We have limits. Moments when righting a wrong supplants normal rules, outweighs personal moral compass, and in extreme cases defies the law. Ordinary men and women throughout Welsh history pushed to the point of believing they had no option but to strike and protest in order to get their grievances heard by institutions and establishments deaf to discussion. 

Wales has a noble tradition of holding power to account. A defiant national anthem imagines a people fighting alongside Owain Glyndŵr in the Welsh Revolt. Joining the Rebecca Riots of the 1840s as impoverished agricultural labourers destroyed toll gates and razed rural workhouses. And of course, advancing the ambitions of the suffragettes. Maybe throwing stones along with suffragettes. But which of us would endorse the glossed-over bombings and arson campaigns of the suffragette movement? Some would, some would not. For we each draw personal lines in political sands. 

With this in mind, which of us would have partaken in the General Strike of 1926, or the 10-month coal strike that followed? And in 1935, can we imagine ourselves taking to the streets shoulder to shoulder with 250,000 other protesters against a reduction of unemployment benefit. 

And within living memory, during the eighties, how were we aligned as 200 properties were reduced to ashes in response to (depending on who you listen to): threatened pit and steel works closures across South Wales; the diminishing viability of the Welsh language; the local population of west Wales being priced out of their own communities. And the miners’ strike. How would we involve ourselves during industrial unrest that left a legacy of hatred and bitterness across now devastated Welsh coalmining communities?  

Into the nineties, as public transport remained inaccessible to the physically disabled, did we back Cardiff protestors handcuffing themselves to trains and lying down in front of buses? And over the past few years, did we express support for the Me Too and Black Lives Matter movements? How about the nationwide lockdown-busting vigils for Sarah Everard, organised by Reclaim These Streets. Agree with them or not, where did we sit with the rights of anti-vax and anti-lockdown protestors? 

And nowadays, No More Oil spending their summer flinging various liquid lunches around art galleries. Extinction Rebellion continuing to pin themselves to busy roads and dangle their bodies from motorway gantries. For or against their right to protest? How do we feel about heckling Prince Andrew? Or the near-egging of King Charles? Picketing migrant centres? Toppling monuments to slave owners? We each check our political instincts and then draw personal lines. 

Overseas, Gareth Bale all but swore to wear the One Love armband to promote diversity and inclusion, and to protest against Qatar’s dismal record on human rights. A principled stand swiftly abandoned by the Welsh FA when threatened by FIFA with ‘sporting sanctions’. Buckling so weakly appears not very Welsh. Not very ‘Ei gwrol ryfelwyr, gwladgarwyr tra mâd, Tros ryddid gollasant eu gwaed’. 

For it is understood that effective challenge to authority habitually results in unpalatable consequences for protesters. In fact, it is often these unpalatable consequences that make a protest more effective. And as such, my view is that the Welsh FA (among others) should have dug in, absorbed the threatened yellow card and in doing so magnify rather than abandon an unequivocal message of support for basic human rights.  

This national step back appeared especially gutless when judged against the Iranian team’s refusal to sing their national anthem. A courageous act in support of the rights of Iranian women that may draw consequences far more sinister than a yellow card. (I should mention here that unlike some, my personal sense of protest does not extend to boycotting broadcasts of World Cup football. I too, can draw weak and convenient lines.) 

Today, looking around the UK, echoes of that 1926 General Strike. Workers at Royal Mail have voted for further strike action. Nurses throughout Wales’s NHS organisations have voted to strike. Ongoing strike action by railway staff is escalating. Barristers in England and Wales remain on indefinite, uninterrupted strike. Students are seeing lectures and seminars cancelled as university staff walk out. The army trained to replace striking Border Force officers at ports and airports. Civil servants managing public services from passports to pensions have also voted to take industrial action. Critically for snackers, production of Jacob’s Cream Crackers and Twiglets was put at risk after workers went on strike. Furthermore, teaching unions are demanding an above-inflation pay rise and look set to join a tsunami of stoppages expected to hit throughout a winter of discontent as workers fight to protect their living standards.  

In response to escalating industrial action, rabid newspaper headlines suggest ‘militant’ unions are ruining Christmas for the ‘hardworking majority’. Metropolitan Police chief, Sir Mark Rowley, also chipped in, claiming public sector strikes stop officers fighting crime effectively. And statements from the Health Minister continuously imply nurses’ demands are unnecessarily greedy. 

We are expected to accept that in defence of a ‘hardworking majority’, rather than negotiate, the UK government is responding not only with a long list of proposed legislation to make striking increasingly ineffective, but also with an updated Police, Crime, Sentencing, and Courts Bill that mutes and, in some cases, criminalises established forms of protest. Legislation placing limits on where, when, and how people in England and Wales can make their voices heard. 

The Bill is a stark reminder that our right to protest is suffering incremental restriction. New forms of banning order that can see protestors stopped from associating. Protests now unable to be too disrupting, or too noisy. The police possessing a high degree of discretion as to what behaviour will be allowed at a protest, to define and redefine what they consider a criminal offence. It is a Bill that also introduces a broad and loosely defined statutory offence of public nuisance that carries a potential 10 years in prison.  

But our right to protest is not a gift from government. Unlike Iran, in our British Isles we have the right to express our views, to gather, agitate, and withdraw our labour. And history shows effective protest needs to be loud, unsettling, and sometimes illegal. History demonstrates effective industrial action needs to be disruptive, widely felt, and painful to employers. Therefore, let us not be gaslighted into thinking such campaigning and industrial action are something new and required clamping down upon.  

So, before condemning incoming strike action, and before conceding any further erosion of our rights to protest, take a moment to remember that without a long history of social and industrial unrest, both legal and illegal, Welsh men, women, and children would be without many employment rights and social privileges we now take for granted.