May I March on Your Street? Trivia Quiz

The Peasants' Revolt began in Brentwood, Essex, in May 1381, when a government official went to investigate why tax returns were so low in the area. The local populace were already in a tinderbox of resentment at the high taxation demanded by the king to fund the Hundred Years' War and rebelled against the attempt to make up the shortfall.

When revolt spread to the neighbouring county of Kent, Wat Tyler rose to become its leader. After deposing the Archbishop of Canterbury and freeing all the prisoners in the city, he raised a band of rebels to march on London. They demanded the abolition of the poll tax, an end to limits on wages for labour and an end to serfdom, the system that obligated peasants to work for the owner of the land on which they lived.

After the rebels caused havoc in London, attacking and killing many people suspected of working with the Crown, King Richard II agreed to meet them in Mile End on the outskirts of the city. He promised to meet all their demands, but when Wat Tyler was killed soon after by William Walworth, the Mayor of London, the king demanded the brutal suppression of the rebellion, executing 150 of the rebels and displaying many of their heads on spikes.

In 1819, times were tough for many in the UK, particularly in the north-west of England. Not only was unemployment high but the Corn Laws had artificially raised the price of bread and made the importation of cheaper grains impossible. The ability of the people to change their circumstances was hugely limited as few could vote. Those that could remained unrepresented as many major dwellings in the north-west had no Members of Parliament, including the major town of Manchester.

In such an environment, the demand for change was high. Meetings were held in many of the industrial centres in the north and a party marched to London to petition for change to voting laws. When this was rejected by parliament, the reformers continued to organise meetings to the government's consternation. On August 16, 1819, an estimated 60,000 protesters marched from various towns in Lancashire to gather in St Peter's Field in Manchester. Though planned as a peaceful protest, the government feared violent insurrection so ensured that they were met by the armed cavalry of the 15th Hussars.

The Hussars charged the crowd and attacked some of the protesters with their swords leading to a number of deaths, estimated at eighteen, and hundreds of injuries. The fallout from the scandal, nicknamed Peterloo in reference to the recently ended battle at Waterloo, led to a government crackdown on reformers, their publications and any "radical" meetings. However, Peterloo was an important touchstone for those who wished to see electoral reform in the UK and a rallying call for those who were to eventually achieve it.

The Chartists were a nationwide movement for political reform, based around the People's Charter of 1838. It demanded votes for the working class, secret ballots and for the job of a Member of Parliament to be paid so that working men could feasibly stand for election. The Charter itself was a response to the Great Reform Bill of 1832 that had made limited changes to the eligibility to vote but had left millions of people still disenfranchised.

After the charter was rejected by the government of the day, the Chartists began to take action. In November 1839, a march was organised in south Wales comprising of approximately 10,000 working men, many drawn from the predominant industry of the region, coal mining. Starting from the valleys to the north of the town, the march made its way to Newport. In anticipation of trouble, the mayor of Newport had assembled soldiers and police constables to manage the events of the day.

The police arrested many of the protesters en route to the town and a crowd gathered outside the Westgate Hotel where it was rumoured that those detained were being held. A shot was fired by either the soldiers or the protesters (it has never been definitively established which side shot first) and a full-on battle ensued that left up to 24 protesters dead and many more injured. In response to the events of the day, the leaders of the rising were arrested and sentenced to be hanged, drawn and quartered, the last people in the UK to ever be executed in this manner.

When more than 3,000 women gathered to march from Hyde Park Corner to the Strand in central London, it was the largest outdoor demonstration for women's suffrage recorded in the UK at the time. The campaign to gain the vote for women had been growing in number since Millicent Fawcett formed the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies (NUWSS) in 1889. At the same time, the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU) led by Emmeline Pankhurst was waging a campaign of civil disobedience to further the cause.

The gathering at Hyde Park Corner included women from a range of social strata showing the universality of the cause. The march was organised by the NUWSS to build upon the publicity gained from the actions of the WSPU and to multiply the pressure on the government of the day. Arranged to coincide with the state opening of parliament on the same day, the purpose was to demonstrate in support of a new suffrage bill due to be put before parliament. The bill did not succeed but the march did in other ways, raising awareness and sympathy for the cause. The movement grew significantly as a consequence and when a similar rally was organised a year later it attracted more than half a million attendees.

The closure of Palmer's shipyard in Jarrow, Tyne and Wear in 1934 had a devastating effect on the town. Following on from the worldwide recession, the economic recovery that benefited parts of the UK had not reached the north-east of England. Still suffering an economic slump and historically high unemployment, 200 men from Jarrow decided to march 291 miles from their hometown to the House of Commons in London.

