Zoe Williams (Most protests do work…eventually, 10 April) should visit the Imperial War Museum’s exhibition of British anti-war protest movements since 1900. It highlights all those that could be considered failures – the conscientious objectors of the two world wars, the inter-war peace movements, CND and its associates like Greenham Common and the anti-Iraq war movement. What is missing is reference to movements that were part of a successful change in the political climate of opinion. Nothing about Abyssinia or Spain, Suez or the Falklands, Mau Mau, Aden, or Cyprus. The Vietnam war protests are presented as a peripheral American phenomenon. But the Suez protest in ‘56 started the wind of change in colonial policy. The Grosvenor Square protest in ‘68 prevented the UK openly joining the US in fighting. Street politics don’t claim to exercise the art of the possible. They are part of the art of making things possible.
Nik Wood
London
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