I FIND it hard to recall a time when such events were so seemingly universal. You only have to turn on the television news daily to find increasingly familiar images.

I’m talking about masses of people on the streets coming together in acts of solidarity, only to be confronted by black-clad riot police with helmets, shields, tear gas and sometimes guns, hell bent on intimidating or stopping them.

Protesters have always pushed proudly through human history, of course, but these days it seems that almost everywhere, ordinary people are finding the need to take their politics to the streets.

As readers of this newspaper will certainly be aware, central Barcelona has become a virtual no-go area of late as the heavy hand of the Spanish authorities inflicts near-unprecedented violence on those seeking independence for Catalonia.

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In Hong Kong meanwhile, mass protests in support of greater democracy in the territory, which began in June, show no sign of abating, while in Baghdad at least 42 people have lost their lives in anti-government protests expressing anger over widespread unemployment and corruption.

In Ecuador, a country rarely in the headlines, a movement that began as a transit workers’ reaction to the government’s announcement of the sudden end of fuel subsidies quickly spread to encompass the country’s restrictive abortion laws and corruption, as well as indigenous people’s rights and many other issues.

This past week here in the UK, too, we have seen Extinction Rebellion climate activists defy a London-wide ban on protests. That London became the first city to prohibit the global environmental movement from staging protests perhaps tells us much about the political culture that is driving people on to the streets in the first place.

So are all these global manifestations of opposition and resistance just coincidence, or do they point to something systemically wrong with so much of politics today and their failure to address issues that matter to so many people?

For centuries, across the political spectrum, it has been an article of faith that, in moments of sharp civic discontent, you and I and everyone we know living in functioning democracies can take to the streets, demanding change. But look around you right now and there is definitely a creeping sense of that being eroded by so many powers that be.

Not everyone in the world, of course, is readily afforded the right to protest or express their politics on the streets, even if they do so peacefully. Indeed perhaps one of the most ominous characteristics of global protests of late is that even when peaceful, the authorities are invariably willing and able to reach for the big stick in violent response.

In some quarters there are those who will shrug and say so what? Almost invariably these same people come from the ranks of those who also regard marches and protests as nothing more than “folk politics”.

These same critics often argue that taking to the streets is little more than social theatre performed to make ourselves feel virtuous, useful and in the right. They insist, too, that rarely are such “theatrics” truly effective in instigating long-term change for the better.

To some extent they have a point, given that there are those for whom political engagement is little more than a kind of dilettantism.

It was the American writer Norman Mailer who, in Armies Of The Night, his 1967 account of the anti-Vietnam war march on the Pentagon, coined the phrase “revolutionaries-for-a-weekend”. Certainly there has never been any shortage of such “activists”.

But to belittle such commitment in itself is a mistake, for even out of such part-time participation bigger things have been born leading to real change. Anyway, as someone once rightly pointed out, politics is too serious a business to be left to politicians alone. God knows, that much has become patently obvious lately in the UK and on the other side of the Atlantic.

But still, though, the question remains as to whether protest is the most productive use of our political attention. For some, protest becomes more habit than solution. Its often intense, fleeting nature frequently appeals to those unwilling to take on the long fight or the complex intricacies and structural problems of the modern political world.

That the internet, smartphones and social media are supposed to have made organising easier often only compounds such attitudes, with activists tending to emphasise numbers and reach than solid lasting results.

For those who take their politics on to the streets in the long term there are also tactical considerations vital to bear in mind It might seem a petty observation in light of the sacrifices being made right now for democratic rights in Barcelona, Hong Kong, London and elsewhere, but ask a commuter or air passenger held up in such places what they think of the protest and your will often get a negatively skewed take from otherwise supportive people.

MANY protest movements may largely be born of necessity and circumstantial opportunities, but their fate is heavily shaped by their own actions. The dangers that come of seeing protests as a quick fix are obvious. The first is that they are rooted in confrontation, not conflict resolution. Even nonviolent resistance is an act confrontation intended to change a political reality.

It’s worth always bearing in mind, too, that protests alone do not achieve change. The courageous American civil rights movement held many huge marches and protests, but these were just part of the story. These protests helped win exposure, but crucially only augmented the legal battles that ultimately made change possible.

That said, protests continue to exert a huge power over politics and they remain the kind of power politicians despise and ultimately fear, not least when they lie or cheat brazenly and are confronted accordingly.

While covering the Arab Spring uprisings in 2011, I well remember time and again protesters reciting the words of the Tunisian poet Abu al-Qasim that had become a kind of mantra: “If, one day, a people desires to live … their chains break and fall.”

That so many people right now with a desire to live are taking to the streets – albeit over myriad issues – tells us about the failings of some leaders and the politics they espouse. Such protests remind us we are not alone and that solidarity matters. They remain almost the only way to have our voices heard as one around the world. How wonderful it would be if they were unnecessary, but until change for the better comes, necessary they most certainly are.