LONDON — Tens of thousands of students waving placards and chanting anti-government slogans marched through central London on Wednesday to protest plans to triple university costs as part of Britain’s radical deficit-reduction program.
Organizers said about 50,000 students marched through the streets and around the Houses of Parliament, including small breakaway groups that vandalized a government building, to show their outrage at plans to raise the cost of studying at a public university to about $14,000 a year.
Some protesters chanted “Tories out” and engaged in a rowdy standoff with police at Conservative Party headquarters at Millbank Tower on the river Thames, where they smashed windows, started a fire in the inner courtyard and climbed on the roof.
Officials said there were a few arrests and minor injuries.
Britain’s ruling Conservatives say the program to scale back the size of government, with a goal of cutting $128 billion in public services during the next four years, is needed to ease public debt and cut a budget deficit equal to nearly 12 percent of annual gross domestic product.
