareness not only of government policies that could affect students and others, but also awareness of ways in which the disaffected can protest. It was the main group behind Thursday's protest and consulted with police about the march to Westminster.

Michael Chessum, 21, was the man behind the first conference. "I sat down last summer and decided we should have a mass demonstration against tuition fees because otherwise free education was going to fall off the map," said Chessum, who is taking a sabbatical from a history degree at University College London to work as the education and campaigns officer for its student union.

Chessum put the message out to "everyone I knew", mostly using Facebook, but he also contacted leftwing political groups including the Socialist Workers party, and the Alliance for Workers' Liberty – although he stressed that apart from that initial call, NCAFC has stood as its own organisation with its own adherents.

"The strength of the national campaign is that it doesn't rely on those groups at all. Our activists are basically all independents."

The initial conference, held in the Jeremy Bentham room at UCL which has been occupied by students for more than two weeks, drew about 150 people from mostly leftwing activist groups at universities across England, some of whom had been active in the Free Gaza movement and other progressive issues, and NCAFC was born. The group continued to hold meetings every two to three weeks, sometimes just with London-based attendees, other times with students from as far as Leeds and Hull attending.

The Education Activist Network joined with NCAFC to call for the national student day of action on 24 November – a follow-up protest to the official NUS campaign on 10 November.

The EAN was established three weeks after NCAFC, following a near-identical process of a conference of leftwing students and speakers. The organisation, which also stands against cuts to education, differs from the other group in that it is made up of "lecturers, students and people working in education," said Mark Bergfeld, 23, one of its founders and a masters student at the University of Essex. "I think the main difference is that our campaign is one of students and staff, and workers in the real sense – we have real trade union support."

The EAN is backed by some regional branches of the University and College Union, the lecturers' union which has helped spread the message to further education students in some parts of the country. It has also received donations from the Rail and Maritime Transport Union, which had a presence on Thursday's march. The activist network is also close to the Socialist Workers party – "a lot of our activists are SWP activists", Bergfeld said, and the party had a strong presence on Thursday, as did lecturers and teachers from UCU.

Some students are now calling for a National Student Assembly which would organise direct action on the ground – an idea originally mooted at some of the occupations of universities around the country, but now backed by both the NCAFC and EAN.

"Because the NUS has been slow in taking action, it doesn't stand with students, we need to mobilise to build a movement that stands with student protesters and fights and wins," Bergfeld said, stressing the intention was not to replace the student body.

The NUS, which represents 95% of all higher and further education student unions in the UK, organised the first march against the increase in tuition fees and cuts to the educational maintenance allowance on 10 November in conjunction with UCU. The march saw a minority of protesters smash windows and gain entry to the Conservative party headquarters at 30 Millbank – action the NUS condemned and distanced itself from.

The organisation had continued to champion its own action in the runup to Thursday, but with NCAFC and EAN able to contact tens of thousands of students through Facebook and Twitter, the NUS's plans for a mass lobby of MPs and for a candlelit vigil were left out of the spotlight. Nine unions including the NUS, UCU, Unison, NUT, Unite and ATL are holding a nationwide day of lunchtime protests at colleges on 13 December in a bid to save the Educational Maintenance Allowance.

Though its cause is not directly about education, UKUncut has been encouraged and reinforced by the rising tide of activism among young people, and is another group with high-profile, social-media savvy campaigns.

It began by closing a Vodafone store in central London in protest against alleged tax avoidance and has since expanded their targets to include Sir Philip Green's Arcadia empire. UKUncut is continuing their more guerilla form of direct action a week today, planning actions in 11 towns and cities.

Protesters, who claim tax avoidance by multinational corporations and wealthy individuals costs the taxpayer £25bn a year, are calling for 18 December to be a "pay day", and will target Vodafone and Green's shops – trying to either close them or lobby customers outside.