twitter.

com/jamiebrown6 25/3/2011

Below are NUS Presidency candidate Mark Bergfeld’s responses to some direct questions put to
him earlier this month. Open letter dated 8th March can be seen in Readcast.

Q. Do you support violent methods of protest?

“I think that the use of the word violence is misleading here. Whenever I have attended a protest it
is invariably the police who initiate violence with protesters, and this is an experience that many
protesters in Britain are only too familiar with. However I do stand in the tradition of mass civil
disobedience as a method of protest in the tradition championed by the Chartists, the Suffragettes
and the Civil Rights movement in the U.S. under Martin Luther King.”

Q. Can you condemn the violence of students, and many non-students, seen in the previous
student led demonstrations which have led to millions of pounds in costs of vandalism and clean
up, and injuries of both protesters and police?

“I absolutely condemn the violence of the Police. It is unacceptable that the Police kettled, used
batons, horses, pepper-spray and dogs against students. Some protesters were as young as 15 and
these assaults resulted in some very serious injuries. Regarding the student’s actions on the protests
there has been an air of hypocrisy in the media’s response. The role of the Police in inciting the
violence has been completely ignored and the anger and frustration of the students has not been
placed into any context. The students were protesting against the largest attack on the right of
education ever witnessed in the history of this country – cuts and a hike in fees that would result in
thousands of the poorest young people in Britain being isolated from higher education based on
their economic background. In protesting they were met with the brutality of the Police and the
resulting civil disobedience has been used as a tool to distract from the politics of the protests.”

Q. Can you confirm that the NUS under your leadership will continue with advocating purely non-
violent protest, and condemn those who use violence?

“The purpose of my attempt to run for the NUS presidency is to create an NUS that fights for the
rights of students is democratic and is run by students for students with input from every member. I
would like to see an NUS that is able to work with other Trade Unions, to collectively resist the
governments agenda of cuts that will destroy the welfare state in this country and would see
thousands of young people locked out of a right to education. If in this struggle acts of civil
disobedience are deemed necessary the NUS under my leadership would not condemn this, but
support it whole-heartedly.”