The Metropolis

Boris Bye-law suggests a new repressive Parliament Square

Josh Hall | Thursday 9 February, 2012 13:33

Last week it emerged that Boris Johnson has been busily redrafting the bye-laws governing permitted activities in Parliament and Trafalgar Squares.

The Mayor was responding with almost palpable glee to the clearing of the Parliament Square protest camp, several months after the death of its figurehead Brian Haw. The new bye-laws are predictably repressive, effectively banning press photography and, presumably accidentally, seeming to outlaw mobile phones.

But the Boris Bye-laws are simply building on restrictions imposed by Saviour of the London Left Ken Livingstone, back in 2002. Red Ken signed the last set of bye-laws, which banned written or pictorial notices, public speeches, the playing of musical instruments, and any “assembly, display, performance, representation, parade, procession, review or theatrical event” without prior permission. The bye-laws predate by three years the Serious Organised Crime and Policing Act, which restricted protest within a kilometre of Parliament.

It is no surprise that a Conservative mayor has quickened the pace of repression in the capital. But it is important to understand that this habit of restriction is not unique to the Tories, but is instead part of the pattern of development of the neoliberal city.

London is perhaps the archetypical neoliberal city. Its characteristics both mirror and cause the social relations that we experience under neoliberalism. Above all, London demonstrates neoliberalism’s appetite to privatise space – to take what was public, and to compensate us with space that appears public but in which our freedom to act is restricted or removed.

We might understand this as a new phase in the centuries-old story of enclosure. For 800 years landowners, and subsequently Parliament, have ‘enclosed’ common land, restricting or preventing public access and instead using it to generate private profit. In the 15th and 16th Centuries, land that had previously been used to grow crops was enclosed by the rich, who then used it for pasture – because it was more profitable to sell wool than it was to grow food. No matter, of course, that this theft of land destroyed settlements and left the country at risk of famine.

Today the enclosures tend to be less dramatic, more insidious. The neoliberal city is characterised by space that is ostensibly open, but in which public activity is dramatically curtailed – and, consequently, in which corporate pseudo-police have become a fixture. Consider the prevalence of private security in the City of London’s endless covered squares, processing around the concrete and glass in high visibility jackets. Try assembling or conversing with more than a couple of people in one of those areas and see how they react.

Parliament and Trafalgar Squares are no longer public spaces. Their function is to provide the appearance of a functioning city, of a society in which people are allowed to freely associate. The neoliberal state is incapable of permitting true public space – but it is required to provide space that appears public. This phenomenon will become increasingly prevalent during the Olympics. Space will be produced in which the public spectacle can occur – but in which actions outside the choreography will not be permitted. Indeed, as new powers to seize political materials from homes demonstrate, the state intends to regulate behaviour in every possible part of the city.

There is very little truly public space left in the UK. One of the most significant achievements of the Occupy movement has been the reappropriation of space in the heart of the city. Of course, there are innumerable problems with their decisions regarding what to do with that space – but it is difficult to argue that St Paul’s is not now more public than it was before October.

As the Olympics approaches, and as resistance to austerity begins to grow, securing public space will become imperative. The government knows this; that is why they are criminalising squatting. We should all think about ways to resist this criminalisation – but we must also think harder about reappropriating public space. Occupy has set the scene; we should consider how we use this as a starting point to retake the city.

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