London: Labour MPs shamelessly encouraged students rioting over tuition fees to "get stuck in" via Twitter at the very moment they started smashing up Tory headquarters, it emerged on Thursday night.
Backbencher John McDonnell used the social networking site to tweet "just shows what can be done when people get angry. We must build on this" as missiles were hurled at police.
Then as protesters started destroying the entrance to the Westminster building, MP Alex Cunningham tweeted: "Well done our students/thousands outside the office getting stuck into the LibDem/Tory government."
Their involvement emerged as: University lecturers at London's Goldsmiths College issued an extraordinary statement "congratulating staff and student on the magnificent anti-cuts demonstration".
A Sussex University academic and prominent member of the socialist action group Revolution boasted he and other militants began planning the attack on Millbank a fortnight ago.
David Cameron called for "the full force of the law" to be used against those who assaulted police or damaged property and said the perpetrators must not go unpunished.
There were calls for one protester who dropped a fire extinguisher from a roof to face attempted murder charges. Despite 50 arrests, all were bailed until February save for a well-spoken grandfather-to-be who was half a mile away from the hotbed of violence. Simon Devey-Smith, 51, who lives in France but was in Britain visiting his children, was charged with obstructing a police officer outside Parliament.
Nick Clegg performed a U-turn, saying he wished he had not been so "hasty" in saying he would end tuition fees. Scotland Yard is facing massive embarrassment over its performance at the protest.
Its farcical response means detectives face months of trawling third-party video to prosecute troublemakers "because officers with cameras were not at the start of the protest". The Met also faces questions over its failure to predict the level of violence, even though anarchists had been plotting on the web for weeks, and why it took three hours to send reinforcements to control the mob.
Even though the numbers swelled from a predicted 15,000 to 50,000, police failed to bolster its team of 225 officers until trouble flared at Millbank. The whole furore has also served to deepen the political row over tuition fees.
In an astonishing U-turn, Nick Clegg said he should have been "more careful" before signing a pre-election pledge signed by every Lib Dem MP to vote against any increase.
Tory MP Greg Hands last night condemned the tweets by Labour MPs.
