A Republic Cornwall? Why no Republic England.

As with many national UK-wide organisations we have set up branches in Scotland and Wales in order for us to better campaign within the devolved political and media communities there. We are not campaigning for a Scottish or Welsh republic separate to the UK, we are simply responding to a strategic need to have branches that can specifically target politicians and media in Cardiff and Edinburgh. Those groups are there to assist us in campaigning around the UK for the abolition of the monarchy – they are there to campaign in Wales and Scotland, not for Wales and Scotland.

England has no devolved political and media set-up, on the whole that which serves England is the same as that which serves the UK, whether that’s the parliament, government or the BBC and national press. To many people that’s an unfortunate feature of our constitution but it is nevertheless a fact. We do encourage (and will do so much more in the coming months) local activity within England (and elsewhere) but in broad terms this is a national issue and it is best dealt with by everyone supporting a national campaign – there would certainly be no strategic advantage in establishing a separate Republic England. The Scotland and Wales groups are an exception aimed at targeting devolved media and politics.

I agree that Cornwall is in a different position because of its relationship with the Duchy and we’ve often considered some pro-active work there. As with Wales and Scotland that does rely on local supporters coming forward and helping us campaign in the area (and of course as the Duchy spreads far beyond the borders of Cornwall a corresponding campaign would do likewise). With all these sub-sections of our national campaign it does depend on how we can prioritise our limited resources.

I’d be happy to discuss with anyone interested the possibility of setting something up in Cornwall and perhaps staging an event there in due course. As with our position in Scotland and Wales we would of course take no view on Cornish nationalism but would simply campaign on the issues uniquely relevant to the area of the Duchy.

The above is a response received from Republic to my blog post here. For Cornish campaigners interested in tackling the Duke to contact Republic and see what can be done.

Cornish Quest

This is to highlight the work of the new Cornish Quest | Hats off to the past, coats off to the future. A charity that places an educational focus on the heritage, the present and the future of Cornwall. Cornish Quest was formed as a registered educational charity to further knowledge about: Cornish History, Cornish Culture, Cornish Law and Cornish Language. We have a responsibility together, to see that the unique history of Cornwall is passed to future generations, and that Cornwall’s children are given a true sense of place.

Scottish, Welsh and British republicans?

So there are Republic Wales and Republic Scotland campaign groups now as well as the UK wide Republic group, but why no Republic England (or Six Counties)? Or, from another angle, why the specific Welsh and Scottish groups? 

I'll see if I can get an answer from Republic because at the moment it looks like they are playing a two-faced game with national sentiment. Either you set up Republican groups for all the home nations - and I would of course include Cornwall in this - or you don't and you stick to one UK wide group.

Coming back to Cornwall. If there is one region (nation) of the UK that has a very specific and murky relationship with the Monarchy then it is Kernow. Hence the need for a dedicated Republic Cornwall group to shed light on the dirty dealings of the Duke and the feudal laws that can have such influence on the democratic decision making process.

As a footnote. A new Republican Party of Great Britain has been launched but they seem of little interest to Cornish campaigners. Their idea of devolution is to a massive South England region. 

Keep Cornwall Whole - what to do?

It's so important that it needs highlighting again here. Keep Cornwall Whole – The Fight Continues! - from the great breselyerkeltic blog is a must read. Please do read the blog post and then act. Equally please vist the Keep Cornwall Whole site to see what you can do.

For what it's worth - I've said it before and I'll say it again - a campaign of PEACEFUL yet spectacular and humoristic direct action should accompany any campaign to protect Cornwall. It would gain attention but not alienate the public. More likely, in making them smile, such a campaign would win the public over.

The Basque group DEMO is a good example. The site is in Basque, Spanish and French but have a look at the photos of what they do and you'll get the picture.

Cornish and Bretons unite!

This - Cornish and Bretons unite for energy plan - sounds like a very positive project indeed. Lets hope it provides employment for local Breton and Cornish residents rather than experts parachuted in for the task.

Of course given much more autonomy from London and Paris both Kernow (Cornwall) and  Breizh (Brittany) would be free to pursue all manner of projects together to the benefit of our economies, cultures and shared environment. Wouldn't it also be far better for Cornwall to have its own university, rather than the annex of Exeter Uni we have at the moment, working as a full partner in this and other projects.

Beware Devonwall and South West regionalism. For projects as above both these regional schemes would see Kernow totally bypassed in favour of cities, industries and jobs in Devon and beyond. Beware equally of equating Cornwall to just the Finistère département of Brittany. Cornwall and Brittany should stand together as equals - both Celtic nations. Cornwall is not the equivalent of merely a département (county) of Brittany. 

UKIP Confirming the trend

Confirming the trend yet one more group issued from the 'British' hard-right now supports the creation of an English Parliament. UKIP join the BNP and other more overt English nationalists, the English Democrats and England First, in calling for an English Parliament.

