PROTEST is a beautiful thing.

It never fails to be moving when a community comes together to try to right a wrong. We do it well in Glasgow.

The equal pay women, say, out on the streets in their thousands, demanding justice from the council and parity with their male colleagues.

Govanhill Baths Community Trust, persisting for two decades to save the Calder Street building and gift it back to the community better than before. I took a tour of the Baths last week - and you can see the pictures online here - to see the work that's underway.

The historic baths are going to be unrecognisable once the refurbishment is completed towards the end of this year and what a magnificent resource for the Southside, and for Govanhill in particular, it's going to be.

Last year the Kenmure Street anti-deportation protest made international headlines as hundreds of people gathered in Pollokshields to say that the Home Office's cruel policies were not welcome in their community.

The spirit of that demonstration kept blazing and last weekend saw a gathering of resistance in Maxwell Square Park to protest the government's appalling Nationality and Borders Bill.

The Bill risks creating a tiered British citizenship where some are more British than others. A barely debated provision to the Bill, Clause 9, means the government can deprive foreign-born nationals, like me, of our citizenship without warning. It extends the powers of the Home Secretary, powers that are unique to the UK.

I'm lucky, though, I'm white. This Bill will disproportionately affect people of colour and implies that some people are more deserving than others. That is wrong and, as Saturday's Pollokshields protest aimed to hammer home, we all equally belong.

Glasgow Times: Whiteinch Primary School pupil Holli reading in the library Picture: Colin Mearns

Another glorious grassroots movement has been the campaigns to save Glasgow's libraries. Save Whiteinch Library, Save Maryhill Library and Save the Couper campaigners have done stellar, tenacious work over the past two years, calmly and doggedly keeping going to make sure these vital community resources reopened.

Even while other libraries around the city saw their doors unlocked and people welcomed back in, the activists didn't stop. Even in the pouring Glasgow rain, there they were, sitting on a Saturday morning outside the buildings, having their read-ins.

Yesterday Save the Couper, with a picture from inside the library, tweeted a simple: "LOOK. AT. ALL. THE. BOOKS!!!!!" and I felt it on a deep level.

At Whiteinch, there was a queue to get in the door and let's hope that queue never dwindles as the fond feeling for the library continues. We have to use them or lose them, these hallowed local spaces.

All eyes must now be on the manifestos of political parties in the coming local council elections to see what provision is being made to keep the libraries open on a permanent basis.

Freedom of peaceful public protest is a cornerstone of a well functioning society where respect between electorate and government flows in both directions.

Protest lets democratic politicians know how successful or acceptable their policies are. When large groups of people - whether the neighbours of asylum seekers, readers or underpaid women furious at carrying a city on their back - come together to fight an injustice, it forces change.

That's not controversial, it's healthy and right.

While voters are rightly appalled and preoccupied with Boris Johnson's seemingly endless lockdown parties, there's a danger we overlook other unsavoury aspects of this current Tory government.

Priti Patel's new police and crime bill, which was hammered in the House of Lords earlier this month, looks to threaten public protest in England and Wales

It would create new powers for the home secretary to restrict or ban marches and demonstrations because they might be “seriously disruptive” or cause "serious unease", including setting “maximum noise levels” for protests.

Police would have more powers over when and where demonstrations could take place and “serious disruption prevention orders” would allow the banning of named individuals – even if they don't have any criminal convictions – from participating in demonstrations.

This is grimly concerning stuff and protests - without noise limits - have been popping up across the UK, including in Edinburgh.

Before being challenged in the Lords, the Bill would have criminalised protest for our neighbours in England and Wales.

While Scotland is not affected, you can't help but feel chilled by the authoritarian moves of the Westminster government with the Tory party in disarray.

Protest is a beautiful thing. It is also a right that we must make full use of, not allowing that right to be diluted in any way.