Tom Nairn

Tom Nairn 1932 - 2023) was Research Professor in the Politics Department of Durham University and was a Professor of Nationalism and Social Diversity at Austrailia's RMIT 2002 - 2010. His books include, The Left against Europe?, The Breakup of Britain, Enchanted Glass and Faces of Nationalism.

Time to Call it a Day: Sometimes it is right for a country to recognise that its job is done

We revisit an article from 2007 meditating on the export of the possible break up of Belgium back across the channel to the country responsible for Belgium's creation in the first place

By Tom Nairn

/ 20 Jun 2010

The English Postman

As Britain's postal workers vote to strike and the Royal Mail seems doomed, Tom Nairn dissects the servile, postman like nature of those trapped in the British polity and points to a way out

By Tom Nairn

/ 9 Oct 2009

Attention: Global Moles at Work

In an article entitled 'Feminism Co-opted' Nancy Fraser has recently suggested that among the deeper effects of Neo-Liberal hegemony may be counted a tacit alliance between

By Tom Nairn

/ 11 Sep 2009

Tom Nairn replies to his comments

I greatly appreciate this opportunity to reply to comments on my recent openDemocracy essay, and (I hope) pursue the argument farther. This hope isn't just piety: I realize

By Tom Nairn

/ 9 Sep 2009

Down Under diary: is it time for Social Democracy?

Lord, it is time. The summer was too long. Lay your shadow on the sundials now, and through the meadows let the winds throng Rainer Maria Rilke, Herbst/'Autumn&

By Tom Nairn

/ 14 Aug 2009

After the global

Global Imaginary... is a title that conjures up the totalising and overweening, even more so in the present moment of financial and other crisis. Over-exposure to "globalisation"

By Tom Nairn

/ 3 Nov 2008

After Greatness, everybody is small

In an OurKingdom essay, Tom Nairn looks at how new forms of nationalism are challenging the established nation-states of an earlier era. In Nations and Nationalism Ernest Gellner compiled

By Tom Nairn

/ 3 Oct 2008

Byzantium: always an Empire, never a Nation

There was never anything like it: not a city but the world city for over a thousand years, her domes, towers and colossal walls dominated the crossroads between east, west,

By Tom Nairn

/ 7 May 2008

Globalisation and nationalism: the new deal

"Life and culture continue to yield new emergent social entities, new adaptive forms brought into being in order to pursue survival and reproduction both through and in spite of

By Tom Nairn

/ 7 Mar 2008

The sorcerer’s birthday: notes from the apprentice

Anthony is Anglo-Britain's outstanding example of "the culture of critique". From New Left Review via Charter 88 through to www.opendemocracy.net, he has, better

By Tom Nairn

/ 28 Nov 2007

Not on your life

It looks very much as if a new character will, in only a few weeks, be stage-centre in the United Kingdom: "New Britain". As chancellor Gordon Brown

By Tom Nairn

/ 14 May 2007

The Queen: an elegiac prophecy

The Queen is much more than an elegy for the British monarchy. By recounting in 2006 the real elegiac events of the first week of September 1997 - the death of

By Tom Nairn

/ 26 Sep 2006