Shop staff in fear for their lives as student protesters try to smash doors

Shop staff in Trafalgar Square told today how they feared for their lives during the student protest.

It came after thousands of students descended on central London in the third demonstration against plans to triple university tuition fees.

Protesters vandalised Nelson's Column, daubing the words "revolution" and "no cuts" along with expletives on the landmark's plinth.

A group of demonstrators attempted to smash their way into Tesco Express and Waterstone's in Trafalgar Square during the protest. Terrified workers were forced to shut the doors and hide inside.

Tesco duty manager Masud Karim said: "Around 50 to 100 protesters started pushing us in to the store and started throwing things around. We tried to stop them but we had to call the police and close the store for 40 minutes.

"The store manager closed the shop again when they started kicking outside and smashed two windows at around 5.30pm. We were obviously scared when they started throwing things around the store. Some of them were aggressive and some of them were drunk as well."

One Tesco worker known as Bukky said: "It was so scary, we thought maybe we were going to die I thought they were going to smash in the door."

Windows at both shops were damaged but did not break as other protesters stepped in to stop further attacks taking place. One protester described the attacks as "despicable", saying: "I am not going to try and justify that, it does nothing for our cause, but the police injured people afterwards by sandwiching us in."

There were 153 arrests during the demonstration, most of which were made the protesters were "kettled" in Trafalgar Square. A Scotland Yard spokesman said up to 200 protesters refused to leave. Most arrests were for breach of the peace and a handful were on suspicion of violent disorder.

Schoolgirl Ruth Lyons, 15, from Hackney was kettled for two hours by police. Her father Ian Wingrove said: "What exactly were they arrested for — bad singing? My daughter was kettled for two hours before a kind police officer noticed her school uniform and asked if she and her friends wanted to leave — which they did."

Police were today looking at video evidence taken from officers at the scene and the force's helicopter to work out which of those arrested were involved in criminal activity.

A spokesman for the Mayor's Office, which is responsible for cleaning up Trafalgar Square, said tests are being carried out on what type of paint was used in the graffiti daubed on the monuments. He said: "We don't know how much this is going to cost yet. Workers are investigating what material was used for the graffiti and then we can decide how to remove it and how much it will cost."