If protests didn’t work they wouldn’t try to ban them
As huge demos once again hit the streets of Britain in defence of Palestine, we must recognise that ours is an era where street politics is increasingly vital, explains socialist historian KEITH FLETT

THE right to demonstrate was hard-won. It took a massacre at Peterloo in Manchester on August 16 1819, where soldiers on horseback cut down, killed and injured protesters who were demanding the right to vote, to remind that state that allowing political demonstrations was perhaps preferable to such confrontations.
It is a right that has required exercise in practice down the decades and centuries — and there have of course been times when demonstrations were banned or attacked by the police.
Since the 1960s protest marches have become a significant way of focusing on issues which official Westminster politics ignores.
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