Archive of Faces of Nationalism

Colin Coulter revisits Tom Nairn's predictions for the fate of the six counties, and reflects on their position in the union today. 

At the height of the crisis of the 1970s Tom Nairn published his collection of essays The Break-Up of Britain, which soon became a key intellectual reference point for the Scottish and British left. Post-Brexit, could those same trends that Nairn predicted would lead to the break-up of Britain be returning? In this article, Scott Lavery asks what Nairn can teach us today.