The aggressive English supremacist tendencies of UKIP, and certainly its grass-roots supporters, will come as no surprise to any Cornish activist unwise enough to have raised the Cornish question with them. With their support for an English parliment and hostility towards any kind of Cornish devolution or recognition it seems UKIP are now to become the majority face of a more overt English nationalism in Kernow. 

But why this recent conversion and need to play to English nationalist sentiments? 

Whilst England culturally, politically and economically dominated these isles sentiments of English patriotism found a happy home in British unionism. No one could be heard calling for an English parliament in years past as Parliament, and its surrounding civil service, were already 99% English. Couple this with the mass of English establishment bodies, Church of England, English Heritage, Bank of England etc, and you had more than enough to satisfy your average swivel eyed Anglo-supremacist.

Then came devolution giving limited power back to a limited selection of natives upsetting forever the image of Britain ruling the waves and England ruling Britain. Never before had we heard of people calling for an English parliament or describing themselves as English nationalists. Evidently the national self-determination of England didn't figure on anybodies radar until the last pieces of empire, the Celtic nations, started to slip through their fingers. This left an irritating question to answer and some Anglo-Brits with a feeling similar to that of the school bully knocked on his arse for the first time. Simple UK unionism would never really recover.

The mask of British unionism is slipping from the face of what has always been imperialistic English nationalism, UKIP confirming the trend. UKIP wish yet another centralised state with its parliment in London. What wonders that would do for Cornwall. 

Labour discovered to their surprise...

Road Fuel Duties: 13 Sep 2011: Westminster Hall debates - TheyWorkForYou. 

Jim Cunningham (Coventry South, Labour): I know a lot more about Cornwall. Some years ago, I sat on the Trade and Industry Committee. We discovered to our surprise that one of the poorest areas in the country was Cornwall. Like the highlands and islands, Cornwall relies on the tourist trade, as everybody knows; a lot of its jobs depend on the tourist trade and a lot of them depend on public transport. That has an impact on public transport and bus fares. That is bound to affect the poorest areas in Britain, whether we are talking about the islands, the south or the south-west.

Why was it such a surprise? Perhaps because the Labour vote in Kernow is so low, it's not one of their heartlands, they ignore us. 

To be or not to be Devonwallians?

Anger over Commons boundary changes. Is our future to be part of a Devonwall region? It's up to the people of Cornwall to decide that but at the moment, acknowledging the low level of political pro-Cornish engagement, I have to admit that I'm struggling to be optimistic.

Whether we admit a clear Devonwall agenda amongst the decision makers in London it cannot be denied that over the years there has been a tendency to fuse administration and services from Cornwall and Devon, often to the benefit of the latter i.e skilled jobs exiting Kernow for the benefit of Devonshire's cities. A brief history of Devonwall can be found here. 

Cornwall's police force was fused with that of Devon's seeing policing jobs cross the Tamar - that story is far from over. Many Cornish postcodes are now based around Plymouth and Exeter. Today we see the Boundary Commission for 'England' creating a Cornwall and Devon sub region (pdf) for the purposes of allocating MP constituencies to the Duchy and England's most southwesterly county resulting in a cross Tamar Devonwall constituency. Our millennial border with England, along with our Cornish identity, counts for little in Westminster. All this adds up to a progressive administrative fusioning of Cornwall with Devon resulting in Kernow becoming little more than a territory administered from cities in England.

And what of our Cornish MPs all now in the heart of government? All of them swore to protect our border until that is, with one exception, they voted for a Devonwall constituency. The exception, Andrew George, effectively abstained by voting for and against.

Do we want skilled and qualified jobs in Cornwall or, rather, in Exeter and Plymouth? Do we want Cornwall to have a greater say over its own affairs? Do we want Cornwall's territory, identity and culture respected and protected? Only you, the residents of our little Celtic nation, can decide these things but I'll say that you need to decide soon before its far to late.

For what its worth we can let the Boundary Commission know what we think about Devonwall. Details of how to contact them can be found here on Dick Coles blog. Please do write/email them but I can't help feeling much stronger actions will be required to stop Westminster from erasing Kernow. Where are Cornish Solidarity when you need them with their vow "to return to fight any attempt to attack or alter Cornwalls ethnic diversity, boundaries or status"?

Who supported Cornish Devolution Now?

On the Digital Democracy website you can now find a map showing the distribution of support around the UK for the Cornish Devolution Now campaign. In fact perhaps more interesting is the map showing the location of those who opposed. On a positive note we clearly have friends outside the Duchy. 


There is also now a button that allows you, simply and easily, to tell your MP that you support Cornish devolution. I hope one and all use it. DD have produced a flyer in PDF format to go with the campaign but, as yet, no MP's have responded

EDL blight Cornish fora.

