Women protest at Greenham Common

In November last year we all saw the footage of British students clashing with police on the streets of London, protesting against the government’s decision to almost triple university fees. Thousands of students and supporters organised rallies and sit-ins and confronted police head on; attacking police vans, smashing phone boxes and setting fire to public property to express their outrage at the government’s answer to the national deficit dilemma.

Protest is usually the first port of call for the disenfranchised and these students are by no means the first to use what has for centuries been a powerful political tool. History is bookmarked by thousands of protests, marches and sit-ins, some of which, for whatever reason, have stuck in our collective memories. In the UK, certainly one of the longest protest ever staged, the Greenham Common sit-in, ran from 1981 to 2000 in response to the US Air Force storing cruise missiles there during the Cold War. The protest involved, over the course of those 19 years, tens of thousands of women. At any given time there could be over 30,000 women at the Berkshire site, some living there year-round, and their peace protest involved chaining themselves to the perimeter fence and disrupting US military movements wherever possible. The protest generated sustained international media interest during the 1980s and again after their departure in 2000.

It is protests like Greenham Common that stay with us, and become part of British national identity. Greenham and others like it are a testament to strength of conviction and will for change that can not only be a catalyst for social transformation but inspires people. Anti-nuclear demonstrations like Greenham that formed part of wider social movements, like those of the 1960s and 1970s, are interesting in that they are pieces of a much larger puzzle. We know now the effects of that era, the ‘Golden Age’ of protest; greater equality for women; an end to racial segregation; recognition of the rights of the gay community and an end to the Vietnam War. These were some of the outcomes of an era defined by massive social and political upheaval that was built on the back of demonstrations and sit-ins.

What people find most alluring about a protest is really the feeling of connection – to a cause, a place, or simply to each other, especially now as we become increasingly isolated from each other and the physical world. Although we may feel upset or angered by a political decision or social injustice most of us feel fairly impotent and unsure when it comes to doing something about it. When people band together physically in the same space because they believe strongly in a cause, that show of strength can not only give people a voice but is life affirming.

And Britain has certainly had its fair share. From demonstrations in the 1960s protesting the South African rugby team’s visit to the UK, to thousands of people converging on the House of Commons demanding a ban on fox hunting in 2004, and marches protesting the Iraq war. The most famous of these was the 2003 rally against the invasion of Iraq that included over two million people, believed to be the largest protest in British history. Lindsey German, convenor for the Stop the War Coalition, the group who organised the demonstration, says protest has brought British citizens together. “A street protest educates people…it politicises them, it makes them aware of all the different issues. I think they’re incredibly effective,” she told BBC Online.

The most effective and memorable protests have often been about grabbing opportunities wherever they present themselves. While the G20 summits held around the world were about addressing global financial imbalances they were quickly utilised by protestors who saw a rare opportunity to draw the attention of politicians and heads of major corporations, as well as the world’s media, to issues like climate change and poverty. In other words they used each summit, already set up as a media ‘event’, to air their grievances and turn attention to their causes. And while occasionally media coverage demonised these protests, to protestors it didn’t matter. For better or worse the issues were being rehashed in newspapers and television broadcasts across the globe and inevitably grabbed the attention of powerful world leaders, including those involved in the summit. Whatever the outcome they had succeeded in making climate change a topical issue once again and in a way that took far less effort than creating newsworthy protest from scratch themselves.

A poster from the 2003 Iraq war protests

The 2009 G20 protests in London that became notorious due to alleged heavy handed tactics adopted by police came at the height of the global financial crisis, an economic downturn that hit the UK hard. People protesting bankers’ huge annual bonuses at a time when many of the larger banks were on the brink of collapse and unemployment had hit an all-time high, were powerful in that they highlighted not only the effects of global recession but the disparities inherent in the capitalist system. Demonstrations came to a head when a student from Brighton threw a computer through the window of RBS, and other groups began breaking windows and looting RBS headquarters, throwing chairs and smoke grenades.

