Good news … Conservative MP opposes Devonwall

In my column in this coming week’s Cornish Guardian will be as follows:

Politics is increasingly partisan these days and politicians often fail to compliment their opponents, even when they do something worthy of acknowledgement.

But in my column this week, I am pleased to be able to praise Steve Double MP for opposing the creation of a Devonwall parliamentary seat.

Last Friday in the House of Commons, MPs debated a Private Members Bill entitled the Parliamentary Constituencies (Amendment) Bill. Tabled by a Labour MP from the north of England, the Bill proposes to make changes to the process by which parliamentary boundaries are presently being reversed.

It seeks to keep the number of MPs at 650 – not the 600 presently preferred by the Tories – and to allow the Boundary Commission more flexibility in redrawing constituency boundaries. 

And from a Cornish perspective, if passed, the Bill would put an end to the proposal for a cross-Tamar seat.

The debate took place at the end of the week and, because many government MPs were not present, it passed its second reading by 253 votes to 37. It now moves to the committee stage and it is anticipated that MPs from the governing party will look to derail the Bill in the coming weeks.

But last Friday, Steve Double was one of two Conservative MPs who voted for the Bill, and therefore against Devonwall and against his own party. 

Full credit to him for him for listening to the people of Cornwall and making it clear that he took this action because it was the “only way” he could see to “address the issue of the Cornish border and maintain Cornish MPs in Cornwall.”

It was, though, extremely disappointing (big understatement) that he did not get support from other Cornish MPs.

Two were present and voted against the Bill. And one of these, Sheryll Murray, participated in the debate and did all she could to undermine Steve Double’s arguments.

In 2010, Sheryll Murray pledged that she would “fight on and on” to make sure that the border was protected, but appears to have done a shocking u-turn.

Instead of backing her colleague from St Austell and Newquay, she called on MPs to “kick” the legislation into the “long grass where it belongs.”

And in a particularly unedifying section of the debate, she called out Steve Double for claiming he was speaking “on behalf of the Cornish,” adding that she wanted it “put on the record” that she was a “Cornish girl” and he “was not speaking” for her.

To be fair to Steve Double, he dealt with it well, pointing out how may people had raised the issue with him in his constituency “on the doorsteps, in the pub and at surgeries” and that it was an issue that he “as a Cornishman” felt strongly about.

It is my strong view that now is the time for us all to put pressure on George Eustice MP, Scott Mann MP, Sarah Newton MP, Derek Thomas MP, and even Sheryll Murray MP, to follow Steve Double’s example and do the right thing and oppose Devonwall.

A couple of extracts from my speech at 2016 MK Conference

It was great to see so many friends at the 2016 MK Conference and to see such enthusiasm for winning a better deal for Cornwall.

I am pictured above with some of the speakers at the 2016 MK Conference: Dr Joanie Willett (MK liaison with the European Free Alliance), Natalia Pinkowska (EFA Vice-President) and Plaid Cymru AM Steffan Lewis.

Here are a couple of extracts from the early part of my speech.

An army of practical visionaries

I must make comment that this year also marks the 50th anniversary of Gwynfor Evan’s stunning victory in the Carmarthen by-election of 1966.

When he became the first member of Plaid Cymru to be elected to the Westminster Parliament – and he delivered a breakthrough which forever changed the face of British politics.

Some years later, when I was a young student at St David’s University College in Lampeter, I was the Secretary of the local college branch of Plaid, and I was privileged to meet Gwynfor on a couple of occasions.

I found him a truly inspirational man.

And what I took from those meetings as a young man was two things.

First, he had a vision for his country as an inclusive, progressive, self-governing nation.

And second, he knew there was no “magic bullet”, no easy route by which he could achieve his aims.

But that he and other members of the Party would need to dig deep and work and work and work for Wales, if he was to succeed.

And that is why Gwynfor had a relentless work ethic to make things happen. Which he and his colleagues did. Setting Wales on a political journey for home rule, that is continuing.