For those that don't know Cornwall 24, by default, is the only pro-Cornish debate forum on the Internet. Love it or hate it (and I've had my ups and downs with the place) it is now a well established part of the greater Cornish movement.

Not surprisingly then it is often plagued by people hostile to greater Cornish self-determination. These trolls and sockpuppet users can be found trying to disrupt positive debate and cause division.

Well, low and behold, one of these individuals turns out to be a bus driver from Plymouth and member of the English Defence League. Not content with bullying the UK's Muslim communities it seems some of them have taken a dislike to any expressions of Cornish pride too. Don't you just love English nationalism.

NB: The Cornwall 24 forum is only very loosly connected to the excellent, if much under used, Cornwall 24 news website. Which reminds me! The Cornish movement should be making much more use of the cooperative and fully independent Cornwall 24 site.  

Cornwall Respect

Don't forget the Cornwall Respect Festival will be held tomorrow (September 3rd 2011) from 11am – 9pm at Victoria gardens and waterfall gardens, Truro.

Guernsey government may be model for Cornwall

BBC News - Guernsey government may be model for Cornwall. Well done to the Cornish Constitutional Convention for keeping the debate about Cornish autonomy in the media and, most importantly, in peoples minds.

It has been noted by our constitutionalists that if the Duke rebooted his duchy as the government for Cornwall then we would have a constitutional position approaching that of a Crown dependency. Would we want to become another tax haven though? One more parasite on the world economy of interest only to the rich. 

Anyway, I'm sure that the Convention isn't considering tax haven status and offshore banking for Cornwall's future but rather simply studying governmental practises in a small autonomous community looking for good ideas for Cornwall.

In the BBC article linked to above it was good to see the following stated: The former Cornwall county council commissioned a Mori poll in 2003 which showed 55% of Cornish people were in favour of a democratically-elected, fully devolved regional assembly for Cornwall. If we want to see Duchy issues tackled or greater autonomy brought to Cornwall then we are going to need to see this 55% of the population motivated and voting for a Cornish future. 

MK stride out onto the World Wide Web

It is gratifying to see MK making a little bit more use of the Internet and the many keyboard campaigners ready to help them. To their note below I will just add that my first blog was in June 2007 and Dicks was in July - and the prise for first pro-Cornish blogger goes too... Equally not to be forgotten, Kernow X also has a blog.

In my opinion all the MK blogs could be tarted up a little and given a more unified party image, easily identifiable with the party and Kernow, but perhaps that's just me being anal. 

Other pro-Cornish blogs of note are: breselyerkeltic, Cornish Heritage, Save Cornwall, anhelghyer, and Madder do ee. Sadly the excellent OurCornwall seems to have been deleated but a new blogger, a Cornish Unionist no less, has created Kernow. 

MK note below: 

MK Party Leader Cllr Dick Cole has had a blog for over four years and the Cornish Republican has been a strong presence on the web for an equally long period.

More recently, they have been joined by other MK members who have launched their own on-line sites. These include Cllr Stephen Richardson, Robert Simmons and a new site from the Camborne and Redruth Constituency Party.

Simon Reed, who stood for MK in the St Ives Constituency in 2010, meanwhile adds a distinctive contribution through his site while the Cornish Zetetics site strongly critiques the actions of politicians and others in Cornwall.

Please support the hard work of MK activists and like-minded campaigners by visiting their sites on a regular basis and helping to promote them more widely

On-line petitions

The government has relaunched an e-petitions website. There are already two petitions on the site that are of interest to Cornwall and the Cornish. These are the establishment of a Cornish Assembly and the recognition of the Cornish as a National Minority. Please take the time to support the petitions and to promote them among your friends and colleagues.

Thank you.

The MK Campaign Team.

St Pirans day bank holiday - update

Cornwall asks for its own bank holiday on tin miners' saint day.

Should Cornwall have its own bank holiday?

I'm stealing a chance to do some blogging here in my life which has suddenly become full of things to do. Yes, a bank holiday for St Pirans day, but it will only be realised if we put constant and unrelenting pressure on our elected representatives. A few letters to the papers wouldn't hurt as well. The Tories want to see the end of a May Day bank holiday and St Georges day is the favourite for England (and Cornwall).

The arguments for a St Pirans day holiday and responses to its critics need to be listed and then sent by all to all.

Some interesting comments from C24 can be found here: What does concern me is whether or not full council will vote for a bank holiday. It only got through in committee thanks to the chairperson's deciding vote, and already the umm-ers and the arr-ers at Lys Kernow are making noises, such as Steve Double and Andrew "on the fence" Wallis. They say it won't work because what if schools didn't have a day off when workplaces did? Erm, it's a bank holiday, the schools would be off!

