THE messages on the placards ranged from polite Morningside remarks to rough and ready Glaswegian insults. From “I’m missing the tennis for this” to “Yer Maw was an immigrant ya tangerine roaster”. And quite a few that are unprintable in a family newspaper.

But can street protests make a difference? Or are they just an exercise in futility?

There was Donald Trump these past few days, strutting around Buckingham Place and swinging his way round the golf course at Turnberry golf course, surrounded by mini armies of bodyguards, clearly impervious to the hurricane of hostility swirling in his wake.

This is a man who has lived his whole life getting his own way, being the big man, smashing aside all those who might block his road to wealth and power. Even the most super-optimistic protesters know that marching on the streets, waving disrespectful placards and chanting cheeky slogans ain’t going to convert the likes of the 45th US president.

All too often, the problems of the world seem too overwhelming and we feel too insignificant. Millions protested in vain against the war in Iraq. Protest can generate a sense of community and collective solidarity in the face of mighty injustices, but when it leads nowhere it can also leave us feeling disempowered.

This week, billions of us across the globe were left gaping at the extraordinary humanitarian endeavour that rescued a dozen young Thai footballers and their coach from the seemingly inaccessible depths of a flooded cave. How powerful humanity can be when it collectively harnesses its talents and resources to help others. And there were no questions asked as to whether the children should be rescued. No hesitation, no need for protest. People took colossal personal risks and 38-year-old former Thai Navy diver Samarn Poonan lost his life in the rescue attempt.

Yet while the world focused on the 12 stranded boys, 200 people, including a number of children, drowned in the Mediterranean. We don’t know their names and we never will. The Thai rescue shows the capacity of people to do amazing works when we choose to do so. But those who have had the power to stop the Mediterranean becoming a mass grave over these past few years have chosen to do nothing. As long as saving children doesn’t disturb the status quo, or cause discomfort to politicians, we’re good to go. Otherwise, we just let them drown. So, it’s fair to say I was feeling disempowered myself as Trump jetted in from across the Atlantic. But I just had to do something. Surely people can’t just stand by while “trial runs” (as Fintan O’Toole put it in the Irish Times) for fascism are being played out across the world. According to O’Toole we’re living in a “pre-fascist” age. All the seemingly outrageous policies deployed by Trump, such as babes in arms being wrested from their mothers and leaving them to cry in cages are testing us to see how much savagery we can stomach.

Although Trump was forced to backtrack a little, the “experiment” left the USA and the wider world inured to just a bit more horror. The the phrase I couldn’t get out of my head was: “Where were you when they came for the Mexican babies?”

What if Hitler is replaced by Trump in future philosophy classes? Instead of what would you have done if you’d met Hitler in 1936, future generations will be asked what would you have done if you had met Trump in 2018?

So, I went along to the demo in Edinburgh and it was important. Collective protest lets everyone who feels angry and alienated know they’re not alone. It says to people who are not there that there’s something they maybe need to pay attention to. It’s a strong statement of dissent.

It frustrates me that people who have power – like Theresa May, or David Mundell – fail to isolate Trump. Instead they fawn over him like star-struck teenagers in front of a celebrity pop star.

And Trump himself is a dab hand at calculated power plays. When he takes Theresa May by the hand, he is deliberately putting her in her place, down beneath The Donald on the power hierarchy ladder. A simple refusal to let him do that, given her position, would have been worth a thousand placards on the streets.

Instead, the Prime Minister was rightly ridiculed, with multiple images being shared across social media depicting her as the handmaid OfDonald. No, that’s not a typo. If you’ve watched The Handmaid’s Tale, you’ll have seen the scene where OfFred starts to whisper in a grocery store to other handmaids to inform them that her real name is June. It sparks off a chain reaction during which all the women reclaim the identities that have been stripped from them by the totalitarian regime. Context is all. It’s a small, simple act. But it’s a powerful show of rebellion.

While Trump’s attitude to May wavers between withering contempt and gushing praise, his attitude to Scotland’s First Minister is one of relentless hatred, as revealed by a Whitehall insider. “I take it as a compliment,” Nicola Sturgeon told the Glasgow Pride rally on Saturday. And so she should.

I started protesting when I marched to the male-only Rangers supporters’ bus my dad ran, demanding to get on board. I progressed to marching against Thatcher and for jobs. I’ve marched against nuclear weapons, against the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, against the displacement and persecution of the Palestinian people, against the detention and deportation of asylum seekers.

I’ve marched for independence, for peace, for equality and to make poverty history. None of these things has been achieved yet.

But protests for women’s suffrage, for lesbian and gay rights, against the poll tax, did deliver. I’ve organised strikes that were successful. Some you win and some you lose. Horror has never been stopped and progress has never been achieved by good people doing nothing.

We might get tired, we might get jaded, we may find ourselves asking: “What’s the point?” The point is to keep trying. The alternative is to consent to brutality.