Concerning Nairn-Anderson, I remember, years ago, when I read Gary Werskey's 1979 book, "The Visible College" about Britain's red scientists like J.D. Bernal, J.B.S. Haldane etc. One of the things discussed in the book was the thesis put forth by Bernal and some of the others that Britain was a country that was in need of modernization. Britain was depicted by Bernal and some of the other scientists as a country where the aristocracy and a variety of premodern institutions still held sway, with the result that science was being given short shrift, so that Britain was falling behind technologically and economically.
Bernal was a member of the old CPGB, and his thesis concerning Britain's need for modernization was quite compatible with the CP's general political line. Werskey went on to make the point that Bernal's thesis had influence outside the CPGB and that some of Harold Wilson's closest advisors had been students of Bernal or of people who had been influenced by Bernal, such that the Labour Party in the 1960s had taken up some of Bernal's ideas.
Reading all that, I was struck by how the Thatcherites of the 1980s seemed to have taken over many of these ideas and made them their own. Undoubtedly, a far cry from Bernal's original intentions.
Jim Farmelant http://independent.academis.edu/JimFarmelant
---------- Original Message ---------- From: "James Heartfield" <Heartfield at blueyonder.co.uk> To: <lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org> Subject: [lbo-talk] Cockburn cut back at Nation Date: Mon, 22 Feb 2010 16:01:54 -0000
The Nairn-Anderson thesis was a thorough waste of time, being in fact just a fancy version of Harold Wilson's sleight-of-hand trick when he distracted the left from the case for socialism by re-directing them to the case for modernising Britain, displacing the struggle against the capitalist class with a struggle against the aristocracy, represented by Alex Douglas-Home. ('Why should you vote for the thirteenth Lord Home?' Wilson demanded, and Home replied, 'why should you vote for the thirteenth mr wilson?'). The Nairn-Anderson thesis effectively redirected the left towards a critique of a supposedly unique English pre-modern governing culture. The true successor of the Nairn-Anderson programme, of course, was Margaret Thatcher's struggle against both the Tory Grandees and the 'Trade Union Barons'.
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