Tom Nairn: Scotland's leading political theorist?

Tom Nairn has been called “Scotland's greatest thinker”, and “Britain’s leading political theorist”, and “by far Scotland’s pre-eminent political intellectual”, all of which sound over-the-top. However, there is no denying that he can claim to be the most prescient prophet of the disintegration of Britain, on the basis of his 1977 book “The Break-Up of Britain”. But who is he, and what has he contributed to political thought in the last 70 years.

Rory Scunthorne’s article in the New Statesman (30 Jul - 19 Aug 2021; from which I take most of my quotes), piqued my interest. But its tedious length and its disjointed stream of inscrutable quotations left me confused and frustrated. So I went to the web. Here below I offer a synthesis; and a conclusion.

CV

    ▪    Born in 1932 in Freuchie, (a small town in Fife, Scotland), where his father was a local head teacher. Nairn attended Edinburgh College of Art, and Edinburgh University where he graduated MA in philosophy in 1956.
    ▪    In 1957, with a British Council scholarship, Nairn enrolled in the Scuola Normale Superiore in Pisa, where he studied politics and encountered the evolving communism of Gramsci, and the strategy of the “long haul”.
    ▪    From 1962, with Perry Anderson in the New Left Review (NLR), he developed a thesis (the "Nairn-Anderson thesis") to explain why Britain did not follow other European nations in their rejection of established religion, and monarchy.
    ▪    He taught at the University of Birmingham (1965-6) and elsewhere.
    ▪    In 1968, Nairn was fired from his teaching job in Hornsey College of Arts, for participation in  a lengthy utopian “sit-in” involving both students and staff. He was clearly shunned by British academic institutions for decades.
    ▪    From 1972–76, with help from a NLR colleague (Anthony Barnett), Nairn was employed in the Transnational Institute, Amsterdam; a non-profit think-tank largely funded by the Dutch Government.
    ▪    He spent 1994-5 at the Central European University (Austria-Hungary) with the sociologist Ernest Gellner, who had argued that Nationalism had helped the development of industrialization.
    ▪    In 1995, he set up and ran (1995-1999) a Masters course on “Nationalism” at the University of Edinburgh .
    ▪    In 2001-2010 he was invited to take up an “Innovation Professorship in Nationalism and Cultural Diversity” at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, Australia,
    ▪    Returning to the UK he became a fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study of Durham University (2009).

Personality

He was said to be an excellent cook by a flat-mate in 1970 in Edinburgh. Said also to be “utterly single-minded” yet “resigned”; even “optimistic”. Also “reserved”, and lacking in even the British level of sociability; fiery in writing, but shy in person. He enjoyed Italy, and became proficient in Italian, but also spent time in Amsterdam, Paris and Vienna.

Thinking

Several ‘periods’ can be discerned, and with each an influencer or colleague.
[1] The Italian period and the romance of communism, immersed in Gramsci.
[2] The Perry Anderson period (1962-1965), and the New Left Review. The Nairn-Anderson thesis was that the British state was archaic. The early revolution of 1642-1660 established a consolidated ‘pre-modern’ political structure in England by 1688.  After the Union of 1707 this was inherited by Scotland.
[3] Political period. Nairn was pro-European, and therefore impatient with the UK’s Labour Party which was insular. He joined the Scottish Labour Party (1976) to advocate devolution in a European context (c.f. the 'auld alliance'). His book The Break-Up of Britain (1977, revised 1982) predicted by 45 years the present state of the British union that is ‘Great Britain and Northern Ireland’.
[4] With his coinage “UKania”, Nairn ridiculed the Ruritanian elements that survive in Britain. His anti-monarchical views were concentrated in his book The Enchanted Glass (1988).
[5]  ‘Nationalism’ period. With Ernest Gellner in Vienna, Nairn developed an analysis of Nationalism that extended to post-colonial countries and incorporated the role of myths and artefacts in the creation of national consciousness. He rode this wave in Edinburgh and Melbourne, and is still active in Durham.
[6] All his life Nairn has been a prolific writer. In all, he wrote 14 major books and numerous articles in the New Left Review and the London Review of Books, and elsewhere.

Conclusion

I get the impression of a shy intellectual who benefits from collaboration, but who takes up and develops a thesis with great focus and tenacity. A product of his time and place. So: Scottish; unselfish, indeed actively anti-selfish; anti-privilege, anti-London, anti-Conservative, anti-royalist, pro-Europe; not above using some of the ‘tricks’ of nationalism to further his objectives. Is he Scotland’s pre-eminent political thinker? He maybe the winner, but of an barely contested prize.

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