Tom Nairn  

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Tom Nairn (1932 – 2023) was a Scottish academic and political theorist. He was known as a supporter of Scottish independence.

He is the author of "Kubrick's 2001 A Space Odyssey - The Worst Trip Ever" (1968) published in London Oz.

Work

Nairn was considered one of the key thinkers of the British New Left, although he expressed dissent with what he saw as its generally nationalist nostalgia. From 1962, with Perry Anderson in New Left Review, he developed a thesis (the "Nairn-Anderson thesis") to explain why Britain did not develop in a 'normal' way, which was defined as the continental European movement to anti-clericalism and Republicanism since the 1789 French Revolution.

By contrast, Nairn was long an advocate of European integration, an argument he first put forward in The Left Against Europe (1973), when leftist opinion in the UK was very much against the idea.

He was an advocate of Scottish independence as well as devolution of power to the Scottish Parliament and the Welsh Assembly and criticised the 1990s–2000s Blair Labour government for not giving those bodies enough power. While critical of Scottish elites, Nairn considered that Scotland’s economic potential had been limited by the concentration of power in London in combination with what he claimed was the archaic nature of the British state.

An anthology of NLR articles, The Break-Up of Britain (1977, revised 1982) is the best known of Nairn's books on the nationalism theme. It is a Marxist critique of the emergence of worldwide nationalism. Essentially, Nairn contends that imperialism from the core countries (Western Europe) amongst the peripheral nations (Africa, Asia, Australia, etc.) motivated the peripheral elites to mobilise their exploited masses. As such, they created powerful myths and stories based on local artefacts and local happenings. The peripheral intelligentsia, as he denoted them, were inspired by both romanticism and populism. In a chapter devoted to him, Enoch Powell is placed in both traditions. Nairn's ideas on nationalism were in the news during Britain's protracted Brexit negotiations from 2016, and Scotland's desire to remain in the European Union; his major works have been reprinted.

His republican inclinations meant that his The Enchanted Glass (1988) was one of the earliest serious modern investigations into the British monarchy from an abolitionist perspective. It won the Saltire Society Scottish Book of the Year Award. Here and elsewhere Nairn used the term 'Ukania' to suggest the irrational and Ruritanian nature of the British constitutional monarchy. His original source for the term is the nickname "Kakania" that Robert Musil uses for the dual Austro-Hungarian monarchy in The Man Without Qualities. An updated edition of The Enchanted Glass (published by Verso) appeared in 2011.

Linking in at time of death

Alexander Cockburn, British and Irish Communist Organisation, Catherine Hall, Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies, Communist Party Historians Group, Crouch End, Cultural studies, Dick Hebdige, Dunfermline High School, E. P. Thompson, Empire, Far-left politics in the United Kingdom, Fife, Friday Night, Saturday Morning, Gwyn A. Williams, Hornsey College of Art, Humphrey McQueen, John Saville, Kailyard school, List of British republicans, List of Scottish writers, London Review of Books, Martin Jacques, New Left Review, New Left, New Reasoner, Partisan Coffee House, Paul James (academic), Perry Anderson, Peter Worsley, Radical Philosophy, Ralph Miliband, Raphael Samuel, Raymond Williams, Richard Hoggart, Rob Gibson, Robin Blackburn, Rodney Hilton, Romanticism in Scotland, Saltire Society Literary Awards, Scottish national identity, Sheila Rowbotham, Socialist Movement, Socialist Register, Socialist Society, Soundings (journal), Stuart Hall (cultural theorist), Tariq Ali, The Left Alternative, Ulster nationalism, Uneven and combined development.



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