And what about the chaos there would be with Cornwall not at work and the rest of the UK at work? Like the chaos there is on St Andrew's Day, or St Patrick's Day. And as we all know, the world's financial markets take a nosedive every time the NYSE closes for a public holiday...

Cornish federalism

A paper from the Federal Trust - A Federal Future for the UK: The options.

The flexibility about the precise size and number of English regions works in the opposite direction as well: it would be possible to have more than nine regions. Partly depending on how a federation is centrally organised, having more units of smaller size is arguably not a problem in the way that an overlarge component might be: the US manages with as many as 50 states; while Germany has 16. Nor need great variance in the size of the components of a federal UK be a problem. The US has states that range from under 1 million (Alaska) to over 35 million (California). Consequently there is no reason a territory such as Cornwall, with a population of around half a million, could not be a single component in a federal UK alongside other larger units. By this means strong regional identities such as that of Cornwall could be harnessed in order to facilitate a more cohesive federal UK.

The main text of Cornish interest from the paper is copied above but more can be found in a document well worth a read. Are our politicians and decision makers taking note?

That's really rich!

Following the Celtic League Cornwall branches announcement that they will be interviewing Cllr Loic Rich about why he has left Mebyon Kernow and joined the Tories I'd just like to know if the league will be asking Cllr Rich about the insults and threats of violence he made to me via his Twitter account?

Is the League more interested in why a Tory thinks MK is rubbish or why a Tory threatened a fellow member of the Celtic League with physical violence? I do hope my collegues in the League will be questioning Mr Rich about this.

The 2nd Cornish Minority Report

The 2nd Cornish Minority Report.pdf.  To be read and fully digested!

Now my advice to people would be to e-mail and/or send by letter this report to every NGO, political party, news paper, individual politician, foreign government and resident of Cornwall (we can probably add a few other destinations) under the sun. Post it on every forum, Twitter account and Facebook page you can find.

I won't be as I feel I've done my fair share for a while now and I'm simply too busy with my move to Brittany.

For those wet blankets out there who are rumbling to themselves that its 'a waste of time' because 'only the duchy route will work' or 'only getting MK elected will work' or any other numskull excuse for sitting on their arses, then just you keep consoling yourselves that only you know the truth. Now, back to packing boxes and such.

Cornwall Landscape Observatory

You are cordially invited to attend the launch of the Cornwall Landscape Observatory on Wednesday 30th November 2011. Sponsored by The Centre for European Research within Cornwall (CERES) and hosted by Truro College.

The Cornwall Landscape Observatory is an exploratory project working to understand and implement the idea of appreciating landscape as an asset to help children and young people integrate into their disadvantaged neighbourhood; and secure access to their social rights

The project was conceived by CERES at the Council of Europe’s Cultural Heritage Division and born of our longstanding association with the Council of Europe’s Congress of Local and Regional Authorities of Europe (CLARE). The idea was then adapted to suit the Cornish situation through our contributions to the Council’s Disadvantaged Neighbourhoods Programme, Resolution 319 on the Integration of Young People from Disadvantaged Neighbourhoods and The Council of Europe’s Enter! Programme on Young People’s Access to their Social Rights and our recent association with the Observatori del Paisatge de Catalunya (Catalonian Landscape Observatory).

Students from a variety of disciplines and age groups will introduce their perspectives on landscape followed by plenary sessions at this one-day seminar. The outcomes of the seminar will be placed on a dedicated website and we will work to develop a Cornish Landscape Observatory through our European connections.

We expect that Maguelonne Déjeant-Pons Head of the Cultural Heritage, Landscape and Spatial Planning Division at the Council of Europe will attend the seminar and we cordially invite you to register your interest by email to Mr. John Fleet of the CERES secretariat at: johnfleet1924@btinternet.com

Cornish Devolution Now - we did it!

I have received the message below from the people at Digital Democracy hosts of my Cornish Devolution Now campaign. Well done to all who helped. 

Yes your campaign finished top in the UK for the month and emails have been sent to all the MPs we are now awaiting responses, especially from those who’s constituency is in Cornwall. This process normally takes 2 -3 weeks due to the workload of MPs and their researchers so keep an eye out on the website. We will be following them up to ask for a response if one isn’t added in the coming weeks. We have also been contacting them directly by phone to let them know about the campaign and how to respond. Could you provide us with any feedback on your experience of the website and what we can do to make it better? This would be very helpful to us.

Loic's rather poor

The latest Tory recruit in Cornwall had the following to say when I asked him:

1) What he thought about the people who did door to door for him whilst he stood under the Mebyon Kernow banner?

2 If he would be standing down so that a new election could be organised in his ward [considering Mebyon Kernow and the Tories are so diametrically opposed]?

"Get real you tosser" and "you're a bleating sissy". Loic then bravely, yet quickly, delated his words of wisdom from Twitter as, I guess, that is the kind of person he his. Thanks for joining the Tories Loic.