Obituary: Baroness Ewart-Biggs

LATE in her life Jane Ewart-Biggs gave invaluable support to the new movement of Charter 88, writes Anthony Barnett.

She was a founder signatory, a member of the Charter's first Council and was especially helpful in getting us to clarify our image. She was thoughtful and had an exceptional ability to ask a simple but perceptive question that would go to the heart of an issue. Jane worked on and signed the letter that we sent to all prospective parliamentary candidates a year before the 1992 General Election. This letter described Democracy Day and asked the candidates to accept the invitations to Democracy Day meetings that they might receive from their constituents. In this way, before her illness overtook her, she played an important part in taking the issues of democracy out to the country, not the least of these Proportional Representation, which she did her utmost to persuade Labour to adopt.

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