Skip to main content
Advertise with the Morning Star
‘French workers wouldn’t take this’ — is our movement exceptionally tame?
KEITH FLETT argues against the lazy trope that British workers and their organisations are inferior in the militancy stakes to those around the globe – especially in light of the current strike wave
UNIQUELY CONFIDENTIAL? Fiery protests greet plans to push back France’s retirement age earlier this week in Paris

TOM NAIRN died recently aged 90. He was an important figure on the left from the early 1960s when he authored, with Perry Anderson, Origins of the Present Crisis (New Left Review 1964).

He was also notable for writing the Break-Up of Britain (1977) primarily on Scottish independence, and The Enchanted Glass (1988) on the monarchy.

While I certainly didn’t concur with his specific analysis on many occasions, his persistence as an opponent of the current British state was — and is — important.

The 95th Anniversary Appeal
Support the Morning Star
You have reached the free limit.
Subscribe to continue reading.
More from this author
Veteran Labour MP Tony Benn, leading over 500 OAPs in a march to mark the start of the three-day National Pensioners Convention in Blackpool's Winter Gardens, April 30, 2001
Features / 22 September 2025
22 September 2025

In 1981, towering figure for the British left Tony Benn came a whisker away from victory, laying the way for a wave of left-wing Labour Party members, MPs and activism — all traces of which are now almost entirely purged by Starmer, writes KEITH FLETT

A ballot box arriving during the count for the Blackpool South by-election at Blackpool Sports Centre, Blackpool, May 2, 2024
Features / 11 September 2025
11 September 2025

Who you ask and how you ask matter, as does why you are asking — the history of opinion polls shows they are as much about creating opinions as they are about recording them, writes socialist historian KEITH FLETT

Jeremy Corbyn (second left) and Zarah Sultana, MP for Coventry South (second right) on the picket line outside London Euston train station, August 18, 2022
Features / 26 August 2025
26 August 2025

KEITH FLETT revisits debates about the name and structure of proposed working-class parties in the past

Ramsgate beach 1899
History / 14 August 2025
14 August 2025

The summer saw the co-founders of modern communism travelling from Ramsgate to Neuenahr to Scotland in search of good weather, good health and good newspapers in the reading rooms, writes KEITH FLETT

Similar stories
Conservative Party leader Kemi Badenoch at their local election campaign launch at The Curzon Centre in Beaconsfield, Buckinghamshire, March 20, 2025
Features / 14 May 2025
14 May 2025

KEITH FLETT traces how the ‘world’s most successful political party’ has imploded since Thatcher’s fall, from nine leaders in 30 years to losing all 16 English councils, with Reform UK symbolically capturing Peel’s birthplace, Tamworth — but the beast is not dead yet

A cartoon depiction of the arrest of the Cato Street Conspir
Features / 4 February 2025
4 February 2025
The legacy of an 1820 conspiracy in revenge for Peterloo resonates down the ages, argues KEITH FLETT
YESTERDAY’S HOPE: Crowds outside the 2017 leaders debate
Features / 6 January 2025
6 January 2025
Every few years, it seems like the ‘right time’ to build a new left party — but what are the right conditions, asks socialist historian KEITH FLETT, looking back at the last two centuries and the insights of Ralph Miliband and EP Thompson
Harold Wilson, Tony Blair and Keir Starmer
Features / 15 October 2024
15 October 2024
KEITH FLETT reflects on the 1964 and 1974 election victories, arguing that despite years in power, Labour failed to fundamentally reshape society in the way Thatcher later would — a pattern Blair and now Starmer would follow