During the week commencing Monday 4th June, a delegation of the Advisory Committee on the Framework Convention were in the United Kingdom to meet the various interested parties to discuss the United Kingdom's Compliance Report. Included below are some additional comments submitted to the delegation and intended to summarise the Tyr-Gwyr-Gweryn concerns. It is anticipated that the Advisory Committee will have formulated its 'opinion' on the United Kingdom Compliance Report by the end of the year [2001].
Additional Comment by Tyr-Gwyr-Gweryn
to support the call for the recognition
of the Cornish people
as an indigenous national group
within the peoples of the multinational
United Kingdom State
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Submitted to the Delegation
of the
Council of Europe's Advisory Committee
on the
Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities
at a meeting convened
at the Strand Palace Hotel,
London
on Monday 4th June 2001 at 10:30 hrs
The Context: In order to set the context for the following comment there needs to be an understanding that our claims for an accommodation of our Cornish Rights have been consistently stated throughout the period of the 20th century.
During this period there has been a persistent political culture which has successfully created an increasing awareness of our Cornish Identity to both Cornish and English people and which on many issues has sought, through the democratic process, to bring about changes in attitudes to Cornish Rights. This renaissance of our Cornish political and cultural awareness has prevailed despite the existence of an alien establishment and media. The fact that Census2001 (April 2001) has included a question to record Cornish ethnicity illustrates the changing mood within our country.
At no time during this period - other than the aforementioned Census data collection - has the State, or media, conceded anything to Cornish Rights, given reasons for rejecting our claims, nor initiated any investigation into why we felt we should be treated differently to our English neighbours. In fact, any investigation into the historical basis of our claims and the processes that we object to would clearly show that the processes of marginalisation - this organisation would claim this to be a process of genocide - of the Cornish people, have accelerated.
This is a fact not lost, bizarrely, on the Nazi propaganda machine during the 1930s as the following extract from the Mebyon Kernow [Sons of Cornwall] submission to the Kilbrandon Commission on the Constitution, 1972, explains:
"In the late 1930s, when the outside world was becoming increasingly vociferous over the Nazi's treatment of the German Jews, German newspapers, fed by the Nazi propagandists, tried to counter criticism from British sources by claiming that'the English should be the last to complain, since they had persecuted the Cornish from time immemorial.' "
Previous documents submitted by this organisation, to the compilers of the United Kingdom Compliance Report (UKCR) and the Council of Europe Advisory Committee on the Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities (FCPNM) already challenges the United Kingdom Imperial State on its failure to view the subject of 'national minorities' in a more objective way and also to get to grips with the Cornish problem. We shall not go away! We are 'the Cornish people' and deserve the right to a 'Cornish' future within our 'Cornish' territory.
ARTICLE 3
Irrespective of whether or not the United Kingdom considers the people of Cornwall to constitute a 'national minority' (clause 48) - a term it chooses not to define! - we do, in fact, exist both in history and in our own perceptions of ourselves but also enshrined within the Royal Duchy of Cornwall. It is for the United Kingdom Government to state and substantiate its reasons for arbitrarily removing us from history so that we may be in a position to challenge such intransigence. Without the external protection offered by Article 3 of the Framework Convention we are absolutely without a democratic recourse to justice. If the State decides that we are 'not Cornish' then the State must also give us definitive reasons why?, when?, how?
Given that concerns over Human Rights have been centre stage for many decades and many Acts and Protocols have been established to protect these Rights, what is the significant difference of principle which has inspired the formulation of the Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities? The Cornish people have needs which are not being provided by the State. We are being forcibly assimilated into the cultural and political awareness of the English people by State and Media coercion and the operation of economic policies which simultaneously encourages English immigration into our country and the 'voluntary' (sic) self-exile of our working population.
Clause 52 of the UKCR makes a reference to the fact that the Office of National Statistics (ONS) proposed :
"to include an ethnic group question in the Northern Ireland 2001 Census".
What it could also have said was that a similar ethnic group question was included within the England 2001 Census to record those who were 'Cornish'. The first occasion ever of collecting any official Cornish-based statistical data! There was, however, no parallel consideration on collecting information on the numbers of people who speak Cornish - our national language - or for identifying Cornwall as country of birth. Why are these questions not universally included within the Census throughout the whole of the United Kingdom?
ARTICLE 4
There is much anecdotal evidence - and evidence which individuals do not wish to make 'a fuss' over - to suggest that there is discrimination against 'the Cornish' but until we have the means to officially monitor and identify this then it is difficult to take this forward. External writers such as C. E. Vulliamy F.R.G.S. in "Unknown Cornwall" (1925) can be accused of arrogantly establishing a particular stereotype of the Cornish people:
"The Cornish peasant has a bluntness and a restful depth of ignorance... ...a Mid African simplicity. His presence helps you to realise that you have travelled into a far and unfamiliar land" .
The acknowledgement of the Cornish people and our Cornish Legitimacy, would immediately bring into focus the existing, and many, failures of the State to "take due account of the specific conditions of the persons belonging to" the Cornish national minority.
