Western Morning News article
Tuesday 29 August 2006

When it comes to examining circumstances surrounding the creation of a flag for Devon, two features stand out as warranting further investigation. Firstly, why should the supposedly non-political, non-partisan, BBC take such a pro-active role in creating and promoting the flag? Secondly, although the flag is said to be non-political, with one promoter disarmingly describing it as "a simple, honest flag" (WMN July 26th 2006), evidence to the contrary leads many to question this. The idea for a Devon Flag came from Australian-dwelling Paul Turner in a 24th June 2002 BBC Internet chatroom proposal to Lancashire's Bob Burns. Previous to this, both men had been discussing their wish to create a Devon Celtic movement to rival that of the Cornish. On the day the proposal was made, a BBC employee, who had been monitoring the dialogue, contacted both men to suggest that the BBC would be willing to host a competition to design the flag. At the same time the BBC suggested that Mr Burns and Mr Turner might like to adopt pseudonyms during the web debate.

Using names like Aberplym and Dartmoor Celt, Mr Burns and Mr Turner went on to discuss the problem of getting publicity for their Celtic Devon initiative. On August 23 2002 the same BBC employee notified them that a BBC-hosted flag voting page was up and running, and that the BBC was looking for someone to come on to BBC regional television to talk about the need for a Devon flag.

With the help of the BBC the Devon flag is now fully established. Numerous purpose-built BBC websites vigorously promote and market the flag, and pro-active BBC staff can often be observed interjecting into private BBC web room discussions to notify contributors where the flag can be purchased. BBC Southwest was the first public authority to fly the flag at the 2003 Devon County Show and BBC online editor Jonathan Duffy states that the BBC will not be happy until every sandcastle in Devon has a Devon Flag on top.

On June4 2004 it was reported that the Devon Flag is to be associated with St Petroc. It was said that the flag's mystic quality arose after Dartmouth's Kevin Pyne attributed his 2003 recovery from a serious illness to St Petroc. The Devon Flag website simply states that the flag was dedicated to St Petroc following a "personal request". It was therefore a hidden blessing for Mr Pyne that Mr Turner's earlier June 24 2002 chatroom proposal to create a Devon flag also included the suggestion that the flag be dedicated to St Petroc.

Messrs Turner, Burns and Pyne are founder members of the "non-political" Devon Flag Group (DFG). Mr Pyne regularly writes to local papers denuding Cornish distinctiveness and promoting his idea that the "Westcountry" should be unified. Mr Burns and Mr Turner are avid contributors to various web-based discussion groups.

Their postings reveal that both want political devolution for Devon, but accept that a more realistic option is to call for a "four county" region based on the 2000-year-old extinct Celtic province of Dumnonia. To this end, DFG members are actively and vigorously disassociating Devon from its immediate English heritage.

They are also engaged in the process of denuding Cornish distinctiveness whilst simultaneously highlighting, in a selective way that is often creative, ancient cultural ties with Celtic Cornwall and part of Somerset.

Mr Turner has devised various Celtic-orientated websites that not only portray the people of Devon as victims of a "suppressed" history and culture, but also equates their situation to that which existed in Ireland, Scotland and Wales. His websites highlight racial differences like black hair and discuss genetic theory to "prove" that real Devonians are a different breed to the Saxon/English. Those enthused both by Mr Burns' chat room rhetoric and Mr Turner's websites speak of "Celtic Devon rising from Saxon ashes" and of Devon gaining admission into the Celtic Congress and Celtic League of Nations.

Bob Burns is on record as denuding the integrity of the English Flag. One reason for his dismissive attitude towards the Cross of St George is the fact that the saint was not born in England. Yet Mr Turner's proposal that the Devon Flag be associated with the non-English born St Petroc was accepted by the DFG.

Remarkably, the Saxon St Boniface, who was actually born in Devon and is described by historians as being "the greatest Englishman of his time", escaped the group's attention. When it comes to dedicating the flag to a cause, some might ask why the previously pro-active BBC stood by as two or three people set themselves up as sole arbitrators. In his various web-based discussions, Mr Burns rejects out-of-hand any evidence indicating that Devon was an English shire, or that Devon was ever an integral part of Saxon Wessex. Documents like the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, Burghal Hideage, Assers Life of Alfred and The Laws of William the Conqueror, which all reveal historic cultural and political differences between Celtic Cornwall and Saxon England, are summarily dismissed. When asked, Mr Burns and Mr Turner decline to describe themselves as English, preferring instead to label themselves Devonian, British. To gain wider acceptance for their stance, both men are actively inventing, and promoting as if it had some genuinely attestable historical foundation, a "Devon language".

Validation for their actions comes from the highly speculative utterings of one Joseph Biddulph, a publisher who guesses what languages might have been like prior to the coming of the English. Hence Mr Biddulph's supposed re-creations of Mercian, Northumbrian and Danelaw Danish.

In 1987 Mr Biddulph asserted that something called "South West Brythonic" might be created by taking bits from both English influenced Cornish and French influenced Breton. He then suggests that it can be given a Devon flavour by incorporating local place name suffixes like Cott and Combe, which, incidentally, are much in evidence beyond Devon.

This was all Mr Turner needed to create the "Devon Language" brand, uplift a website and on it claim, without providing any justification, that the likes of Pennycomequick in Plymouth is actually Celtic, and that the supposed 2000-year-old "Devon language" was spoken well into the Middle Ages. Although Mr Turner's "Biddulphian" greeting for 2004 was a random mix of Cornish and Breton, enthusiasts now speak of getting the "Devon language" into schools in Devon.

The fact that Mr Biddulph describes himself as a mere publisher is conveniently overlooked by Mr Turner, whose various websites describe Mr Biddulph as a linguist. Also overlooked is the fact that Mr Biddulph speculates that his "South West Brythonic" existed from the Tamar to Berkshire. Mr Biddulph himself provides no evidence to indicate why his "language" would not have been spoken in Cornwall, which was an integral part of Dumnonia, and Mr Turner gives no reason as to why his random extrapolations should be called exclusively Devonish.

Perhaps the situation is best summed up by the fact that online, self-edited, encyclopaedia Wikipedia rejected Mr Turner's first attempt to have the "Devon language" or Biddulphian, referenced within it.

This followed academic claims that it was a "conlang" like Klingon. Only after linguists became worn down by Mr Burns and Mr Turner conducting an unforgiving, repetitive onslaught, did Wikipedia finally accept Mr Turner's revised entry. For those interested, the whole debate is archived on the site. Wikipedia does inform, however, that conlangs, or constructed languages, "are associated with constructed worlds".

The reason this information is brought to your attention is twofold. Firstly, the BBC has made no effort to promote the proposed Somerset Flag, does nothing to publicise or promote the ancient Cornish flag, but adopts an almost fanatical approach to a Devon Flag.

BBC licence-payers should therefore be aware of what the BBC is doing with their money. For instance, some might call for parity of treatment, while others may wish to ask the BBC whether or not engendering, promoting and advertising embryonic separatist ideas and products conforms to the spirit of the BBC Charter and other guidelines. Secondly, those who conceived of, and now promote, the Devon Flag should reveal their true political and cultural allegiances.

Then those who choose to purchase and fly the Devon Flag can make their own judgement as to where autonomy ends and nationalism begins.