Bill Carmichael: Middle-class revolutionaries

How else to interpret the student demo in London this week which, with a crushing inevitability, ended in violence and thuggery?

No surprise there. It happens every single time. For the middle classes in the UK, the occasional Left-wing demo is the equivalent of a football ruck – a chance to escape for a few hours from their comfortable but dull lives and experience the frisson of an ersatz revolution.

One of the downtrodden masses from my old Cambridge college was quoted as saying: "I'm not really worried about violence against property or objects – smashing buildings is completely fine, it's a great image of our anger."

I wonder how she would react if someone broke her iPhone to demonstrate their anger?

No less hilarious were the self-proclaimed anarchists demanding that the state pays their tuition fees. Some kindly lecturer should explain what anarchism actually means.

To be fair many students were not looking for trouble, although about a thousand were cheering on at Millbank as the police were attacked, fires lit and windows smashed. They were incredibly lucky that no one was killed when a fire extinguisher and other objects were thrown off the top of the building.

The leadership of the National Union of Students bears heavy responsibility for the violence. They were guilty of using inflammatory and extreme language such as threatening to "hunt down" MPs and sparking a "demo-lition" in London.

Perhaps if the NUS officers were held liable for the damage caused, it would force them to grow up a bit.

This was a self-interested uprising of the privileged. Figures from the Higher Education Statistics Agency demonstrate that universities remain the province of the comparatively wealthy. If you come from a disadvantaged neighbourhood, your chances of entering higher education are tiny.

By demanding that tuition fees be paid out of general taxation, what the students are saying is that the working poor should subsidise the life choices of the middle classes. In other words the self-employed plumber, the Tesco shelf-stacker, the office cleaner and the lorry driver should pay taxes so that the sons and daughters of doctors, lawyers, civil servants and carbon reduction officers can attend university.

In contrast, the coalition Government's policy is logical and equitable – that those who benefit most from higher education should pay for it.

Figures suggest that graduates earn on average 400,000 more over their lifetimes than non-graduates. Isn't it fair that they should pay a tiny proportion of this extra money to fund the education system that gave them such a boost in life?

And don't forget that graduates won't have to pay anything until they are earning 21,000 a year and any outstanding debt will be written off after 25 years.

Yes, I enjoyed a "free" university education. My fees were paid by the state and I even received a small maintenance grant. But before I am accused of hypocrisy let it be known that these changes will hit me badly.

I have one daughter at university – already with substantial debts – and two other children ambitious to follow in her footsteps just as these new changes kick in. The financial implications are enough to keep me awake at night.

I'd be far better off if tuition fees were paid through taxation – and heaven knows I've paid more than enough of my fair share of tax in my time.

But the bottom line is this – I can't understand why people who are far less well off than me should be forced to subsidise my children's university education.