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Charter 88
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Charter 88
Charter 88 was a British pressure group that advocated constitutional and electoral reform and owes its origins to the lack of a written constitution. It began as a special edition of the New Statesman magazine in 1988 and it took its name from Charter 77 – the Czechoslovak dissident movement co-founded by Václav Havel. It was a successor to the popular mid-19th century Chartist Movement of England that resulted in an unsuccessful campaign for a People's Charter and also Magna Carta or 'Great Charter' of 1215. In November 2007, Charter 88 merged with the New Politics Network to form Unlock Democracy.
Charter 88 was created by 348 mainly Liberal and Social Democratic British intellectuals and activists. They signed a letter to the New Statesman magazine as "a general expression of dissent" following the 1987 General Election victory of the Conservative Party, led by Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. This was then followed by further advertisements in The Guardian and The Independent. Five thousand signatures were published in The Observer newspaper in January 1989, followed by the establishment of an organisation.
The organisation was offered space within the offices of the New Statesman magazine, then based in Shoreditch. For several years it was based in offices in Exmouth Market, Clerkenwell. It later moved to the Institute of Community Studies (now The Young Foundation) in Bethnal Green. Its initial activity resulted in the creation of a Charter which the public was invited to sign and to support with financial contributions. Anthony Barnett was the first Director and Andrew Puddephatt, former General Secretary of Liberty, became the director of Charter 88 in 1995.
Charter 88 was the brainchild of New Statesman editor Stuart Weir and came into existence as a direct response to Thatcherism in Britain in the 1980s. It closely followed the methodology that had been employed by Charter 77 in Czechoslovakia during 1977. Charter 77 originally appeared as a manifesto published in a West German newspaper that was signed by Czechoslovak citizens representing various occupations, political viewpoints, and religions. The manifesto was reprinted and circulated as a document inviting other signatures and by the mid-1980s it had been signed by 1,200 people.
The Original Charter of Charter 88 was explicitly concerned with institutional change:
We have had less freedom than we believed. That which we have enjoyed has been too dependent on the benevolence of our rulers. Our freedoms have remained their possession, rationed out to us as subjects rather than being our own inalienable possession as citizens. To make real the freedoms we once took for granted means for the first time to take them for ourselves. The time has come to demand political, civil and human rights in the United Kingdom. We call, therefore, for a new constitutional settlement which will:
The inscription of laws does not guarantee their realisation. Only people themselves can ensure freedom, democracy and equality before the law. Nonetheless, such ends are far better demanded, and more effectively obtained and guarded, once they belong to everyone by inalienable right. Add your name to ours. sign the charter now!
Since 1988, approximately 85,000 people have signed the Charter, over which time the aim of the movement has changed considerably.
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Charter 88
Charter 88 was a British pressure group that advocated constitutional and electoral reform and owes its origins to the lack of a written constitution. It began as a special edition of the New Statesman magazine in 1988 and it took its name from Charter 77 – the Czechoslovak dissident movement co-founded by Václav Havel. It was a successor to the popular mid-19th century Chartist Movement of England that resulted in an unsuccessful campaign for a People's Charter and also Magna Carta or 'Great Charter' of 1215. In November 2007, Charter 88 merged with the New Politics Network to form Unlock Democracy.
Charter 88 was created by 348 mainly Liberal and Social Democratic British intellectuals and activists. They signed a letter to the New Statesman magazine as "a general expression of dissent" following the 1987 General Election victory of the Conservative Party, led by Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. This was then followed by further advertisements in The Guardian and The Independent. Five thousand signatures were published in The Observer newspaper in January 1989, followed by the establishment of an organisation.
The organisation was offered space within the offices of the New Statesman magazine, then based in Shoreditch. For several years it was based in offices in Exmouth Market, Clerkenwell. It later moved to the Institute of Community Studies (now The Young Foundation) in Bethnal Green. Its initial activity resulted in the creation of a Charter which the public was invited to sign and to support with financial contributions. Anthony Barnett was the first Director and Andrew Puddephatt, former General Secretary of Liberty, became the director of Charter 88 in 1995.
Charter 88 was the brainchild of New Statesman editor Stuart Weir and came into existence as a direct response to Thatcherism in Britain in the 1980s. It closely followed the methodology that had been employed by Charter 77 in Czechoslovakia during 1977. Charter 77 originally appeared as a manifesto published in a West German newspaper that was signed by Czechoslovak citizens representing various occupations, political viewpoints, and religions. The manifesto was reprinted and circulated as a document inviting other signatures and by the mid-1980s it had been signed by 1,200 people.
The Original Charter of Charter 88 was explicitly concerned with institutional change:
We have had less freedom than we believed. That which we have enjoyed has been too dependent on the benevolence of our rulers. Our freedoms have remained their possession, rationed out to us as subjects rather than being our own inalienable possession as citizens. To make real the freedoms we once took for granted means for the first time to take them for ourselves. The time has come to demand political, civil and human rights in the United Kingdom. We call, therefore, for a new constitutional settlement which will:
The inscription of laws does not guarantee their realisation. Only people themselves can ensure freedom, democracy and equality before the law. Nonetheless, such ends are far better demanded, and more effectively obtained and guarded, once they belong to everyone by inalienable right. Add your name to ours. sign the charter now!
Since 1988, approximately 85,000 people have signed the Charter, over which time the aim of the movement has changed considerably.