Cornwall

as considered, or not, within

The

United Kingdom Report

on the Council of Europe

Framework Convention

for the Protection of National Minorities.

The Response by Tyr-Gwyr-Gweryn

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Received by Tyr-Gwyr-Gweryn on Saturday 24th April 1999

Deadline for responses to the Report at or before Friday 7th May 1999

Dispatched first class recorded delivery on Tuesday 4th May 1999

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As we have seen so often before, the bureaucratic machinations of the State entraps Cornish Rights in its unrelenting and dismissive grip and we are excluded from any further consideration by a single facile, and misrepresentative, comment found in a single paragraph within Part 2 of the Report within that Report's consideration of the Framework Convention's Article 3. The comment (para 48) reads as follows:

"The Government has received representations from a number of individuals from Cornwall, including MPs and MEPs seeking recognition of the Cornish as a national minority under the Convention. We do not consider that the people of Cornwall constitute a 'national minority'. But we are not aware of any rights granted under the Convention which are being denied to any individual in Cornwall."

A previous paragraph (47) justifies the inclusion of the other Celtic nations thus:

"Case law has determined that the Scots, Irish and Welsh, who originate from what were formerly independent nations, are defined as a racial group by virtue of their national origins. We have, therefore, included in this Report details of the measures taken to maintain and develop the language and culture of these communities. "

We must construe from this that the State has no intention of taking any measures to maintain and develop the language and culture of the Cornish people and which, by implication, is an affirmation of its continuation of those policies which deny to us our inalienable rights. It is interesting that the Cornish people are not considered to "constitute a national minority" when the term has not even been defined by the State.

We may, presumably, continue to pursue the seemingly impossible task of decolonising our Cornish history as some self-fulfilling compensatory mechanism to challenge the State, its misinformation, and its genocide by stealth of the Cornish people? During which time our Cornishness and our people are further 'institutionally cleansed' from all consciousness and territory by those institutions which will superficially rubber-stamp the proposed Report on the Framework Convention. It seems almost hypocritical, but not surprising, that this latest attack on Cornish aspirations comes from the Racial Equality Unit of the Home Office. This response in no way debunks the concepts of race or racial equality contained within the document but questions the legitimacy of the creators of the Report and their decision regarding the Cornish people whilst clearly in ignorance of Cornish 'Case law' - whatever that term may mean!

There has clearly been no motivation from the State, or its representatives, to question why the Cornish seek - and have consistently sought - what should have been given freely by right. Just arrogant presumption that we must be wrong about our own self-identification. As we saw in 1978, within the Commons debate on the proposed European Parliamentary Constituencies (4th December) that the Cornish objections, some 25% of all representations, were marginalised by referring to these as, "The greatest number of individual representations on one subject - that is, 200 - was against the inclusion of Plymouth in the Cornwall constituency". This current draft Report seems content to misrepresent the Cornish submissions in a similar way in that Cornish organisations, together with the representative remit of elected members, are reduced simply to, "from a number of individuals from Cornwall". That, frankly, is not good enough and is plainly dishonest! This process of marginalisation is consistent with the trend of subsequent Public Inquiries held since 1978 into Cornish objections to sharing a Member of the European Parliament with the English city of Plymouth, where the Inquiry has systematically increased the geographical participation at such inquiries to ever larger non-Cornish interests.

Whilst not privy to any of the other earlier submissions to the Home Office from Cornwall, the remark in paragraph 48, "But we are not aware of any rights granted under the Convention which are being denied to any individual in Cornwall.", is somewhat bizarre. The comments contained in the submission by this organisation to yourselves and dated 1st February 1999, pointed out a number of rights which are being denied to the Cornish people and which we feel can only be addressed by representations to a non-UK commission and are a suppression of rights which still exist whether the State recognises our existence or not. The necessity for the State to recognise Cornish Rights is to take the initiative in ensuring a reversal of the many policies which exist and which are destroying the integrity of both our territory and our people.

On the assumption that the original submission was, for whatever reason, considered inadmissible - not having received any comment at all upon it! - I shall resubmit that document as an appendix to this response on behalf of "Tyr-Gwyr-Gweryn", together with a restatement below of some of the articles of the Framework Convention which this organisation accuses the State of breaching, with regard to Cornish People and Cornish Rights.

