Hundreds of Students joined a rally to protest against tuition fees and demand that grants are restored.

Oxford University students carrying placards with anti-tuition fees slogans, marched from the Martyr's Memorial in St Giles to the rally in Headington Hill Park yesterday.

Oxford University Student Union organised the event as part of a nationwide campaign to get tuition fees abolished and maintenance grants restored.

Speakers from the National Union of Students, the Labour Party and the University urged students to join the nationwide non-payment of tuition fees campaign.

One of the estimated 500 students at Oxford University who have not paid their fees this term is John Stewart, 19, of Abingdon Road, who is in his second year of reading modern history at Pembroke College.

He told the crowd: "I am a non-payer because it is safe and it is legal. Some of you on the fringe of the campaign may think £1,000 is a reasonable sum. But in Australia they introduced fees on a small scale initially and now they pay the full amount which adds up to about £5,000."

Speaking after the rally, he said: "I have not paid so far and I will see how far I get, but I do not intend to get sent down for it. I paid last year because colleges effectively censure all publicity about student fees to freshers. You are bundled into a hall to pay.

"You are not told you can apply to pay in instalments. "You are given a week to pay and after that they can withdraw your Bodleian Library card. But how they are going to do that with hundreds of students, I don't know."

Liz Davies of the Labour Party's National Executive Committee, who told the crowd she was attending in a personal capacity, congratulated people for not paying their fees.

"We know that an unfair tax can be defeated if people don't pay that tax," she said. "The Government saved £130m by introducing tuition fees. That is about the figure the taxpayer stands to lose by underwriting the sale of arms to Indonesia.

"I would rather my taxpayer's money was spend on higher education than selling arms to a genocidal regime."

Anneliese Dodds, President of the Oxford University Student Union, said: "This Government, that many of us voted for, told us that grants had to be abolished because we cannot afford to fund the middle-classes through university - but it is the students from the lower economic groups that are suffering.

"It is creating division. The Government has a £58bn surplus and this country has the lowest tax rate in Europe - why can that money not be put into student grants?"

Dozens of people joined a second march through Oxford yesterday to campaign against poverty. People walked from Islip to Oxford as part of the People's Pilgrimage against Poverty - a national campaign to persuade the Government to adopt a strategic and planned approach to end poverty in the UK by the year 2020.

A Festival Against Poverty followed the Oxford leg of the walk in Blackbird Leys, featuring music, drama, discussions and speeches by both Oxford MPs, Dr Evan Harris and Andrew Smith.

Story date: Monday 11 October

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.