> The solution is then always an organized military response.
In actual history, not always, and not that often.
Case in point, for example, the Peterloo Massacre: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peterloo_Massacre
took place at St Peter's Field, Manchester, Lancashire, England, on Monday 16 August 1819. Eighteen people died and 400–700 were injured when cavalry charged into a crowd of around 60,000 people who had gathered to demand the reform of parliamentary representation.
The immediate effect of Peterloo was a crackdown on reform. The government instructed the police and courts to go after the journalists, presses and publication of the Manchester Observer.
For a few months following Peterloo it seemed to the authorities that the country was heading towards an armed rebellion. Encouraging them in that belief were two abortive uprisings, [..], and the discovery and foiling of [..] conspiracy to blow up the cabinet that winter.
By the end of the year, the government had introduced legislation, later known as the Six Acts, to suppress radical meetings and publications, and by the end of 1820 every significant working-class radical reformer was in jail; civil liberties had declined to an even lower level than they were before Peterloo.
Events such as [ ..these.. ] all serve to indicate the breadth, diversity and widespread geographical scale of the demand for economic and political reform at the time.
Peterloo had no effect on the speed of reform, but in due course all but one of the reformers' demands, annual parliaments, were met. Following the Great Reform Act 1832 [ ... ]