The Green Ribbon Books

The Day Britain Died

Andrew Marr
Profile
1999

This study of the state of Britain in the immediate aftermath of devolution betrays its origins in an accompanying TV series. One can almost hear the author delivering his piece to camera as one reads it.

That Marr's engaging style conceals an awful lot of information packed into quite a short book is something one might expect from a journalist who would shortly become BBC political editor. That it also conceals some pretty radical conclusions might come as more of a surprise.

Marr presents himself as an expatriate Scot from a background steeped in traditional Britishness, and a comfortable citizen of the UK.

After Britain: New Labour and the Return of Scotland

Tom Nairn
Granta
2000

Nairn, arguably the leading Scottish nationalist intellectual, greeted the creation of the Scottish Parliament with this bold polemic, predicting the break-up of the union and calling for the emergence of new English and Scottish civic nationalisms.

The book depicted Britain as 'Ukania' a contemporary counterpart to the Austro-Hungarian empire, in which an early-modern monarchy struggled to contain emerging nationalisms.

After Britain included an early dissection of Blairism, predicting that the Scottish Parliament would transcend New Labour's limited aims for devolution. That judgment is perhaps already being vindicated by events

The most significant of the wave of book-length essays that emerged in the wake of Scottish devolution.

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Nationalism, Devolution and the Challenge to the United Kingdom State

Arthur Aughey
Pluto Press
2001

An analysis of the growing nationalist challenge to the British state in the wake of devolution.

Aughey, Professor of Politics at the University of Ulster, takes a staunchly unionist standpoint, arguing that 'constitutional change intimates another chapter in history and not the end of the story.'

Useful as a counterpoint to the nationalist analysis of writers like Tom Nairn, and as a survey of the literature on the subject.

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Renovation or Revolution? New Territorial Politics in Ireland and the United Kingdom

Edited by John Coakley, Bridget Laffan & Jennifer Todd

UCD Press

2005

 

(Review originally published in the Irish World)

With the pace of British-Irish co-operation in the peace process picking up in recent weeks, it perhaps an appropriate time to review this recent volume of essays, which looks at the changing relationships within and between Britain and Ireland as a result of devolution and the Good Friday Agreement.

There has long been a school of thought arguing that the dynamic of those changes will eventually result in the break-up of the UK, of whom the foremost representative is Scottish nationalist philosopher Tom Nairn.

That view is subjected to a robust challenge here by the University of Ulster’s Arthur Aughey, perhaps the leading academic exponent of the alternative thesis, that recent reforms reflect the continued vitality of the British state.

The Enchanted Glass: Britain And Its Monarchy

Tom Nairn
Radius, 1988

An incisive critique of the Monarchy and its role in sustaining the British establishment. Nairn sees the monarchy as the lynchpin of an oligarchy in which Westminster, Whitehall and the City of London all seek to contain popular democratic/nationalist demands in order to maintain a residual sense of global greatness.

Some of Nairn's targets; Trident - 'the Royal bomb', the 'pseudo-feudal socialism' of much of the Labour Party, appear even more well taken twenty years on.

Indeed, it has become ever more apparent that New Labour's early constitutional reforms were ultimately an attempt to shore up the system Nairn describes rather than challenge it. This book is arguably even more timely now than when it was written.

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The Isles: A History

by Norman Davies
Oxford University Press
1999

A grand attempt to tell the history of the British Isles from a post-unionist standpoint.

This book is ironically let down by some key errors on the Irish War of Independence period, the very events which ensured that the British Isles would no longer be co-extensive with the United Kingdom.

Nevertheless, the recognition that the history of the British Isles is not merely the story of the British state makes this study a milestone in historiography.

Reviews

Stephen Moss - Guardian Unlimited
Keith Robbins - Hnet
Ann Talbot - World Socialist Website

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