Making themselves heard - Manchester Students Demo

It was big, it was loud, and it was anarchic in the best possible way. Manchester students made themselves heard and seen all round the city centre on Wednesday when around 3,000 of them went on the march.

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They collected first of all at two points on Oxford Road, near the University Students Union and the MMU. Many were carrying their own homemade placards, sheets of cardboard with pictures pasted on and humurous slogans written by hand: "Fuck It, I'm Moving To Scotland", "Fib Dems", "Don't Shaft Us, We're Not Samantha Cameron", "David Cameron: Keeping Students Sober Since 2010", "We're Used To Dealing With Shit But This Is Ridiculous - student nurses oppose public service cuts", "Throwing Fire Extinguishers Isn't The Answer - But Neither Is Big Signs" and one with a picture collage, the basis of which I can only suppose the owner got from a porn magazine, which showed Nick Clegg bending over and being, ahem, shafted by David Cameron.

Shortly before 12.30 a hundred school students from Chorlton joined the march. And then it set off. Some blew horns, some danced along to the sound system, and when they passed under the first bridge across Oxford Street, where sound echoes beuatifully, they all raised a mighty cheer. The students got a thumbs up from all the BBC journalists who came out to watch, and to film them. They continued up Oxford Street but as it the march approached the town hall, it was dverted ands started to meander down back streets. This is a common ploy the police use with demonstrations, they endorse a route that will keep the march as much out of sight as possible. Apparently the march was supposed to end at the town hall, but the police had decided they wanted it to end at Castlefields. Not everybody agreed, and when the march was passing the Museum of Science and Industry some students started shouting, "To the town hall, to the town hall" and suddenly diverted right past the museum entrance. About a thousand students followed them. The press of bodies was so close at that point that it took a few minutes for the police to push through and at that there were only two of them. One pointed down the street towards Castlefields and said "The speeches are that way!". More students walked right past him going in the direction of the town hall. There were now effectively two marches.

At the town hall a few hundred carried on going up Cooper Street, making now THREE separate demonstrations. The rest either listened to speeches on one side, or danced to the sound system in the middle of the road, thus holding up the traffic. I was keeping a close eye on the police at this point, as I thought they might start kettling people or making mass arrests, but they didn't. Possibly they were stretched too thinly, with an unexpected three demonstrations to cover instead of one.

The students who had carried on up Cooper Street came back from the opposite direction after about an hour, and shortly after that those who had gone to Castlefields also joined the crowd at the town hall. And then they set off back the way they came, and apparently this too was "unauthorised": the police had expected everybody to go to Castlefields and then disperse, and they hadn't arranged to divert the traffic. Not all of the drivers seemed to mind the inconvenience of being held up, judging by the number hooting their horns in approval as the march passed.