Charter 88

Charter88 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 also has a faint echo of the far more 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.

Charter88 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 triumph of the Conservative Party, led by Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. This was then followed by further adverts in The Guardian and The Independent newspapers, with over 5000 signatures and many donations before 1989. The 5000 names were published in The Observer newspaper in January 1989 and based on the tremendous response the decision to create an ongoing organization was taken.

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