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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An historian's view of Brexit.

The many views on Brexit.

    When the dust has settled, historians will begin to study and debate what happened in the momentous years 2016 — 2019, when parties, elites, and families in Britain were torn apart by the question of whether or not to pull out of the European Union.

    The referendum forced us into two great camps: that of 'Leavers', and 'Remainers'. But in truth there are many little camps, all rather isolated from each other, and in many cases having little internal communication either. (In pubs and cafés, talking about Brexit is taboo for it is easy to cause offence; and pointless anyway, because it is impossible to sway minds. Apart from family and a handful of journalists and politicians, I know few who think as I do. I would love there to be a Remainer's café where I could hang out and discuss strategy.)

    Eventually a party will have to form, a coalescence of groups supporting a single course of action. In the meantime some think Brexit will make them better off, others think the opposite; some would cosy up to USA, others prefer Europe; some think that Britain can make better laws on its own, others that EU laws are better. 

    Let me try and define your particular group. Perhaps:

(1)  You wish to achieve maximum national and personal sovereignty, trading as and when circumstances allow, but contributing as little as possible to world peace, stability, or culture: "little Englanders".  (Perhaps Rees-Mogg?)

(2)  Or you want to "take back control", mistakenly believing that the European Court consistently or repeated over-ruled British laws (actually 72 times out of 34,000 and in those cases on good grounds http://researchbriefings.files.parliament.uk/documents/RP10-62/RP10-62.pdf)

(3)  Perhaps you prefer an alignment with the USA, to one with the EU (dominated as it is by Germany and France), perhaps on the grounds that the USA and UK share a common language.

(4)  Perhaps you think Brexit will allow Britain to trade freely, and gain an advantage over others by lowering standards or loosening restrictions. (Perhaps David Davis?)

(5)  Perhaps you think that Brexit could be a ticket to leadership of the Tory party. (Perhaps Boris Johnson?)

(6)  Perhaps you acknowledge that Brexit looks bad commercially, but believe that it is the duty of Government to deliver a form of Brexit that few (or no-one) voted for. (Perhaps Thersesa May?)

(7)  Perhaps you think that Britain is not ready for the degree of monetary and political integration that is the trend in Brussels, but would nevertheless vote Remain to retain our present position at the European table. (Perhaps George Monbiot.)

(8)  Or you know about the Erasmus scheme and think that Britain benefits financially and culturally from the EU, and you welcome both the supply of labour from the East and the meticulous law-making of 'Benelux'.

(9)  Perhaps you voted remain because you see a united Europe as a potential superpower more akin to British tastes and interests than the combative, exploitative, and increasingly isolated USA. 

(10) There will be those who see Britain as being (for at least the last 1,000 years) consistently and essentially a part of Europe, sharing its history, culture, religion, fighting its wars, exchanging monarchs, migrants and refugees, skills, trades, diseases. Admittedly, this point of view might be restricted to those who speak Latin or two or more of the core European languages. But Kings William I to Henry IV spoke French, while George I & George II spoke German by choice, even if you did not know that; and most of our Kings had a European mother.

    If I have not grasped your position on Europe I would be most grateful if you would tell me, so I can add it to my list. 

--
Cawstein: cawstein@gmail.com 

Nationalism: the greatest enemy to happiness today

International Law: Part 1 – Nationalism

     "Wherein", asks C.E.M. Joad in 1939, "is to be found the greatest enemy to the happiness of contemporary man?" In poverty? In pain? In the wickedness of the human heart? Possibly and perhaps. But these have oppressed men in all times; they were not distinctive of 1939. Twentieth century man (Joad suggested) suffered more from the unchecked power of the Nation State, than from pain, poverty, or personal brutality.

      "The Nation State regards itself as the sole arbiter of right and wrong, claiming to be both judge and jury in its own cause, acknowledges no law to govern is relations with other States and no morality in restraint of its designs upon its neighbours. Over the lives and liberties of its citizens it exercises an absolute control. It requires of them a willingness to kill other human beings whom they have never seen, whenever it deems the mass slaughter of the members of some other State to be desirable, and conceives that its welfare may be promoted by exacting from them the most horrible sacrifices, in order that they may harm the citizens of its alleged enemy.....

     "It tramples upon the liberties of individuals in order to establish its independence. While proclaiming its determination to be free, it deprives its citizens of their freedom......

     "The State is an anachronism. With its trade restrictions and tariffs, its customs and quotas, it sets up barriers between itself and its neighbours and seeks to the best of its ability to impede the manifest drive of our civilization towards unity. ...(driven by)...the abolition of distance.....It is only 150 years ago that it took a man as long to travel from York to London as it now takes him to fly from London to New York. The future holds in store advances no less remarkable than those of the past......... Today we can fly in the air; tomorrow we shall fly in the stratosphere." (Joad writing, we should remember, in 1939).

     I admire Joad's clarity, and vision. So much he got right! Yet the shrinking of distance that has seen a man walk on the moon, and that has sent this week a rocket to land on Mars (!!), has not yet welded Europe into a Federal State, nor abolished the concept of protective tariffs. At least this seems to be the case in the slower-moving parts of the Anglo Saxon world, like Derbyshire and Detroit. 

(This is the beginning of an investigation into the slow process by which we evolve International Law; a folk process; almost a religious process. )