ARTICLE 5
Because the Cornish are not recognised by the State then the State - in a flawed mood of denial about the Cornish nation - considers there can be no requirement to accommodate what does not exist. This is at odds with the reality of Cornwall and Cornish aspirations and is bizarrely hypocritical. The United Kingdom Government is the victim of its own success. Its ignorance is not the fault of the Cornish people.
The conditions to maintain and develop Cornish culture and identity in Cornwall are non-existent. The protection of our language, traditions and cultural heritage are left to the particular interest groups and reduced to the stigma of a 'club' activity within an environment which is alien and aggressively hostile.
The United Kingdom Government has just rejected the inclusion of the Cornish language within its scope for complying with the Council of Europe Charter for Regional or Minority Languages (clause 83 UKCR) despite an Independent Report, commissioned by the Government, that recommended its inclusion. There is much that could and should be done in promoting an awareness and understanding of this aspect of our cultural heritage - whether in understanding the place in which we live or as a means of communicating thoughts and ideas - which has been seriously damaged by this further act of denial and which, in turn, will lead to further acts of discrimination against the use of our national language.
Like Wales (clause 88 UKCR) we have a Cornish Gorsedd (Gorseth Kernow) and an Eisteddfod (Cornish Esethvos) but which receives no official support. The Cornish Gorseth - established in 1928 and based on the Welsh format , is closely associated with the Gorseddow of our sister countries of Wales and Brittany, and promotes the fact of Cornish cultural traditions and language and also that Cornwall is a Nation.
We consider that the United Kingdom, whether it recognises the Cornish as a national minority or not, is seriously in breach of Article 5 of the FCPNM because it refuses to acknowledge that the processes of State control over the Cornish people are detrimental to the rights of the Cornish people to be 'Cornish' and true to their distinct history and geography of place. Its final comment in Clause 92 of the UKCR - for the Cornish, at least - has been set aside in the State's pursuance of an English South West Region
ARTICLE 6
The total absence of any Cornish-based curriculum within Cornish schools must be identified as the single most destructive process implemented against Cornish Rights in that it destroys the basis upon which we build identity, namely, knowledge of place and history and creates a schism within families.
During the consultation phase, in 1990, the National Curriculum Council refused to acknowledge the need to specifically identify the history and geography of the Cornish people within the proposed National Curriculum. This perpetuates the lie that Cornwall is 'in England' and that the Cornish people are 'English'. Consequently, whilst some aspects of the Cornish historical experience may, possibly, be included within the curriculum by some enlightened teachers, there is no requirement to identify and distinguish the specific attributes of our Cornish Legitimacy. There is no requirement to 'tell the truth about Cornwall' (clause 97 UKCR) but only an opportunity to look at the immediate environs of a school or within the repressive context of a South West English Region. Any possibility of consolidating the Cornish identity or instilling 'pride of place' - the ingredients of a national identity - are denied to us. I see this as a formula of genocide and as a catalyst for generating anti-English feelings as seen by certain examples of graffiti.
There are occasional lapses of English Imperial domination within the media which serves the Cornish people, and it is possible to feel the immense power that the media holds over how people perceive themselves. This occasional lapse also reveals how repressive the media (clause 101 UKCR) truly is when it deals with Cornwall.
The failure of successive United Kingdom Governments to acknowledge the existence of the Cornish people has fuelled a media which is knowingly and aggressively alien to Cornish aspirations and which in turn, as opinion-creators, have a disparate influence upon public perceptions and whose operating platform is now firmly entrenched within an amorphous English South West/Westcountry mind set. A recent series of unrelated television programmes will well illustrate the concerns which derive from the media.
In these examples the focus is on the Independent television operation of 'Westcountry Television'. This is an English company, which many of us see as dubiously obtaining the franchise (because of its name?) to manipulate and create a new South West/Westcountry identity to complement the State's moves towards establishing an English South West Region and the forced assimilation of the Cornish people within it. The unnecessary supplanting of the epithet 'Cornish' with that of 'Westcountry' and programmes such as the 'Westcountry' Quiz all complement each other in insidiously denying our Cornish existence
There have been a series of two 60 minute 'independent' programmes within the recent past [April/May 2001] entitled "Kernow" and which have - unusually for the English media! - dealt objectively and excellently with the Cornish political situation in a way which should have focussed some minds positively on Cornwall. Yet within a couple of days, a midday news report, looking at the bad architecture of the English cities of Exeter and Plymouth, also looks at the tourist attraction at Land's End - which it describes, incorrectly, as the tip of 'England'. No enlightened, sensitive or geographically correct use of 'Britain' but rather the default mentality of 'England'. It is as if the State seems hell-bent on ignoring the Cornish protests over the past 100 years
There is also the double edged sword which either converts any discussion on Cornwall into one to include the 'South West', or alternatively, the discussion on the South West which in reality is a discussion on Cornwall. The latter case was evident in a 30 minute programme broadcast on Tuesday 22nd May at 23:00 hrs. The programme was called "South West plc" - a virtual company! - and described as a 'radical look at the problems of the so-called "South West". The bulk of the programme, some 90%, discussed commercial enterprises and opportunities 'in Cornwall' with occasional, almost incidental, references to places in Devonshire - presumably as a ploy to prevent the programme being called 'Kernow plc'.
