This afternoon I popped down to the car park with Barbara, our busy Registrar, to meet Anthony Barnett the co-founder of Charter 88 and founder of openDemocracy.net. He is a little bit surprised that I don't have a beard, as he is going on my appearance on the left of this blog, which seems to depict me en route to a 'wanted' photo. Anthony is kindly bringing in a copy of the original Charter 88 petition from the Observer newspaper which he is loaning for the show. I am reminded that Vaclav Havel visited the Library just last week, since the petition was inspired not just by the Victorian Chartists but by Charter 77 in Czechoslovakia during 1977. It's a shame we couldn't arrange a meeting.
I remember debating Charter 88 in a Portakabin in Somerset at the tail end of the 1980s. It is interesting to see what has changed and what hasn't over the last two decades. Scotland is no longer 'ruled from Westminster', the Lords is half-reformed - but at the moment the central demand of a bill of rights remains moot at best. We are also, of course, delighted to be showing the Bill of Rights from 1689, on loan from the Parliamentary Archives.
It is the big vote in congress this afternoon, on the $800bn, pork-filled bank bill, and my eye is half on NYtimes.com. I am struck by a line in Thomas 'the world is flat' Friedman’s column:
"I've always believed that America's government was a unique political system — one designed by geniuses so that it could be run by idiots. I was wrong. No system can be smart enough to survive this level of incompetence and recklessness by the people charged to run it."
I spend a minute reflecting on the problems of constructing a constitution and how the Founding Fathers' stock has fallen and risen over the years, before returning to the business of labels. Currently, I am reducing the Oz trial to 90 words (we also have a sound recording of the 1971 obscenity trial) and am reading Geoffrey Robertson's amusing account of his experiences as a postgraduate participant in the near-theatrical Old Bailey trial (The Justice Game, 1998).
At one point, the silks turned their attention to the 15-year-old Vivian Berger, and whether his depiction of Rupert Bear's head transposed onto a lewd Robert Crumb drawing was a moment of 'artistic genius' or not. It would have made fascinating television, and indeed there was a BBC drama in the 1990s.
I note that the Road to Roubaix is sold out at the Bike Film Festival is sold out, and instead head home with a DVD of the film clips that have to be cut for the exhibition. Not a bad alternative.
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