Student Protests, 1989 Style

November 1989. I was not long turned 18, in my first year at Imperial College, and working on Felix, the student newspaper. Oh, and Margaret Thatcher’s Conservative government was proposing to replace student grants with student loans. Cue a wave of protests and demos…

The first of those was on November 22nd, meeting at 1pm on Malet Street, London. I was there – but not as a protestor. I had my notebook, I had my camera. I was reporting.

Over two decades later, I was watching this year’s demos begin, and discussing it with others on Twitter. I couldn’t resist digging out my old negatives, scanning them and sharing them, as a point of comparison with last week:

Things have, I think, changed…