What, and who, then defines 'the South West'? It would have been more appropriate to have called it Cornwall, or Kernow, plc and focussed entirely on the Duchy. The format of the programme was objectionable but entirely predictable and part of a process which manipulates, with the intention of destroying, perceptions of a Cornish territorial identity. The hidden agenda was made clear with an obnoxious and insensitively subliminal message being carried by the wilful and offensive repetition of a musical jingle sung to the words "selling England by the pound".
Even with the State's failure to acknowledge the rights of the Cornish people there could be sensitivity and respect for the Cornish by listening to what is being said and making a positive, and passive, contribution to how Cornwall and the Cornish people are referred to. Sadly, there is neither compassion nor sensitivity with the English Imperial heart.
ARTICLE 12
There is nothing positive that can be said regarding the United Kingdom's compliance of Article 12 of the FCPNM and the Cornish people. The refusal by the State to recognise our Cornish Rights - by its ignorance of Cornwall, Cornish history and Cornish aspirations - must stand as its own testimony to how it has failed the Cornish people. It is offensive to note that we are to be the victims - still! - of the self-induced State denial of Cornish history. The words of clauses 182 to 186 of the UKCR sound fine but are rather empty when it comes to the Cornish.
ARTICLE 14
Cornish place-names represent a good example where a basic knowledge of the Cornish language (Article 14 FCPNM) would provide a meaningful understanding of our national territory and which would inevitably generate a desire to pursue the language further. This is more to do with the inclusion of intrinsically Cornish material into the school curriculum but, from this writer's personal experience, would profoundly influence the way that we see our country. It would be impossible to achieve a measure of 'sufficient demand' in an environment which is currently hostile to Cornish aspirations.
ARTICLE 15
All regional strategies (clause 221 UKCR), whether Government or Media, which affect the Cornish people are currently those which impose our forced assimilation into an anonymous English South West - a strategy we reject absolutely as being repugnant to Cornish Rights. This strategy also percolates down to the lower, more local, levels and Cornish aspirations are further marginalised.
There is a need for ethnic monitoring (clause 284 UKCR) within the Duchy of Cornwall in order to focus on the needs of the Cornish people and to facilitate identification of acts of discrimination.
ARTICLE 16
Given that the United Kingdom Government chooses to remain in a state of denial about the existence of the Cornish people whilst simultaneously imposing policies to coerce us into becoming integrated within an anonymous and bureaucratic 'English' South West Region - apparently to meet European Objectives? - it can, at a stroke, convince itself that it is not in breach of Article 16. The truth, however, is that the Cornish do exist and that manipulation of the proportions of the Cornish-English population are being altered to the detriment of the Cornish people.
The population of Cornwall will almost certainly be shown, from the 2001 Census, to have increased by some 60 per cent over the past 60 years and reflects an English colonisation of the Duchy of Cornwall. This goes beyond the normal concept of 'freedom of movement' in that there has been no Cornish-controlled management of the change. The cultural trauma that this has initiated is incalculable and, of course, irreversible. In addition to the basic mathematics of numbers, those moving into Cornwall have the security of an Establishment which consolidates their external values and not Cornish values. The Cornish are deliberately marginalised within their own territory in all aspects of socio-economic, socio-political and cultural debate.
The consequence of this on Cornish lack of self-confidence is further exacerbated by the inability of a Cornish voice to influence the external changes, implicit in the development of a new English South West, or Westcountry, Identity. Application of proportional representation for the European Parliament elections in 1999 meant that it was impossible - even if the Cornish people unanimously voted for it - to achieve any 'Cornish' voice within an 'English' South West . In the Cornish case the genocide is by subtle political and cultural asphyxiation. We can see the enemy and know how to defeat them but - without the protection of the FCPNM - there will be no democratic avenue left open to us.
ARTICLE 17
Clause 317 of the UKCR draws attention to the fact that the Isle of Lewis is the United Kingdom base for the European Bureau for Lesser Used Languages. Is it implying that this is, in some way, a United Kingdom initiative and funded accordingly or simply that it is not interfering with it? Are the compilers of the UKCR aware that Cornwall is also a member of this Bureau?
This organisation hopes that the Advisory Committee on the FCPNM will be of the opinion that the United Kingdom Compliance Report fails to take proper account of the rights of the Cornish people.
This organisation repeats its plea that an independent party needs to intercede on behalf of the Cornish people and that that party should be identified by the Council of Europe, as the proven protector of all Human Rights, for the purpose of clarifying the legitimacy of the Cornish Case.
A national identity is not something that can simply be dismissed or ignored and is an inalienable right that no one has jurisdiction over unless this is extinguished by acts of genocide - irrespective of how such acts might be implemented or defined - and the United Kingdom Government stands accused, by this organisation, of Cornish Genocide!
E J Pengelly - coordinator "Tyr-Gwyr-Gweryn"
Saturday 2nd June 2001
website: http://www.tyr-gwyr-gweryn.kernow.eu.org
email: Kernow_TGG@Compuserve.com
