The power of protest

The BBC Politics Show is asking people to nominate their top ten political protests in the light of the death of Rosa Parks, whose refusal to give up her seat on a bus for a white passenger in Alabama in 1955 galvanised the American civil rights movement. Political protest I think has to be seen as something distinct from riots and revolutions, though it may inspire such mass collective actions of rebellion. The problem with any form of 'lists' of political protests is that only symobolic actions, normally undertaken by individuals, have any chance of making the top ten - despite the fact that real change comes when millions of ordinary people undertake lots of extraordinary little actions that simply do not get recorded. But that taken into account, here are ten inspiring protests for you - in chronological order. Not all of the ten below are 'protests that shook the world' - but I think all are quite timely ones to remember in the current climate - though there are hundreds, if not thousands, of others that could easily make such a list.

1. Martin Luther's 95 Theses in 1517 'On October 31, 1517, according to traditional accounts, Luther's 95 Theses were nailed to the door of the Castle Church as an open invitation to debate them. The Theses condemned greed and worldliness in the Church as an abuse and asked for a theological disputation on what indulgences could grant.'This arguably helped to kick off the Protestant Reformation, which split the Church, up to then the key ideological buttress of European feudalism.
2. Emily Davison, Suffragette who threw herself under the King's Horse 1913
3. Gandhi's Salt March, 1930, against the British Empire.
4. Battle of Cable Street, East London, 1936, which smashed Mosley's British Union of Fascists.
5. Rosa Parks, Alabama, 1955 - sparked the Civil Rights movement.
6. Black Power at the Mexico Olympic Games, 1968.
7. Tiananmen Square, China, 1989 - inspiring pro-democracy protest.
8. Poll Tax riots, London, 1990 - brought down Thatcher.
9.The 'Battle of Seattle', 1999, which shut down a meeting of the World Trade Organisation, and brought the anti-capitalist movement into the front rooms of people across the world.
10. Global Day of Protest against the Iraq War, February 15th, 2003. Thirty million demonstrate globally - will ultimately be the thing that brings down Blair.