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# How Brown began
- URL: https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/how-brown-began/
- Published: 2007-05-18T13:05:39.000Z
- Updated: 2019-02-14T22:36:10.000Z
- Author: openDemocracy Supporters
- Tags: #en, #Migrated, #Import 2026-04-09 18:23

**Guy Aitchison (London,** [**OK**](http://ourkingdom.opendemocracy.net/?ref=opendemocracy.net)**)**: Just re-published on-line by [Unlock Democracy](http://www.unlockdemocracy.org.uk/?ref=opendemocracy.net), the 1992 speech which marked Brown's first engagement with the constitutional agenda. It is very revealing:

["The current movement for constitutional reform is of historic importance. It signals the demand for a decisive shift in the balance of power in Britain, a long overdue transfer of sovereignty from those who govern to those who are governed, from an ancient and indefensible Crown sovereignty to a modern and popular sovereignty, not just tidying up our constitution but transforming it."](http://www.unlockdemocracy.org.uk/?p=893&ref=opendemocracy.net)

The Charter 88 Sovereignty Lecture , chaired by Helena Kennedy, took place a few days before the 1992 general election was called. It is invaluable in understanding what Brown's thinking was before he took office, on everything from a British Bill of Rights to Freedom of Information and Lords reform. Does Brown’s analysis of Britain in 1992 as a society in which ‘we have become more centralised, less sensitive to individual rights and less free than we were’, sound familiar? As the day of Brown’s long-awaited accession to the premiership draws closer his early reflections on the ‘Hobbesian’ unbounded government which Britain’s ‘unwritten constitution’ creates shed light on what a ‘constitutional settlement’ needs to deal with. Let us hope that it’s this Brown, and not a Blairised version that takes office.