It has been the considered opinion of this organisation, and many others, that the concept of national minorities within Europe related to the minority nations suppressed within the formation of the imperial European States, Britain et al., and in Fourth World parlance amounts to some 100 historical and cultural European nations Many of which have retained their national identity (i.e. Scotland, Wales Brittany etc.) but others (e.g. such as Cornwall and Scania) which have been totally suppressed and which now seek their rightful place on the world's stage. There has been no racial connotations within the framing of the Framework Convention and in our opinion were never a consideration with such aspects of humanity being covered in numerous other protocols on Human Rights whereas historical and cultural nations have, hitherto, been ignored unless the issue has been forcibly put onto the agenda.

The failure of the imperial European States to develop a consensus on the definition of 'National Minorities' further affirms that it is these failed political accommodations which pose the problem of 'instability' rather than matters of fundamental human rights or those specifically related to extreme right-wing racialism. This view is reinforced by the Council of Europe's own attempted definition of national minority - rejected by the Heads of State - as do also its comment regarding aspects of regional autonomy. The consideration within the preamble of the Framework Convention of "Being resolved to protect within their respective territories the existence of national minorities" - nowhere referred to within the Draft Report - has neither relevance nor meaning unless construed as applying to the historic and cultural nations of Europe of which the Cornish are most certainly one.

We believe that the Framework Convention was conceived in order to protect the rights of regions such as Cornwall and that its alignment to the more emotive concepts of race has discredited the principles enshrining its creation and its link to a sincere development of a Europe of Regions. There is a definite need to provide clear and unambiguous definitions to show the relationship between national minorities and the nation to which they are equated or denied. Misrepresentation of the latter leads to confused considerations regarding the former and it is clear that the State has sought continually to adopt for itself the status of Nation and that this is often misrepresented as a Nation-State. The Final Report should clarify the contextual use of Nation to enable subsequent interpretation of what is really being said. The convenient but, nevertheless, fallacious presentation of a 'British Nation' ignores that this can only be achieved by suppression of the minority nations - an Imperial doctrine - within the multi-national but Anglo-centric British State. Which suppression, as far as Cornwall is concerned, is absolute.

In Breach of:

The following comment refers to some of the more obvious articles of the Framework Convention which this organisation considers the United Kingdom Government to be in breach of with regard to the inalienable Rights of the Cornish people. It is obvious that the Government, by not recognising the Cornish as a National Minority, will consider it inappropriate to afford any form of political accommodation towards Cornish Rights. It is also obvious that for the Cornish to obtain this recognition that we being forced into the disproportionate expense of pursuing legal actions against the State or its agents or seeking some other mechanisms to force the issue into the open. It should be noted that the Duchy has recently achieved Objective One status for European funding. This reflects the failed economic policies in Cornwall, deliberate or otherwise, by successive Administrations both inside and outside of Cornwall. The Cornish people have been kept poor and ignorant of their history. This will change.

Paragraph 2 within the Introduction to the Draft Report identifies who qualifies to be covered under the Framework Convention and why:-

2. "National Minority" is not a legally defined term within the UK. Our report is based on the definition of racial group as set out in the Race Relations Act 1976 which defines a racial group as "a group of persons defined by colour, race, nationality (including citizenship) or ethnic or national origins." This includes our ethnic minority communities (or visible minorities) and the Scots, Irish and Welsh, who are defined as a racial group by virtue of their national origins. It should be stressed, however, that these historic national identities within the UK are in no way ethnically exclusive. Members of ethnic minority communities, just as much as the rest of the UK population, may feel an identity with one or other of the UK's constituent parts. Being Welsh, for example, does not depend upon being white.

This organisation repeats its concerns that the Government equates 'national minority' to a 'racial group' and we sincerely believe that there should be some qualification of word definitions to remove the ambiguity which exists by artificial word associations. Associations designed to lead the reader away from what we believe to be the original principals of the Framework Convention in that 'National Minority' refers to minority nations within the multinational State. Apart from relative size, and of course strength, the aspects of history, geography, culture and constitution which identifies the Irish, Welsh and Scots as a historic national identity apply equally to the Cornish.

