With only nine students coming from Liverpool Guild, the lingering question was what kind of turnout the NUS could reasonably deem a success for a mass lobby. Sitting on an early train from Lime St, Steve Bloomfield confidently suggested there would be 800 poor students begging their MPs for support. Today, Guardianonline reports a much more believable 200.

But at Westminster we waved goodbye to Steve. We went to Parliament, he went to the NUS Briefing. Or whatever that was. Assuming it was an NUS training type event on ‘how to lobby your MP’ the obvious choice was just to get on with the job in hand.

The Central Lobby remained almost deserted at 11am though I can say Leicester SU were there, all in their best suits, making Liverpool Guild look like poor deprived students. So presumably there was some sort of press stunt going on elsewhere, but shouldn’t there have been an effort to raise public awareness of the day? Press releases and lobbying in the Palace is all well and good but it might be an idea to spread the message of our campaign in a more upfront manner. Didn’t someone suggest we wanted to emulate the Fair Trade lobby? Fat chance of that happening.

So having arranged to meet twelve MPs between us, we started off with Maria Eagle, Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions. Oh! And apparently MP for Liverpool Garston. This link to her constituents though struggled to shine through against her love of being on the Government payroll.

In preparation for the lobby, Alistair Campbell seems to have trained up the Labour MPs to repeat “the situation is still fluid” and that “things might still change.” Well done on repeating the mantra Maria! However, when it comes down to asking what action MPs will take, comments such as “I’m a minister. I won’t be able to speak out and keep my position in government” are not particularly reassuring.

A lunchtime excursion to Downing St was interesting, where hundreds of school children were sitting outside the main gates shouting “education not war!” Seeing a protest of schoolkids forcibly broken up by the Met was a bit disturbing; dragging twelve year-olds across Whitehall and using horses to shove them into a pen isn’t something I’d expected to see. Presumably there were some NUT militants involved but these were children who knew the score and were happy to debate it, so while the earlier experience suggested Blair seemed OK on top-up fees he looks increasingly screwed over Iraq.

But actually, despite the complete lack of co-ordination at the lobby, it did seem successful. Bob Wareing and the Labour Left were on-side and thoroughly supportive. Charles Kennedy had obviously sent the message to his troops calling for a massive arse-licking campaign to make friends in the NUS, though John Pugh’s interesting “don’t bother talking to me, I’ll do whatever you want” should have earned some sort of award.

Rushing in and out of the Central Lobby, the NEC and Conference-hopefuls had emerged in force. At one stage they seemed to be taking over the place looking for possible voters to latch on to. Helen Symons looked particularly despondent for some reason.

Anyhow, the need was to convince the Labour waverers and people seemed to think the day had been constructive. Support for the EDM is increasing, there is a commitment to campaign against the fees and even the careerists who accept the fees recognise the grant needs a big increase. So to finish the day we were taken to the Strangers Bar for a drink on the terrace by Stephen Hesford. A young MP of Labour’s 1997 intake, we expected some hard work with him but no! It was quite nice to finish the day with a genuine loyalist saying the White Paper was wrong, that there would be a vote in the House, and he would oppose the government. So maybe not all hope is lost.

But at the end of the day I’m still not sure what the NUS did other than suggest the date. They booked Committee Rooms, but what was the point? They might have had a briefing session, but where and when was it? If it was a ‘mass lobby’ where was everyone? From an individual point of view, the day was a success, but from the NUS there seemed a lot left to be desired.

Read Steve Phillpott's lobby report

Funding Campaign- Tools, Information & Advice.

>> Charles Clarke has now delivered the White Paper which will map out student and university funding in the future. As expected it contains a lot of bad news, with debts of over £20k planned and funding cuts in other areas which will see us move closer to a two-tier system of Higher Education. So here is a resource centre for student activists to help oppose the proposals. White Paper Summary & what you can do Left A poster template for the national lobby. To access a word version RIGHT click here and choose 'save target as' Right If you can get them done, here's a template of a postcard to send to MPs. Click Here to see more >> Amnesty International say a letter is worth ten protesters, so here's the easy way to get a letter to your MP. You may not believe this, but not all MPs have published email addresses. However, you can go straight to a web based fax form just by entering your postcode. More Info and Petitions FaxYourMP.com