website Facebook, 25,000 people had signed up to take the day off from studies and protest prior to the actual event, and these protesters included not only university students, but also school children who had walked out of lessons to join the demonstration. The NCAFC encouraged protesters to use social media to invite others to join them. One of those protesting was Jessica Linley, a law student at the University of Nottingham who had been crowned Miss England in September 2010 and who used her status to gain media coverage for the cause, telling press that she would not be able to afford to go to university if the tuition fees were increased, and that "these sweeping austerity measures are unacceptable." Whitehall march Several thousand protesters, most of whom were students or school children, gathered in Trafalgar Square, central London, late in the morning. They proceeded toward Whitehall shouting the slogan, "fuck David Cameron". Believing that there had been a lack of officers at 10 November demonstration, the Metropolitan Police drafted in 1000 police officers from across Greater London to oversee the event, almost five times the number at 10 November. Police informed press that they planned to monitor fringe elements within the demonstration whom they believed planned to encourage "vandalism and violence". At Whitehall, just before 1 pm, police prevented the protesters from reaching Parliament Square and the Houses of Parliament, setting up a line of riot police to kettle the protesters. A reporter The Guardian described the crowd at this point as being "predominantly good natured, although very noisy". Nonetheless, the demonstrators tried to push through the police line, leading to clashes. An unoccupied police van which had been left in the midst of the crowd was vandalised; protesters rocked it back and forth, climbed on its roof, smashed its windows, wrote graffiti on it and threw a smoke bomb inside. A group of school girls encircled the van, urging people not to vandalise it. One of them later told reporters that "the cause that we're here for today isn't about 'I hate the police, I want to burn the police and I want to destroy everything they represent.'" At around 6 pm, mounted police charged at the north end of the crowd to push them back; despite video evidence police denied that this was an actual charge, describing it as crowd control using horses. Roughly 1000 protesters