Some Intellectual Origins of Charter 88

摘要

Charter 88 was not (despite some hostile critics' claims) a movement mainly founded on abstract ideas, nor one specifically of, by or for intellectuals. Yet it had a very diverse set of intellectual roots and influences, drawing on many currents of thought ranging from global developments in democratic political theory, through essays in rethinking the histories of Britishness, to specifically Scottish and Welsh intellectual innovations—as well as ranging from the (former) disciples of Leon Trotsky to those of Edmund Burke. This article seeks to trace some at least of those multiple currents of intellectual input into the movement, and suggests that both the greatest achievement and the greatest mystery of Charter 88 is how successfully and on the whole very amicably their adherents managed to work together.