At Plaid’s Conference last month, I was also struck by the words of Adam Price, one of Gwynfor’s successors as member of parliament for Carmarthen and now the town’s representative in the National Assembly.

He said that – at its best – a political party is “an army of practical visionaries, a movement of doers and dreamers that together get things done.”

How right he is. And how we, as members of Mebyon Kernow and the wider Cornish movement, need to rise to the challenge to become just that “army” which Adam has described.

Faith in the people of Cornwall

I am proud to be the leader of Mebyon Kernow.

Ours is a political party that unashamedly seeks to give political expression to Cornish nationhood … and to secure a better deal for all the people of Cornwall.

But I do not want us to be defensive in any way or to simply practice a politics of grievance. 

Because I have faith in the people of Cornwall.

I look out across our fine nation and I see men and women of heart and spirit, of conscience, of talent, of invention, of ingenuity, of great common sense ... who together, have the skills and the passion, and the where-with-all, to build a better Cornwall … but we need to wrestle political power from the deadhand of Westminster to give us the tools to do the job.

Remembering the fallen of the First World War

Thousands of people attended the recent Remembrance Day commemorations across Cornwall and I was honoured to be able to lay a wreath at my local war memorial in St Enoder Churchtown (above).

It is right that we remember the dead from all conflicts but, as we continue to mark the centenary of the First World War, it is especially important that we learn more about the war which engulfed the globe between 1914 and 1918 and led to the tragic deaths of millions, leaving no community untouched.

2016 is particularly poignant as it marks the one-hundred-year anniversary of the Battle of the Somme, one of the bloodiest battles of the whole conflict, which took place between 1st July and 18th November 1916. Forever etched on the consciousness of a continent, it also marked an intensification of the Great War and a resultant rise in the number of casualties.

In my home area of Fraddon, Indian Queens, St Columb Road and Summercourt, some sixty men, mostly clay workers and farm labourers, did not return home from WW1.

Thirteen lost their lives in 1916. Six of these men were killed in action on the Western Front, with Frederick Langdon (Fraddon), Henry Francis Osborne (Penhale) and John Thomas Andrew (Trevarren) buried alongside thousands of their comrades in France and Belgium. No known grave survives for the other three: George Bullock (St Columb Road), Basil Henry Gregor (Fraddon) and William Nicholls (Retew), and they are remembered on the Thiepval Memorial. A colossal structure, it includes the names of over 72,000 British and Commonwealth soldiers who died in the Somme sector.

According to his “medal card” a seventh soldier, Samuel John May (Fraddon) succumbed to an unnamed disease contracted when on active service in France. Having returned to the UK, he passed away and is buried in his home parish in the churchtown at St Enoder.

By 1916, the conflict was increasingly global with diseases, including malaria, also taking a terrible toll.

Two local men from the Summercourt area, Arthur Carhart and Samuel Gill, died in India, while Arthur Randolph Kendall (Fraddon) and Walter Vincent Trenerry (Summercourt) died in Iraq. Arthur Kendall was a prisoner at the time of his death. Harry Osborn, a former resident of St Enoder Parish, who had lived in South Africa for many years, also died from malaria and is buried in Tanzania (formerly known as German East Africa).

Closer to home, Philip Charles Rundle (Indian Queens) died whilst based at the HMS Vivid training unit at Devonport. He was aged only 17 and the cause of death was recorded as pneumonia. He is buried in Bodmin, close to where his parents were living in 1916.

Each year, as the names of the fallen are remembered, it is important that we task ourselves to discover much more about who these men were, what they did in their lives, what happened to them, and the consequences of their deaths for their families and friends.

[This will be my article in this week’s Cornish Guardian].

Government response to Cornish language petition is "shameful"

The Department for Communities and Local Government yesterday issued its response to the petition, signed by over 10,000 people, to reinstate funding for the Cornish language.

The extremely short statement was as follows and has been widely condemned:

“The Government has provided Cornwall Council with substantial spending power to allocate resources to their local priorities, including the Cornish language.

