SIR,
Your report 'Students plan protest walkout' (Beacon 24th November) contained a statement from some students that a walkout in protest at the huge rise in tuition fees and the abolition of the Education Maintenance Allowance would be 'irresponsible'.
On the contrary, it should not be forgotten that many of us enjoyed the benefit of grants, not loans, and paid no fees.
The student protestors have presumably learnt the lesson of history that no major economic and social change has ever been effected without protest and some form of 'disobedience'.
In Monmouth, there was much suffragette agitation and we now celebrate the Chartists at the Shire Hall.
Many of us have found the recent protests an inspiration.
It is all our right, and duty, to oppose injustice and a government without a mandate for regressive social policy.
Peter Short
(Monmouth)