At the beginning of the Tudor Period, circa 1500, Polydore Vergil wrote:-

"The whole country of Britain is divided into four parts, whereof the one is inhabited by Englishmen, the other of Scots, the third of Welshmen, the fourth of Cornish people…which all differ among themselves either in tongue, either in manners, or else in laws and ordinances."

There has always existed amongst the Cornish people the knowledge that they were Cornish and not English. Yet we are the only indigenous group denied the right to put this on a 'British' passport. If we are to be denied this right then someone must tell us by what legal chicanery this came about. The right of the Cornish to be politically identified as 'Cornish' (apart from our own self-identification) and the fact that our territory - the oldest identified territory in Britain - is distinct from England, is enshrined within the creation of the Duchy of Cornwall. This Cornish constitutional institution is being suppressed by the State Parliament and has been a significant factor in the suppression of both external and internal perceptions of our Cornish Identity.

Part 2 of the Draft Report deals with the individual Articles of the Framework Convention and states how the United Kingdom Government deals with the requirements. We have extracted some of the Articles and their associated comments and would ask that you further consider them with regard to Cornish Rights in relationship to your comments regarding Cornish Rights in paragraph 48.

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Article 3

1 Every person belonging to a national minority shall have the right freely to choose to be treated or not to be treated as such and no disadvantage shall result from this choice or from the exercise of the rights which are connected to that choice.

2 Persons belonging to national minorities may exercise the rights and enjoy the freedoms flowing from the principles enshrined in the present framework Convention individually as well as in community with others.

This organisations comments on the exclusion of the Cornish People has already been covered above and there is only one other comment at this point with respect to Draft Report paragraph 45.

45. "National Minority" is not a legally defined term within the UK. Our minority population is mainly made up of 'ethnic minorities' or 'visible minorities'. UK anti-discrimination legislation is designed to protect ethnic minorities because this has been the pattern of discrimination.

The Cornish people reside world-wide but all see their homeland as Cornwall. Because of many policies, it is clear that the Cornish are not only a minority within the United Kingdom but also within their own historic territory. If it is considered to be legitimate to assign ethnicity to groups of indigenous British peoples and to further identify them as a 'racial group', why is it legitimate to exclude the Cornish people from the same treatment or are we officially classified as second rate people?

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Article 5

1 The Parties undertake to promote the conditions necessary for persons belonging to national minorities to maintain and develop their culture, and to preserve the essential elements of their identity, namely their religion, language, traditions and cultural heritage.

Paragraph 79 of the Draft Report states:-

79. The Government believes that the richness and diversity that this country draws from its ethnic minority communities has made Britain a stronger nation. We value and recognise the contribution that our ethnic minority populations have made, and continue to make, to this country - economically, socially and culturally.

Contrary to official propaganda, Britain is not a nation but is a legally constituted multinational State made up of the historic nations of this island. Whilst it is possible to accept the context of the reference being made with regard to the value and recognition of the contribution made by ethnic minorities, we feel that a further qualification should be added. This should state, and justify, a comment to the effect that such is true unless the contribution is by the Cornish people where neither value nor recognition is given.

Paragraph 80 indicates that sensitivity should be offered towards the needs and concerns of our ethnic communities:-

80. The Government has an important role in ensuring that the needs and concerns of our ethnic minority communities are recognised and respect for differences between and within different cultures is encouraged throughout society. Our aim is to enable members of ethnic minorities to play a full part in national life, with all the benefits and responsibilities which that entails, while still being able to maintain their own culture, traditions, language and values.

The ambiguity of the word nation is again contained within the phrase 'national life' and one must ask, to which nation within the State does the phrase refer to? With regard to the Cornish Nation, there has been a wilful disregard for the needs and concerns of the Cornish people. Not least within this current phase of consultation. The paragraph therefore needs the same qualification as the previous one.

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Article 5

2 Without prejudice to measures taken in pursuance of their general integration policy, the Parties shall refrain from policies or practices aimed at assimilation of persons belonging to national minorities against their will and shall protect these persons from any action aimed at such assimilation.

