One mark of a healthy democracy is that its people not only have the right to protest when they perceive a wrong, but the will to do so. A democracy is a moribund if its members do not exercise their right to challenge each other and the authorities when they are concerned about something. Writing to MPs, taking legal action, marching in streets, are all forms of protest. Protest is a duty in certain cirumstances, just as much as the duty to vote, to be informed, and to play one’s part in promoting the general good.

It should hardly need saying that protest is more effective when it is peaceful. That is not a truth that angry protestors regularly remember. The impact of protests that take the form of demonstrations and marches is too often weakened by the minority who are there primarily to break windows and scuffle with the police.

The police prepare for the protest marches by arming to meet the violent minority. Too often, as a result, they end up clubbing people who are demonstrating peacefully. So the hooligans who ruin the case that protesters wish to make are responsible for a double wrong.

If one does not complain about the fly in the restaurant soup, or the poor service in the shop, or the inefficiency of the utility company, or the faultiness of a product, or the effect of ill-thought government legislation, or the neighbors’ inconsiderate levels of noise, one will not be doing a favor to oneself or anyone else. Too often we pass over what is unsatisfactory, not wishing to “make trouble”, thereby be passing on to further trouble to the next person who comes along. As Abraham Lincoln said, silence is a sin when protest is called for.

Of course no one wishes to be one of those killjoys who can find nothing right with anything and endlessly say so; but it is surely possible to tell the difference between justified and unjustified complaint. If everyone made a stand and protested against the shoddy, the inefficient, the unacceptable and the wrong, the world would be, and we would each feel, considerably better for it.