Stuart Weir: The editor who shaped a country

In 1988, the New Statesman’s campaigning leader devised Charter 88 – a call to arms that radically transformed Britain’s political debate.

By Anthony Barnett

Photo by Peter Jordan/Popperfoto via Getty Images

Stuart Weir, the New Statesman’s editor from 1987 to 1991, died peacefully in his sleep on 2 July 2024, after a series of strokes. He was 85.

Mischievous is the word that comes immediately to mind about Stuart. A roguish sense of humour, a delight in being contrarian, a gleeful opposition to authority when he could expose its misdeeds.

But below this there was a deeply serious man, determined to make a difference if he could, whether in the Labour Party – which was part of his life – or in the British state that we all have to endure. Later he tried to help countries in the Global South become law-abiding democracies.

He always wanted to be a journalist. He joined the Oxford Mail after university and then became a diarist for the Times. But in 1971 he joined the Child Poverty Action Group under Frank Field. There, he learned how skilful and focused campaigning from outside the established political order can shift the parameters of the possible and make a lasting difference. This gave his future journalism a quite different depth to those who only experienced it as being part of the chorus.

The finest example of his ability to combine editorial flair with political purpose came in late 1987 when he took over a troubled New Statesman. He inherited a supplement in the Christmas issue on the 20th anniversary of 1968. One of his skills was to get others to draft editorials, which he then finalised. He loved working with others, drawing on their energy and giving it focus. Almost all his books were co-authored.

He phoned me and asked if I would draft an editorial on 1968. I said I thought the more important anniversary was 1688 and the need to move on from the Glorious Revolution and have a modern Bill of Rights. He told me to go ahead and I bashed out a draft, which he finalised. He liked the feedback, including from someone who said “Why not call for a ‘Charter 88’?” At the time the Czech Charter 77, headed by the then dissident and persecuted Václav Havel, was an inspiring force of democratic opposition to Soviet oppression.

Stuart wanted to give the New Statesman a shot in the arm and a repositioning. In January 1988 he summoned a group of us into the office to discuss the idea and asked me to write a first draft – which I did on the condition that I had nothing to do with any organisation. Ten months later, Charter 88, a stunningly designed, carefully formulated 1,500-word manifesto, with ten demands and 348 signatories of centre-left figures (many of whom would today be called “influencers”) but no politicians, was published in the New Statesman and in full-page adverts in the Guardian and the Independent. The timing was perfect. It was the zenith of Thatcherism, after her third election victory, and at the height of the boom triggered by her chancellor, Nigel Lawson. Her authoritarian regime seemed unstoppable. Labour looked unelectable. Charter 88 was a call to arms for all democrats, to turn the UK into a modern European democracy with a constitution that would make us “citizens not subjects”.

In the bottom corner was a coupon saying “Add Your Name to Ours”. Large bulging sacks of envelopes arrived at the New Statesman office as 5,000 signed before the end of the year, many sending cheques.

The redrafting and final editing; the wording of the demands; gathering the names that combined left and liberal support to give the Charter its distinct positioning; fundraising from Trevor Smith at the Joseph Rowntree Reform Trust to finance the adverts; commissioning a superb designer, Keith Ablitt; organising photo opportunities as the Charter was presented to parliament via Robin Cook, with Salman Rushdie in attendance. All this was Stuart’s doing.

He then made another bold move. Before anyone else, Stuart realised that a campaign had been born. He booked a page and half in the more expensive Observer to list the names of those who had sent in their support. Fulfilling such a campaign demanded additional drive and administration. I offered to take it on. What I didn’t know at the time was that the key Lib Dem backer objected to someone with a more radical temperament shaping an agenda he wanted his party to own. Stuart faced him down and appointed me to turn the impact of his audacious and perfectly executed protest into an influential organisation with the ambition of influencing the Labour Party.

Charter 88 gave the New Statesman a project that chimed with the desire for modernisation that was sweeping the left. And while it was not taken further by Stuart’s successors as editors after 1991, its radicalism was embraced in 1993 by then Labour leader John Smith and then inflected New Labour under Blair and Brown. It also helped ensure the delivery of a Human Rights Act, Freedom of Information, the defenestration of most of the aristocracy from the second chamber, a Scottish Parliament, a Welsh Assembly, a London mayor and a Supreme Court.

We don’t yet have proportional representation but it is coming. And when we gain a written constitution, Stuart will be recorded as one of its pioneers.

[See also: The strange career of David Marquand]