The development of the Imperial English State (alias the British State) has seen a multiplicity of mechanisms to assimilate the Cornish people and are too numerous to mention for the purposes of this reply. Whilst it may be argued that there is no mass reaction to this forced assimilation, we would contend that this has been achieved up to now by the State removing those aspects of identity and political consciousness which would facilitate the confidence to take on the State. Any study of the Duchy over the past, say, fifty years would reveal a progressive raising of the Cornish Consciousness - despite the intransigent and corrosive influence of the State.

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Article 12

1 The Parties shall, where appropriate, take measures in the fields of education and research to foster knowledge of the culture, history, language and religion of their national minorities and of the majority.

2 In this context the Parties shall inter alia provide adequate opportunities for teacher training and access to textbooks, and facilitate contacts among students and teachers of different communities.

3 The Parties undertake to promote equal opportunities for access to education at all levels for persons belonging to national minorities.

Article 12 covers the requirements where this organisation considers that the State has failed the Cornish people in the most significant and profound way. It is one of the mechanisms alluded to above and is a principal policy of the genocide by stealth being implemented against the Cornish people. There is no accommodation for Cornish subjects for any of the academic disciplines within either the educational establishment, curriculum or media. The absence of any Cornish focus has removed all perceptions of the Cornish people from the minds of both opinion-creators and decision-makers.

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Article 14

1 The Parties undertake to recognise that every person belonging to a national minority has the right to learn his or her minority language.

2 In areas inhabited by persons belonging to national minorities traditionally or in substantial numbers, if there is sufficient demand, the Parties shall endeavour to ensure, as far as possible and within the framework of their education systems, that persons belonging to those minorities have adequate opportunities to being taught the minority language or for receiving instruction in this language.

We have no argument with regard to what should constitute the official language of the State but there is much that can and should be done in facilitating knowledge and awareness of the Cornish language. Whilst it must be conceded that the need for communicating in our national language may be, at this time, small there are many aspects of the language which should be pursued at the official and formal level. We only draw attention to this article as being one where official recognition would raise the profile of the language and facilitate a focus on the many aspects where this would benefit the broader Cornish curriculum.

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Article 16

The Parties shall refrain from measures which alter the proportions of the population in areas inhabited by persons belonging to national minorities and are aimed at restricting the rights and freedoms flowing from the principles enshrined in the present framework Convention.

We find the treatment of this Article by the State as quite bizarre and feel that there should be a qualifying statement as to how it may be interpreted as specifically relating to the parliamentary constituencies! If the Article had made some reference to the changing of geographical areas in order to effect the proportions of population then there could be some logic to the interpretation. The focus of the Article, surely, is regarding population proportions within an existing area.

The Article, as seen from the Cornish perspective, relates to the latter interpretation and we would present Article 16 as an Article under which the State breaches Cornish Rights. We see part of the Protection of the Cornish National Minority as paralleling the State's right to impose an immigration policy [what's good for the goose, is good for the gander!] and that the imposed policy of unsustainably high house-building programme within the Duchy fails to recognise, deliberately or otherwise, the cultural trauma which can, and does, prevail. The consequence of such a policy can only have a detrimental effect upon the Cornish Identity and this needs to be controlled. The population of Cornwall has increased by approximately 35-40% since 1951, mainly from the affluent south-east of England bringing with them their colonial attitudes and urban values.

At a political level this change of population proportions has had a significant influence upon the political demography of the Duchy and is seen by this organisation as part of the process of marginalisation, to use a euphemism, of the Cornish people. This process is further exacerbated by the introduction of proportional representation for the European Parliament and which leaves Cornwall totally marginalised within a larger non-Cornish geographical area. It is ironic that the European Community and its concept of a Europe of Regions has presented, since 1978, an opportunity for the State to breach Article 16 and that the ultimate breach is to be implemented in the year that the State became a signatory to it.

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Conclusion

We feel that the current consultation, because of its limitations already discussed above, has not reached the full spectrum of Cornish opinion and that given a broader approach and a more appropriate time-scale would have allowed the Report to take a less dismissive approach to Cornish Rights. We can only hope that the Final Report will include a more sincere reference to the Rights of the Cornish people and provide an opening for further discussion?

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E J Pengelly - Coordinator "Tyr-Gwyr-Gweryn"