Setting off on October 5, 1936, they delivered their petition less than four weeks later with 11,000 signatures demanding the restoration of the industrial works in the town. Though the petition was immediately unsuccessful, as the government dismissed it out of hand, the march had a longer lasting impact as it awakened much of the British public to the plight of those in economic need and paved the way for the welfare state reforms of the immediate post-war period.

Bloody Sunday was a shameful episode in British history when UK paratroopers lost control and fired on unarmed marchers in the Northern Irish city of Derry on January 30, 1972.

By the start of 1972, the relationship between local Catholics and the UK army had deteriorated significantly after several civilian deaths at the hand of British soldiers and many retaliatory killings by the Provisional IRA. In addition the policy of internment, holding suspected terrorists without trial in internment camps, had bred huge resentment. In January, all marches were banned in Derry by the Prime Minister of Northern Ireland. Despite this, less than two weeks later on January 30, a march was organised in opposition to the internment camps. Around fifteen thousand marchers took part. The route planned by the organisers was intended to take the march into the city centre but the army barricaded the centre and sent the march off into a side street.

When some marchers threw stones at the soldiers, some paratroopers responded with disproportionate and excessive force, firing indiscriminately at the crowd, injuring and killing both rioters and peaceful marchers. In all 14 people were killed including a bystander who was not even on the march. It would be nearly 40 years before a judicial review would see the UK government admit that the killings were unlawful and formally apologise for the events of that day.

The Battle of Lewisham was a message to the far right from local residents that its divisive politics were not welcome in the area. It echoed a similar violent counter-protest against the British Union of Fascists that had occurred in Cable Street in the East End of London some 40 years previously.

The roots of the battle came from a local election in 1976 for the Deptford ward of Lewisham borough council. The election saw the National Front (NF), a racist far-right political party, and a splinter party from the NF called the National Party come second and third in the vote. Emboldened by this result, the NF organised a march in the area to protest against the multi-racial society, which they had vowed to destroy.

With the march confirmed, a local anti-fascist group formed to counter-demonstrate and disrupt the unwanted invaders to the area. Despite the police's best efforts to keep the two demonstrations apart, violence broke out and the march failed to reach its intended destination. The far right marchers dissipated but the violence continued between the counter-demonstrators and the police. Over 200 arrests were made in the course of the day.

In an echo of the Peasants' Revolt of 1381, the introduction of a poll tax by Margaret Thatcher's Conservative government caused huge unrest among the UK public. Officially called the Community Charge, the intention of the tax was to provide a new system for funding local government, establishing a fixed tax paid equally by every citizen above the age of 18, regardless of means. As well as being unpopular because of its disproportionate burden on those of lower income, it also was, in most areas, a far more expensive tax than the rates that it replaced.

Protests about the tax were organised around the country including a campaign of mass non-payment. The largest protest took place in London on March 31, 1990. An estimated crowd of 200,000 people gathered in a park in south London and set off towards Trafalgar Square. The unexpected size of the demonstration meant that the unprepared police had to blockade Trafalgar Square for fear of overcrowding and to protect the government buildings on Downing Street just down the road. The consequent penning in of many of the demonstrators inevitably raised tensions. When mounted police then charged into the blocked area, things escalated quickly and violence ensued. Police attempts to disperse the crowd simply spread the rioting to a larger area and sections of the West End of the city closed down as vandalism and looting took place.

In all, over 300 demonstrators were arrested and even though the rioters were condemned by all sides of the political sphere, the government was badly damaged by the fallout from the events of the day. When Margaret Thatcher was ousted as prime minister later that year, it is said that the events of that day had been a significant contributing factor. Her successor as PM, John Major, soon set in motion the process to replace the poll tax with a new charge, known as Council Tax.

The US, supported by a coalition of partner countries from Europe, Japan and Australia, had called for action against Iraq from September 2002 as part of the "War on Terror" that President Bush had declared in the wake of the September 11 attacks the year before. The US presented a case that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction (WMD) that were a threat to other countries in the region and beyond.

The public in countries around the world vehemently objected to the plans to invade, especially as no independent evidence of the WMD could be found. A worldwide day of co-ordinated protest was arranged for February 15th, 2003. More than 50 countries held protests with an estimated ten million participants in total. The UK held multiple events, with the largest being held in London, a march through the streets to a rally in Hyde Park. There were an estimated one million marchers who took part, larger than any demonstration that the UK had seen before. Despite the strong showing of public opinion against the war, the march was ineffective in changing government policy and the invasion took place just one month later.

Trump's comments about how his wealth and celebrity allowed him to grope women without consent had caused understandable revulsion among women and men across the world. When he subsequently won the election for the US presidency, protests were arranged for his first day in office in multiple cities across multiple continents.

The march in London drew a crowd of approximately 100,000 who gathered outside the US embassy and walked the two miles to Trafalgar Square to hear speeches highlighting women's rights issues.