Leicester City Council has passed a draconian Public Spaces Protection Order (PSPO) that bans many of the habitual activities of local political and religious groups.

Among other things, the order bans:

• unauthorised amplification, including musical amplifiers, megaphones, and loudspeakers;
• unauthorised charity collections;
• unauthorised ‘structures’, such as tables, stalls, banners and flags.

So far, dozens of religious groups have received warning notices for their flags and amplifiers – including gospel singers and a group that played Christian music as they handed out bibles.

Political campaigners have also been targeted, with a 72-year-old fined £100 last weekend when she refused to take down her ‘unauthorised’ table.

Local political groups are up in arms about the law, and have vowed to defy it and if necessary take legal action.

A superb motion passed by the Leicester & District Trades Union Council (and reported on the blog of Leicester activist Michael Barker) states:

That the banning of stall tables and banners is an attack on the democratic right to campaign and protest, and that Leicester City Council should not be in a position to decide who can or cannot use them. Whilst the distribution of political material is not itself being debated, resources like banners and stalls are an essential part of facilitating their distribution. For many trade union branches, political parties and campaign groups…relying on inexpensive foldable tables to display petitions and materials…is one of the few affordable ways they can engage with the public.

Leicester Council says that the PSPO ‘does not restrict freedom of speech’, and strictly speaking this is true: a person can still stand in a public place and speak, perhaps with a few leaflets in their hands.

But the council has banned the equipment that is necessary for people to make themselves heard in a public space.

Without a microphone, singing or speaking cannot be heard; without a stall, there is nowhere to put a petition or publications, and no point for members of the public to approach; without a banner or flag, people cannot see what cause you are promoting. The lady who was fined said that campaigning without a table would be ‘like campaigning with one hand tied behind my back’.

The PSPO doesn’t mean that Leicester will be entirely silent and devoid of banners and tables, but rather that the only sound you will hear, and the only banners and tables you will see, are those that have been sanctioned by council officials.

This places a bureaucratic obstacle in the way of public expression, meaning that you can only promote your religious or political cause after lots of form filling and waiting (one political campaigner has been trying to find out how to get approval for over a month).

But it also means that the public square is not a free for all, full of whoever decided to pitch up that Saturday, but rather an officially choreographed space. This official control of the public sphere is a feature of totalitarian and not democratic and free societies.

The Manifesto Club will be supporting the groups in Leicester that are seeking to defy this egregious order – in the name of free speech, democracy, and keeping the public square public.