British multiculturalism and Tom Nairn's Two Englands

This roundtable contribution begins with a brief letter exchange between Tom Nairn and Yasmin Alibhai-Brown in 2000. It explores how Nairn's nationalism challenged the liberal optimism of Britain's multiculturalist moment-and what he saw as its London-centric assumptions. Returning to Nairn's account of 'Two Englands', it suggests that his Marxist-nationalist commitments, though not without problems and limits, can help us think in new ways about the spatial politics of economic life in late twentieth-century Britain. Nairn's nationalism draws attention to the territorial dimensions of inequality and political identity, urging us to bring into a single frame the racial and regional peripheries of British rule.