“The Government has always been clear that its funding of some £650,000 since 2010 to support the development of the Cornish language was time-limited, and that the Council should seek alternative sources in order to place it on a more sustainable basis.

“Cornwall Council has a core spending power of £1.7 billion over four years from which they can allocate the necessary resources to local priorities, including the development the Cornish language, if they wish.”

The response is frankly shameful and it is clear that central government is not being truthful with the people of Cornwall.

It has previously been confirmed that a five year programme of funding was actually in the 2015 “devolution deal” until removed by central government just before the document was finalised. The leader of Cornwall Council, John Pollard, has since told the local media that he had been “reassured” by the DCLG that the removal of funding from the document “was a technical matter” and “that another funding route would be identified.”

A very measured statement has been published by Cllr Loveday Jenkin who, as well as being MK’s Deputy Leader, is the Chairman of Kowethas an Yeth Kernewek.

“The Government statement that the funding for the language over the previous 5 years of between £120,000 and £250,000 a year (total £650,000) was a time-limited commitment is not the understanding of the Cornish language community from either this Government or previous ones. This amount of money has enabled the voluntary sector to develop to meet the increasing demand for Cornish language services across Cornwall. Most of these services are supplied from the voluntary sector so small amounts of public sector funding are very efficiently spent.

“The Cornish language community are aghast at the misunderstanding of the Westminster government in relation to its responsibilities in respect of Cornish under Parts 1 and 2 of the European Charter for Regional and Minority Languages 2002 and the Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities 2014.

“Previous discussions with local MPs have emphasised that the respect and promotion of the Cornish language is a UK State responsibility which has not been devolved to Cornwall Council in its entirety. Unless and until it is devolved to a Cornwall wide governing body with sufficient powers to cover the relevant agencies to ensure respect and promotion of the language at all levels of government the Cornish language community consider that the Government is in breach of their responsibilities under these international treaties.”

“So much for all those Tory promises”

It has been a pretty hectic week and I have only just realised that I hadn’t posted my latest article in the Cornish Guardian, which was published on 9th November under the above title. It was as follows:

When the United Kingdom Government signed off the so-called Cornwall Devolution Deal in 2015, it claimed that it was "historic" and a “major step” in their commitment to “extend opportunity to every corner of our country.”

The Prime Minister David Cameron said the deal would put power in the hands of local people and talked about the “fantastic potential that Cornwall holds.”

The deal also included reference to “Cornwall’s rich and unique heritage, including its historic revived language and passionate communities.” It even noted the importance of the Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities.

At that time, I saw it somewhat differently from the press office of the Conservative Party.

Through Mebyon Kernow, I welcomed the fact that devolution was being talked about but criticized the very limited scope of the deal. I described it as unambitious, and also hit out at the growing influence of unelected and unaccountable entities – such as the Local Enterprise Partnership – which have no democratic legitimacy.

Some two years on (Friday 21st October 2016) the Communities Minister, Sajid Javid, was at an event in Exeter titled “South West Growth Summit.”

Speaking in the context of a potential “devolution deal” for the 17 local authorities in Devon and Somerset, he branded the previously “historic” Cornwall Devolution Deal as “not ambitious.” He made reference to the fact that the deal did not include any new money (even though it was Conservatives who refused various requests from the unitary authority for additional investment) and went on to tell the attendees from those two counties: “What’s the point of going down that route?”

In his speech, he disparagingly added that “some in Cornwall see their county as distinct from the rest of the region, a special case that should be handled separately from everywhere east of the Tamar.” He linked this statement to a few more comments about rivalries and tensions in the wider South West, before adding “that whole attitude has to change.

So much for the Conservative’s promises and their (threadbare) commitment to Cornwall, Cornish distinctiveness and our “rich and unique heritage.”

I can cope with Tory politicians contradicting each other and showing one and all that their spin does reflect any reality. But I am worried that central government seems to be, once again, looking to promote a “large south west” model for future governance which would see Cornwall’s distinct needs marginalised – just as the UK Government is pushing forward with a boundary review which disrespects Cornwall’s historic border.