When Spanish mayor Juan Manuel Sánchez Gordillo recently led farmers on a supermarket sweep, raiding the local shops for food as part of a campaign against austerity, his political immunity as an elected assembly member protected him from arrest. He now asks other local mayors to ignore central government demands for budget cuts and refuse to implement evictions and lay-offs. In this era of austerity, such flagrant disrespect for the law ought to be encouraged. Sometimes, the greatest strength of popular movements is their capacity to disrupt. So here, for the benefit of imaginative indignados, are five examples of civil disobedience.

1. Salt March

Mahatma Gandhi led the Salt March in protest against the government monopoly on salt production. Photograph: Central Press/Getty Images

Gandhi's defiance of British colonial laws over the empire's salt monopoly, beginning in March 1930, sparked a wave of civil disobedience that contributed to expelling the British empire. Salt laws taxed the production of Indian salt so that the country had to import British salt. Gandhi and his supporters began a long, expanding march to produce salt and transport it without paying the tax. It did not stop the practice: the British suppressed the march fiercely, arresting tens of thousands, and refused to make any concessions. It was also limited by its failure to win Muslim support.

However, the campaign had long-term effects that weighed against its failure to win its immediate goals. In the first instance, it was inspiring for those taking part, since many had never been organised before. Second, it announced to the world that the Indian masses were a serious force, and that the British authorities had been forced to negotiate with their leader. Third, it stimulated further waves of civil disobedience. Finally, the Salt March had a tremendous influence on the thinking and strategy of other insurgents, such as Martin Luther King.

2. Extremadura campaign

Farms in Extremadura were occupied by unemployed peasants during the 1936 election campaign. Photograph: Prisma Bildagentur AG / Alamy/Alamy

Land reform was a priority in rural areas of Spain during the republican era. High countryside unemployment contributed to the election of the leftist Popular Front government. In Extremadura, during the 1936 election campaign, Popular Front candidates had promised quick land reform. Rather than wait for the government to deliver on its pledges, unemployed peasants began to occupy large estates, starting with some 3,000 farms in the Badajoz province. The government, faced with popular unrest, legalised the early occupations. Hundreds of thousands of peasants were re-settled.

But it was not just a question of taking over the land. There was a debate about what should be done with it – whether it should be collectivised or allotted to individual owners. The seizures provided not just land and work, but also a democratic forum, a focus for arguments about the whole future development of the society. Or so it was until the nationalist forces of General Franco conquered the territory and slaughtered the peasants and their leftist leaders.

3. Flying pickets and sit-ins

The Great Depression sparked a wave of militancy that produced legal support for US workers for the first time. Photograph: Bettmann/Corbis

Industrial struggles in the US historically had a pattern of near-insurgency, largely due to violent collusion between the government and employers, until the New Deal period. A wave of militancy during the Great Depression produced legal and institutional support for US workers for the first time.

Unorganised workers in textile plants and coal mines, hammered by the recession but also inspired by Franklin Roosevelt's promise to look after industrial workers, began a series of desperate struggles against pay cuts and job losses. But in order to win, they had to opt for the most disruptive tactics, weathering the violence of strikebreakers, police and in some states the imposition of martial law.

Enter the "flying squadrons" of pickets marching from town to town during the textile strike of 1934, urging workers to walk out. This was particularly important because these workers were often distributed in small production facilities, and had little industrial muscle by themselves. A second key moment was a series of sit-ins by workers in steel and auto factories. This involved workers obstructing production simply by occupying a strategic area of a plant and refusing to move: a highly effective tactic that was also less violent than the picket lines and was later used by civil rights and anti-Vietnam war campaigners.

4. Dismantling unwanted enterprises

José Bové and his supporters dismantled the Millau branch of McDonalds brick by brick. Photograph: Georges Bartoli/Reuters

The fast food chain McDonalds had been welcomed into many European countries with no questions asked when it first expanded to the continent in the 1970s. France was always a different matter, as public distaste for its malbouffe was widespread. The chain's attempt to open a branch in Millau in 1999 aroused the interest of José Bové, a militant farmer and member of the agricultural union Confédération Paysanne. Before the branch was fully built, Bové and his supporters arrived and began to dismantle it, brick by brick.

Such actions are largely symbolic. But Bové's was just one of a wider series of stunts disrupting the purveyors of GM and junk food flooding the French market. These actions brought to the fore not just Bové, but an entire layer of agricultural activists. They formed a significant part of the anti-capitalist movement and later joined the struggle against the European constitutional treaty, as part of the coalition that delivered the "No" vote.

5. Poll tax non-payment

A network of anti-poll-tax campaigns brought protesters together. Photograph: Denis Thorpe

The most dramatic moment in the anti-poll tax campaign may well have been the riot arising from a 200,000-strong protest in central London on 31 March 1990. The police, quite unusually, came out on the losing side. While symbolically important, it arose from a series of tactical failures. You can surprise the authorities every once in a while, but they learn from their mistakes and incorporate the lessons into future plans. What is important is that underlying such spontaneous actions is a much more durable form of civil disobedience.

In the case of the poll tax, a nationwide network of campaigns and non-payment unions had developed. These groups brought people who were ordinarily isolated, or not politically active, together. Their strategy was to resist at every step: refusing to register for the tax, contesting liability orders from the council (thus clogging up the legal system) and finally refusing payment. This was highly effective. Tax collection was ineffective, and the situation was polarised at great expense to the ruling Conservatives, who were forced to depose their leader and retreat from the full legislation.

In each of these examples, the key question is neither violence nor non-violence, neither legality, nor illegality; it is disruption. Popular movements are engaged in civil disobedience whenever they recognise the society's dependence on their co-operation, cease co-operating, and actively disrupt its smooth functioning. This moves politicians to spittle-lathered furore. It is the way in which progress is made.