Pupils have taken to the streets of France to protest against the conditions of schools: severe underfunding, crumbling school infrastructure, overcrowded classrooms, frequent teacher absences without replacements, and rigid university admissions platforms like Parcoursup (as reported by The New York Times). So it made me think: what will the pupils achieve, and how can they best get what they want? Why do people protest: is it anger pure and simple? Q1: Have we taken part in protests, student demos, anti-hunt protests, extinction rebellion or others? Do we feel we achieved anything by our actions? Have we changed our position on any of the beliefs we held? **The Tolpuddle Martyrs (1834)** Six agricultural labourers from Tolpuddle wanted to resist repeated wage cuts, which had left farm workers struggling to feed their families. They formed a friendly society (the Friendly Society of Agricultural Labourers) to bargain collectively for fair pay. They swore an oath of secrecy when joining, which was used against them under an obscure 1797 law on unlawful oaths. They were convicted and sentenced to seven years' transportation to Australia. Mass protest followed, including a march of tens of thousands in London and a petition with hundreds of thousands of signatures. The sentences were remitted and all six were pardoned and returned. Trade unions were legalised more fully in later decades, and the TUC holds an annual Tolpuddle Martyrs' Festival in Dorset each July. Q2: Did the Tolpuddle Martyrs succeed because people thought their cause was just, or because they thought they thought they might also benefit from any outcome of the protest? **John Locke** It might be useful to look at the thoughts of philosophers. Here's a well-known line from John Locke's Second Treatise of Government (1689), on the purpose of law and liberty: "Where there is no law, there is no freedom." Locke's reasoning is that law, properly understood, protects people from arbitrary power rather than

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