Student protest forces Lib Dem’s London Conference Venue to be cancelled at eleventh hour. Students preparing to protest outside the Lib Dem London Conference on Saturday have caused the venue to cancel the booking at the eleventh hour. This sends a very clear and unambiguous message to the Lib Dem activists .
There is now some confusion over where the conference will be actually held, about 30 minute ago the London Lib Dem website announced that a new venue would be at the Royal Horticultural Halls, but this notice swiftly disappeared. A tweet from London LibDems earlier said ‘Registered attendees look out for email update’ so perhaps a staff member mistakenly put it up when it was meant to be only emailed out .
Following the suggestion first being made here at Socialist Unity, in just a few days, more than 1200 students had signed up via Facebook to the protest planned for tomorrow. The peaceful protest was organized by the Free Education Campaign and supported by a range of organizations including the NUS Black Students’ Campaign, NUS LGBT Campaign and Compass Youth.
According to the police, as a result of the protest the venue has now said it does not want to be associated with the Liberal Democrats Conference at this time.
The student protest will go ahead if details of the venue can be found; keep checking facebook for details. (Amusingly, one of the links on the London Lib Dem website is called “Find your local Lib Dems“)
Fiona Edwards, spokesperson for the Free Education Campaign, which organised the protest said:
“The cancellation of the venue for the conference is yet another sign of the deep unpopularity of the Liberal Democrats policy on fees and is hugely embarrassing for the party.
It is not too late for them to keep the promise they made to students that they would reject higher fees.
A free market in fees is a Tory policy cooked up by the heirs of Thatcher and the Lib Dems should not go along with it.”
