Last month saw some of the biggest demonstrations in recent years, with tens of thousands of people protesting against President Donal Trump in London alone, while there were further demonstrations in towns and cities across the country. In an age when it's easy to feel you're being politically active by clicking to sign a string of petitions in your lunch break, for many this was the first time they had actively protested, while others were veteran campaigners.

But there are countless other protests and campaigns taking place all the time, some of which may involve a handful of people standing outside a local supermarket while others might be done from a toilet cubicle with the help of social media.

Meet three local campaigners who are dedicated to their cause.

WHEN Sarah Brisidon first contacted a local shop to ask for a suitable toilet for her son, who has cerebral palsy, she could never have imagined that a few years later selfies of her on the toilet would be all over the national media.

Sarah took her first steps as a campaigner when she realised that her son, Hadley, who at the time was in nappies and still needs to lie down to have his trousers taken off, was getting too big for conventional baby changing tables.

"He was about three and I had a major panic," says the graphic designer from Ashurst, who was horrified by the realisation that her child would have to lie on often dirty toilet floors.

"I thought what do I do now? I started Googling it because I thought we couldn't be the only people who needed changing facilities for older children or adults.

"I discovered Changing Places toilets, but there weren't many of them, so I started to campaign for more in our area."

Sarah first set her sights on Southampton Ikea, simply because she was in there and had had an issue with having to lay Hadley on the toilet floor to change him.

"I used social media and took photos, because that seems to be the platform that businesses respond to," she says.

"As I became more involved, I discovered more campaigners and I now have a huge network of 'toilet friends'."

When she started out, Sarah didn't realise that she would have a major campaign on her hands.

"I naively thought that once we told businesses and councils that children and adults with disabilities are having to lie on urine soaked floors that they would be outraged and that change would happen, and I was surprised when that didn't happen," she says.

"I found that I had no response or that people wrote back and said 'that's a shame, but we have no plans to do anything'.

"I realised that this is a huge human rights issue, and that it's not going to go away unless we make a song and dance about it."

The next step, which saw Sarah and her campaign hit national headlines and bring about more change, came about as a result of a chat with a friend.

"I wanted to do a campaign around Christmas, but I wasn't sure what," she explains.

"I was chatting to my friend on the last day of November and I said something about taking a photo of myself on the toilet every day and posting it as an advent calendar. She said 'you should definitely do that, but I'm not doing it with you!'."

Sarah says that she didn't expect there to be much interest in the campaign, which she hoped would raise awareness about the lack of toilet and changing facilities for disabled people, but to her amazement it got picked up by the media and she had journalists calling her asking what the next day's photo would be.

"I achieved more in one month with that campaign than I had with sending thousands of emails," she says.

"What Hadley has to go through is horrendous. I've had him begging me to get him changed as quickly as possible because it's so horrible, so if I lost a tiny bit of dignity through the photos, it doesn't bother me in the slightest."

Ikea and St Mary's Stadium have already installed Changing Places toilets as a result of Sarah's campaigns, and The Mayflower is soon to open one as a direct result of the advent calendar photos.

"The Mayflower fundraised for the toilet as a direct result of the toilet selfies. It's a huge win for Southampton," says Sarah.

"I'm only aware of two others theatres that have Changing Places toilets and they're quite far north and also not places that show West End shows. The Mayflower is the only theatre I know of where you can see West End shows which will have a Changing Places toilet. I love the theatre, so for anyone not to be able to go because the theatre doesn't have suitable toilet facilities is unthinkable. I'm super proud of this achievement."

Hadley has a twin sister, Erica, and Sarah says that the lack of suitable toilet facilities for Hadley is a real and constant issue for the family.

"We have to think all the time 'can he go to this party? Can we go there? What are the toilet facilities like?'. It's something that most people just take for granted – it doesn't go through your head, but it really does control our lives, and it will get to a point where we can't even lift him anymore.

"I am passionate about the social model – Hadley is not a person with a disability. He is disabled by society which doesn't allow him the access he needs," she adds.

With Hadley about to turn eight, Sarah felt it was important to respect his wishes regarding her campaigning and his right to privacy, but he is right behind her.

"We had a discussion about it. I was aware that he might not want me talking about him using the toilet anymore but he said 'you can't stop, Mum. It's not just about me, it's about everyone else who needs them too'," she says.

"He and his sister have both started campaigning themselves. They are really aware of the needs of others and being inclusive.

"Hadley has been taking videos and photos and he wants his own Twitter account so that he can start sharing stuff – but we're not quite ready for that yet!"

* Read more about Sarah's campaign at www.hadleysheroes.co.uk

IT'S very easy to sit at your computer, signing petition after petition with a few clicks, but Christelle Blunden doubts how effective this approach is on its own.

"I don't think women would have got the vote just by writing emails!" says the GP from Shirley.

