Protest! How People Have Come Together to Change the World

Protest! How People Have Come Together to Change the World is an excellent history of protest movements, from the first workers’ strike when the people building the pyramids downed tools to demand better pay, to today’s school strikes and the Extinction Rebellion movement. In between it examines and describes a range of the most important protest movements and events, grouped both chronologically and by theme. It is global in its approach so that the section Medieval Troublemakers covers the Kalabhra Revolt in India alongside the German Peasants’ revolt and the Levellers and Diggers. A final spread in that section looks at the way other activists have used the land and gardening to make a stand.  Other sections are titled Class War (the French Revolution – Peterloo), Rights for Women, Freedom and Civil Rights and Acting Up, Speaking Out, which includes the fight against AIDS. And yet it is much more than a setting out of facts, though it does that very well indeed.  In their introduction, sisters Alice and Emily Haworth-Booth describe their memories of the first big protest they remember going on, which was the march against the Iraq War in 2003, and their experience of feeling an overwhelming sense of love for humanity. The book is written with this in mind and always from the perspective of the protestors, while protests covered are in line with the authors’ own sympathies. It fills the book with that same sense of excitement, possibility and shared humanity that they describe feeling on the march. That protest of course failed to stop the war and the book doesn’t shy away from explaining that not all protests are successful.  It states too that often protests involve police or state violence. The result is a clear-eyed information book that is enlightening, accessible and genuinely inspiring. At a time when children are more likely than ever to be involved in protests, there couldn’t be a more timely or important book.

Read our Q&A interview with Alice and Emily Haworth-Booth