> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://www.opendemocracy.net/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # Five down, two hundred-and-ninety-five to go - URL: https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/five-down-3537jsp/ - Published: 2006-05-11T23:05:00.000Z - Updated: 2019-02-14T22:53:20.000Z - Author: Tom Nairn - Tags: #en, #Migrated, #Import 2026-04-09 19:27 Quote of the Day: "Let us recognise that national and global media not only report on change, but are themselves agents of change." – [Kofi Annan](http://www.opendemocracy.net/globalization-UN/article%5F1956.jsp), United Nations secretary-general, quoted in [*Irrawaddy,* (Burma)](http://www.irrawaddy.org/aviewer.asp?a=5164&z=6&ref=opendemocracy.net), 11 May 2006 When Charter 88 was set up in [1988](http://www.charter88.com/about/charter.html?ref=opendemocracy.net) one of its banners was "Three Hundred Years Are Enough" – three centuries of the United Kingdom's early-modern parliamentarism standing in for democracy. Eighteen years on, very recent events have shown that "enough" has still to catch up with it. The thing standeth yet, albeit shakily: weaker at the knees, and more addicted to compensatory bombast like Tony Blair's world-power parades and Gordon Brown's campaign for New (i.e. Old) Britishness. But still re-mortgaging the present, and still poised to punish all defaulters and detractors in 2007 and later – whether in Tower Hamlets, Tehran or Cardiff: the living past – not dead and indeed "not even past", in the sense of William Faulkner's famous Southerner's quip. So has nothing changed? Well yes: the whole world, from West Bromwich to [West Papua](https://www.opendemocracy.net/articles/View.jsp?id=1239). Marx's mighty Sorcerer of Modernity is adding to his workload, not relinquishing it. But in rat-holes like Westminster and Capitol Hill, such labours can only be seen as tributes to former glories, the heirloom "values" of 1688 and 1776\. *Their* pasts never will be past. "Globalisation" was never meant to change *them*, but the others: those awaiting redemption from free trade, with democracy as an eventual added extra. **openDemocracy,** has consistently taken a stand against such hidden-hand complacency, by arguing that capitalism's post-1989 supremacy can only be a prelude to a wider revolution – democracy not as a bonus but as the foundation of a tolerably unified world. And of course it starts at home: as [Todd Gitlin](https://www.opendemocracy.net/articles/View.jsp?id=election) demanded in 2004 when George W Bush finally got himself elected. "Democracy in Baghdad *and* Washington". That's what global "democratic warming" is about: the humanisation of capitalism through inspiration and example, not its imposition by military means. **Tom Nairn is** [**professor**](http://www.rmit.edu.au/browse/About%20RMIT%2FContact%20Us%2FStaff%2Fby%20name%2FN%2F;ID=9nx4xwtapmo9;STATUS=A?ref=opendemocracy.net) **of globalisation at the Globalism Research Centre, RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia.** Among [Tom Nairn's](http://tomnairn.cgpublisher.com/?ref=opendemocracy.net) articles on **openDemocracy,**: "[Pariah Kingdom](https://www.opendemocracy.net/articles/View.jsp?id=351)" (May 2001) "[The party is over](https://www.opendemocracy.net/articles/View.jsp?id=373)" (May 2002) "[America vs Globalisation](https://www.opendemocracy.net/articles/View.jsp?id=879)" (a five-part essay, January-February 2003) "[Britain's tipping-point election](https://www.opendemocracy.net/articles/View.jsp?id=2631)" (June 2005) "[After the G8 and 7/7: an age of ‘democratic warming'](https://www.opendemocracy.net/articles/View.jsp?id=2663)" (July 2005) "[On the beach: a bonfire of monarchies in Melbourne](https://www.opendemocracy.net/articles/View.jsp?id=3027)" (November 2005) "[Ending the big ‘ism](https://www.opendemocracy.net/articles/View.jsp?id=3220)" (January 2006) This formula needs new media that are Annan's "agents of change", on the banks of the Thames and the [Potomac](https://www.opendemocracy.net/articles/View.jsp?id=3127) as well as of the Irrawaddy. **openDemocracy** has helped lead the way in this direction, and will go on doing so. It stands for the development of open societies, through democratic-constitutional conflict – for nation-states awakening and changing their skins, not "withering away" or being guided by closed élites, still largely in bemedalled uniforms. Subsidised mainly by [George Soros](https://www.opendemocracy.net/articles/View.jsp?id=1913) and the United States's National Endowment for Democracy, [Burma's *Irrawaddy*](http://www.irrawaddy.org/?ref=opendemocracy.net) gets published just across the border in Thailand, in the same spiritual country as **openDemocracy**. As *Newsweek's* southeast Asia correspondent Joe Cochrane noted recently: "The magazine is published in English – a deliberate strategy to reach the widest possible audience about Burma's plight. Its Website, www.irrawaddy.org, is in English and Burmese and garners an impressive 47,000 unique visitors each month. The *junta*, which monitors e-mail and Internet content, has banned the site, but Burmese can still access it using proxy servers..." (Joe Cochrane, "Burma's river of news", [Foreign Policy, May-June 2006](http://www.foreignpolicy.com/users/login.php?story%5Fid=3444&URL=http://www.foreignpolicy.com/story/cms.php?story%5Fid=3444&ref=opendemocracy.net) \[subscription only\]). **openDemocracy's** not-so-secret plan is to manoeuvre the British-Isles nations towards this same country of the [future](http://www.granta.com/shop/product?usca%5Fp=t&product%5Fid=298&ref=opendemocracy.net). Hence its problems of survival. Without being proscribable for Terrorism by the un-uniformed Thames-side *junta*, it offends warders and trusties alike. Contemporary in style and delivery yet not dismissably postmodern, it's like a standing application to get the Westminster Constitution "listed" status with English Heritage, in the "Virtual, Grade 1, exceptional interest" category (See "Pavilions of Splendour" at www.heritage.co.uk). [Democratic warming](https://www.opendemocracy.net/articles/View.jsp?id=2663) is dangerous: international minus the "-ism", an unfond farewell to the early-modern, to fossilised pastness, to US neo-conservatism and the Blair-Brown Third Way. You vote for it each time you visit the site: the editors have recently described what you're voting and subscribing to: "Are people ready for open-minded, democratic citizenship? One answer came on 15 February 2003 when millions demonstrated against the proposed invasion of Iraq supported by majorities in many countries. This widespread anti-war sentiment was not the craven appeasement of a dictator whose downfall was welcomed. It was not (on the whole) a celebration of populist simplicities by the unwashed. It was a wise, well-judged refusal of a war of choice and its likely consequences. The leaders of Anglo-Saxon power who had led the world since 1945 proved less far-sighted than their citizens. This moment should be seen as historic." (Anthony Barnett & Isabel Hilton, "Democracy and openDemocracy", [12 October 2005](https://www.opendemocracy.net/articles/View.jsp?id=2792)). As [Paul Rogers](https://www.opendemocracy.net/articles/View.jsp?id=%20Paul%5FRogers) regularly reminds visitors to this site, plenty more historic moments are on the way, probably too close for comfort, and calling for the same refusal, and the same deeper affirmation.