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BBC Sounds. BBC Sounds, music radio podcasts. Do demonstrations ever achieve anything?

About a million people took to the streets to stop the war in 2003.

About half a million were at the demonstration against the fox hunting Ban a year earlier.

More recently, hundreds of thousands of people were involved in street protests against the decision to leave the EU.

Nonetheless, the Iraq war happened. The hunting ban remains remains and Britain did leave the EU.

I'm James Tilly, a professor of politics at Oxford, and in this episode of analysis

I want to ask, why do people take to the streets to protest and do demonstrations

have any effect on politicians and voters. The origins of the modern

demonstration lie in the very late 18th century. The first big demonstrations that follow a kind of modern pattern as we know it today

happened in 1794, 1795, large crowds making demands with perhaps a political programme.

You don't see that earlier in the 18th century.

Katrina Navikas is a professor of history at the University of Hertfordshire.

She told me that in the earlier part of the 1700s things were rather different.

One of the most common forms of demonstration is the riot and particularly around food prices.

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