Thanks that makes some sense. I think the thing is they’ve been effective in the past, and not much else has. Maybe there has to be some sort of sacrifice to gain progress.

I guess some of the postwar progressive (economic) reforms - largely now abolished - were actually a product of democractic pressure rather than protest - but some of the other ones like anti-racism stuff still did require sacrifice and protest on top of that. And the prevailing economic conditions were quite extreme at that time. When people have less to lose there’s less cost.