Democracy was born in the public square. The Athenian agora was the central meeting place of an engaged citizenry where business was transacted, social life flourished and a common direction for the people was determined.
The idea of a public square – where individuals operate in a relationship of trust and shared endeavour – is embedded in the life of our democracy. But today, increasingly, our public squares are squalid, lawless, derelict spaces, as Gus Carter records in our cover piece. Shoplifters go unpunished, fly-tipping is unpursued, drug-taking and dealing are commonplace. The busy commercial and social life of the high street a generation ago has been supplanted by rows of barber shops many of which are cover for money laundering, vape stores which feed teen addictions and vacant sites which distant landlords feel no incentive to fill. The air of decline hangs as heavy over these precincts as the persistent and sickly aroma of cannabis smoke.
And when the public square is so visibly in decline it is no surprise that our democracy reflects that. Anger at the failure to uphold established authority on our streets was the drumbeat recorded by pollsters and canvassers in the run-up to last week’s elections. Luke Tryl, of the More in Common thinktank, found voters in despair at the rise in petty crime, the proliferation of anti-social behaviour, the failure to pursue shoplifters, the aggressive begging, the conversion of family houses into homes where young men are warehoused and the absence of consequences for those who subvert public order. Voters from every background lamented the chaos, decline and disorder they see on their streets and responded by punishing those nominally in authority in local and central government – the established parties, Conservative and Labour.
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