The Green Ribbon Books

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 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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