"I don't feel like the democratic voting system in this country really gives people much of a voice. I have never felt very empowered by going and putting my tick in a box.

"I think that taking action raises awareness and really makes people think about things. When ordinary people do something physical and tangible, I think that's what makes a difference."

With a taxing job and two young children, aged six and three, Christelle is a busy woman, but still finds time to be involved the national campaign against the arms trade.

This has seen her take part in direct action, including protesting arms fairs, standing in the road to block vehicles and, in June this year, along with a group of Trident Ploughshare protesters, chain herself to the Houses of Westminster for around six hours, to protest the UK refusing to sign the UN Nuclear Weapons Ban Treaty.

Christelle became involved in activism while she was a student at the University of Southampton, where she became involved in groups which were campaigning for fair trade and against the arms trade.

"We were trying to get the university to become a fair trade university, and use fair trade produce where possible, but the arms trade focus was broader," she says.

"What started me off was when I realised that The UK hosts an arms fair every two years in London, which is heavily subsidised by British taxpayers and to which lots of countries are invited which have a very dubious human rights record, so I started going there to protest it."

Christelle has never been arrested while protesting, "probably because I've had to get back and pick up my children, and the prospect of being detained for an indefinite period would be difficult to balance with my current considerations!

"I used to worry about getting a job with a criminal record but I now worry less about that, having been assured by the General Medical Council that they wouldn't take issue with doctors getting arrested in the course of peaceful protest," she adds.

She feels that taking direct action is critical to bringing about positive change in the world.

"I think that over time it has an impact," she says.

"You chain yourself to a fence and then you go home and the UK still hasn't signed the Nuclear Weapons Ban Treaty but you engage the public's attention, gain support and raise people's consciousness about the fact that we are spending so many millions of pounds of taxpayers' money on a weapon for which nobody can think of a justifiable use.

"I don't feel discouraged by not having immediate tangible results, because I see throughout history that these things happen over a number of years."

For Christelle, actively protesting isn't only important for the world around her. It is also valuable to her personally.

"I think being involved lifts you out of a state where you just think of yourself and your everyday concerns," she says.

"It takes your focus to what kind of world you want for yourself and your children to live in. It gives me a sense of being involved in creating something better for everyone and not just my immediate life."

HAVING been born shortly before the introduction of the NHS, Mike Dukes says he was very aware as he was growing up of the huge relief that people around him felt at being able to see their doctor without paying for it.

This, combined with a growing awareness of the civil rights movement in America and the nuclear threat posed by the Cold War contributed to his developing sense of right and wrong, and growing political activism.

Mike has been on the streets of Southampton and beyond protesting since his teens, from marching against the Vietnam War in both Southampton and London and staging a ceremonial disinfection of Porton Down, which reached the cover of a national newspaper, to helping to organise the city's silent march in remembrance of the victims of the Grenfell Tower inferno, for some 55 years.

Now aged 71, striving for a better world is as important to Mike as it ever was. In fact, retiring from his career as a teacher, which he went into in a bid to give something back to society, has given him more free time to focus on activism, which he has put to use by helping to form a Unite Community group in Southampton, which campaigns for unemployed people.

"I have a profound sense of there being so many things wrong with the world." says the grandfather from Southampton.

Although I'm in good health, I don't know how long I've got left, and I want to go down kicking and fighting for things that I believe in.

"Poverty is growing enormously and I can reflect on the quality of life in the past and see that it's clearly worse.

"Things have swung in favour or the rich and powerful, at the expense of the poor and vulnerable."

When Mike and his friends formed the Southampton branch of Unite Community, they struggled to find the 50 members needed to set the group up. Now they have more than 300 members and have campaigned on a number of issues.

"We have successfully campaigned on sanctions for unemployed people, with things like demonstrations and street theatre, we have organised food bank collections outside supermarkets, campaigned against the roll out of universal credit and done things like organising a celebration of the 70th birthday of the NHS as well as joining with other groups to reintroduce the Mayday Festival to the city."

Mike is keen to place his and Unite Community's activism in context.

"What we're doing is part of a movement," he says.

"Back in the 1930s, (fascist) Mosely came to Southampton. He held a public meeting on the common, and had to be carried away because there was such a huge protest against him.

"There has been a long history of protest in Southampton, from the anti-Vietnam War marches in the 1960s to recently successfully protesting against an Immigrant Street series being filmed in the city."

Mike says he feels heartened by the levels of activism in the area.

"Over the last three years, we've seen the number of people involved in the different campaign groups in the city increase enormously," he says.

"The need to address these ills in society is so dire, that we need to use every channel we can, and that means taking the message out to ordinary people on the streets.

"We need to keep campaigning and I will do it for as long as I can. The need is there. If we don't respond to these challenges, this country will not be the kind of place that many of us want to live in."