It’s not always about a physical presence either. It was the notable absence of particular nations during the multinational boycott of the 1980 Olympic Games in Moscow, a protest led by the US against the Soviet Union’s invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 that made the political statement. The boycott, which Britain, Italy, Sweden and France did not take part in, famously made political a sporting event that has always prided itself on its absence of agenda. The boycott proved effective – supported by Afghan freedom fighters the boycott gained international support for the withdrawal of Soviet troops. Over the years the Olympics has increasingly become a world stage on which a number of social issues have played out, often reflecting the social movements of the time, including a handful of anti-racism protests in the 1970s. Despite the best efforts of the International Olympics Committee to make the Olympics an environment free from the politics and infighting of various nations, they have had to concede that it is an inevitability. In fact, ironically, the IOC has involved itself in the politics of sport on a number of occasions; banning the South African team from the 1976 Games because of their policy of racial segregation.

Likewise, the controversial decision to hold the 2008 Olympic Games in China was defended by then IOC executive director, François Carrard, who ignored demands for the IOC to permanently overlook the country due to its gross human rights violations. Mr Carrard said they would go ahead with the Beijing Olympics to facilitate awareness of human rights issues in the country. It simply proves there is no such thing as a politics-free zone. Where you find people you find politics and the Olympics proved an enticing and impossible to resist platform for protestors wanting maximum exposure for their grievances.

There are many ways to stage a protest of course, beyond the prototypical sit in or rally and they needn’t always involve a thousand people.  Rosa Parks’ lone refusal to give up her seat on a bus for a white passenger was the brave act of a single person but became the catalyst for the civil rights movement in the US. One or two people refusing to accept the status quo can turn into widespread change. The iconic image of a lone Chinese protestor stopping a line of army tanks with an outstretched arm in Tiananmen Square in 1989 is another example of this. No one knows what happened to the lone figure, who became known as Tank Man, and it could be said his actions had no lasting consequences but the image alone was powerful enough to inspire a generation.

Product boycotts are another great example of the power of the consumer to influence major companies and enforce corporate responsibility. The widespread boycott of Nike products, after it was revealed the company uses sweatshop labour and the boycott of Nestle that spread to the UK due to the use of harmful ingredients in their baby formula are well known examples. The more recent Vodafone boycott, following allegations the network received a tax exemption of almost £6 billion, actually managed to temporarily close a number of shops across the UK. Protestors rallied outside stores along Oxford Street and across the UK calling for a mass boycott of the company’s products.

A sole protester in Tiananmen Square

But boycotts like these, and protests like Greenham Common and G20, beg the question of how effective these actions really are to creating lasting change. Some in the past certainly have been, namely the well known civil rights and women’s movements during the ‘60s and ‘70s that were leveraged on protest and relied heavily upon it – with positive results. But in other cases, are they simply too easy to ignore? You could argue that while the women of Greenham Common certainly followed all the prescribed rules for staging an effective protest: massive numbers of women creating clear pathways for support of their cause and certainly proven staying power.

But was it really their presence on the Common for all those years that helped propel the social and political change necessary for the US government to sign the Intermediate Nuclear Forces Agreement (INF) with the Soviet Union, or would this have eventuated either way? Many of the women who based themselves at Greenham on and off over the years believe it was indeed their persistence and methods of disruption that affected change. Di McDonald, who lived at the camp in 1984, says she believes this to be the case. “Greenham was the driving force behind the INF treaty,” she told CNN. And in terms of keeping the media spotlight on issues of nuclear weapons and the anti-war movement you could again call the protest a success, but do long running protests like this become too easy for politicians to ignore and the media to demonise?

Famous protests like Tiananmen Square that resulted in the massacre of those involved certainly drew the world’s attention to human rights abuses in China. G8 and G20 protestors likewise got their gripes about the environment and the effects of financial crisis back on the front page, but connecting these obvious victories with concrete shifts in policy is more difficult. Another difficulty for protestors is, while they can make an event easy for the press to cover, they can’t control the nature of the coverage. Media reports of summit protests around the world is more often than not disparaging towards the protestors themselves; painting them as crackpots and anarchists out to destroy social order and unnecessarily occupy police time.

Professor Peter Waddington, who teaches a course on the politics of protest at the University of Reading, says that aside from a handful of success stories, he does not believe protests can achieve anything of lasting significance. “People protest because they are otherwise powerless. It’s a kind of gesture politics with a loud voice,” he told the BBC.