Laws handing sweeping new powers to police and private security to restrict access to Britain’s public space will extinguish the diversity of civic life, writes Josie Appleton. Time for us to rediscover and defend our freedoms!

Councils and the police will have an almost free hand to determine the use of all public spaces from civic squares to rural footpaths.
The idea of public space, as it developed in the modern period, was space for the free use and enjoyment of the citizenry.

The temper and character of public space should be determined not by any private or public authority, but by the ways in which people choose to use it.

A bill currently passing through the UK Parliament will mean the death-knell of this principle.