Colours of democracy: Trade union banners and the contested articulations of democratic spatial practices

Abstract

In Forging Democracy, the historian Geoff Eley argues that democracy in Europe 'did not result from natural evolution or economic prosperity' or 'as an inevitable byproduct of individualism or the market'. Rather he suggests that it 'developed because masses of people organized collectively to demand it ' (2002, p. 4). He argues that 'the banner of democracy was held up most consistently by "the socialist tradition"' and that the uneven success of 'democracy's European trajectory … was secured by the Left, sometimes passionately, sometimes painfully, but always as the necessary and most reliable support ' (2002, pp. 5, 12). A key constitutive part of the left's contribution to democracy in this respect has been the role of