A CORNWALL OF NEWCOMERS

We are immigrants, settlers, incomers, all of us. We are not the originals, the indigenous. Whatever ethnic or national labels we give ourselves, others were here before us and ours. I explored this last year in the post Indigenous and have previously mentioned the Ancient Human Ocupation of Britain (AHOB) project.

Now have a look at this report in Science. The article costs but the brief abstract is free to read. There are also longer free online account here and here.

The report is another look at what happened to the Neanderthals. We homo sapiens sapiens migrated into Europe about 40 000 years ago. Looking at Perigord in southwest France, the report suggests that our species overwhelmed by numbers, along with cultural and technological advantages, the Neanderthals already here.

Indigeneity, a political construct, did not begin in Britain with a relatively recent Celtic-speaking people; that does not look far enough back. There were humans in Britain about 800 000 years ago at Happisburg in Norfolk. Inconstant settlement in our country has a long, long history with humans coming and going as circumstances changed. The last human occupation began about 12 000 years ago.

We are newcomers, all of us, and largely here by specific conquest. The predecessors as an identifiable group are gone, extinct or absorbed into us or massacred by our ancestors.

Hmm. I’m not sure the title of this post delivered what some might have expected.

Notes
‘Tenfold population increase in western Europe at the neandertal-to-modern human transition’ by Paul MELLARS and Jennifer C FRENCH in Science 29 July 2011

Where do the Cornish come from? 22 June 2011

There are two spellings in English of Neanderthal/Neandertal

EDIT: the reference to sciencedaily.com added 30 July 2011 and to For what they were, we are added 10 August 2011.

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PIRAN AND PTOLEMY

The photographs of the celebrations of St Piran’s day, 5 March, fill the local newspapers. In fine weather children danced and pranced in the streets, probably organised by their schools but very clearly enjoying themselves. People played cheery music, sang, bedecked themselves, and marched with flags.

This was street patriotism everyone can be happy about, the sort of festive celebration you find all over Britain and the world though you can overdo the marching purposefully with flags.

It is a happy circumstance that Piran is lost in the fog of history and indeed may never have existed. We can ignore the fantastical nonsenses told about him. It is best to take most saints with a pinch of salt: the instincts of the Reformation Protestants were right about this. He is a peg on which to hang this day; belief in him is not required.

I have discussed before the disconnection between being Cornish and being a nationalist. St Piran’s day demonstrated it convincingly. Many people here enjoy being Cornish, are happy to be Cornish, confident in their Cornishness; celebrate it; if asked to choose one only descriptor may very well call themselves Cornish and put it on the flawed censuses; and think Cornwall special, though aware of ubiquitous uniqueness; but do not desire politics here to be a nationalist re-enactment of the middle ages. The vast majority of people in Cornwall, by whatever nationality and ethnicity they call themselves, think the most important things in their lives are the everyday experiences around home, family, work, friends, neighbourhood, and health, as do people in the rest of England.

As for nationalists, they make their case, speak and write freely, demonstrate freely, learn and speak and write Cornish if they wish, fight elections freely. Nationalism presents what I see as the Ptolemaic model of Cornwall with its constitutional positions and its particular interpretation of history – and political nationalism and separatism sink like a millstone. People in Cornwall can indeed distinguish between being Cornish and being a nationalist; the former does not necessarily imply the latter.
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PUNY BOUNDARIES

The best theory we have is that all of us alive today, males and females, carry the mitochondrial DNA of one woman who lived in Africa about 150 000 years ago. All males alive today carry the Y-chromosome of one man who lived there about 70 000 years ago. The dates are for question but everyone in Cornwall, indeed everyone from the world, is ultimately related and ultimately from Africa.

We have a common origin and we are all members of the same human family.

Of course many people develop sentiments about the place they think of as home and of course from place to place, group to group, and time to time people have constructed cultures. However, nothing should blind us to our common origins and heritage. All of us in Cornwall are, without exception, either immigrants ourselves or the descendants of immigrants to this place. None of our original families began here in Cornwall. Arguing that my great-great-grandfather got here before yours is for playgrounds.

It is disappointing to hear the narcissism that is Cornish nationalism proclaim imagined difference, divisive diversity, and census apartheid. Mine may be a small voice against the nationalist clangour about claimed distinctiveness but I say such separatism sucks. Don’t build walls between people, tear them down.

Wordsworth had it right:
“We multiply distinctions, then
Deem that our puny boundaries are things
That we perceive, and not that we have made.”

Earlier posts
What does it mean to be Cornish? 1 October 2009

Atomising people 12 September 2008

We multiply distinctions… William Wordsworth The prelude book 2, line 217 onwards
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A WONDROUS MIXTURE

You have had a couple of days or so to get used to being related to a pipid frog.

Now get used to this. Modern European and Asian humans, homo sapiens sapiens, likely interbred with Neanderthals – the word can be spelt Neanderthal or Neandertal – and as a result share about 1 percent to 4 percent of their DNA with Neanderthals.

You can read the science story, ‘A draft sequence of the Neandertal genome,’ in Science for 7 May 2010 pages 710-722.

New Scientist for 6 May 2010 has a summary article about it, ‘Neanderthal genome reveals interbreeding with humans,’ and the story appears in several newspapers.

Dienekes interestingly discusses doubts.

What a wondrous mixture we are. A new tick-box for the census: True-born, with a touch of frog and Neanderthal.

CORNISH NUMBERS (2010 UPDATE)

I collected together data, of varying status, for the number of people in Cornwall who describe themselves, or are described by their parents, as White Cornish in a 2007 post, updated by posts in 2008 and 2009. This post is a further update to incorporate the 2010 PLASC figures.

In Britain people have a free choice as to how they describe their ethnicity and one can freely change one’s ethnic description if one wishes. The Office for National Statistics (ONS) uses numerous ethnic categories though only a few appear discretely on spatially constrained census forms.

There are several major local sources of information about the numbers of people in various ethnicities in Cornwall, the annual school census, the periodic Cornwall quality of life survey, and two social service surveys. The sets of data from each of these are neither comparable between the sources nor, strictly, within them and this should be borne in mind when reading the sets or assuming apparent trends. The national census has not had an open tick-box option of the two main ethnicities in Cornwall, English and Cornish (actually, White English and White Cornish) and thus is unhelpful here.

Pupils
Here are the ethnic results from the school census (PLASC), taken in January each year, for the overall proportion of pupils described as White Cornish:
2006: 24 percent
2007: 27 percent
2008: 30 percent
2009: 34 percent
2010: 37 percent

This data suggests that the proportion categorised (largely by their parents) as White Cornish is rising overall as new nursery and primary pupils enter school. Additionally, the percentages of White Cornish for each of the separate primary/nursery, secondary, and special school groups have risen over time.

Adults
The 2004 Cornwall Quality of Life Survey for the county council showed that 35 percent of respondents described themselves as “White Cornish” (Table 5). In the 2007 survey this is 26 percent (table 3.1.15). The fall is unexplained in the survey. Note that there is a fall here but a rise in the pupil figures.

Elderly
Two surveys in Cornwall in 2006 of people receiving various social services included a question about ethnic identity. The Charter survey showed forty three percent of respondents regarded themselves as Cornish; the personal social services (PSS) homecare survey showed forty five percent did; in both surveys virtually all were White Cornish. The respondents to the Charter survey were chiefly female and elderly; the numbers of respondents to the homecare survey were substantially female and practically all of them were elderly.

Data discrimination against the English?
The 2004 Quality of Life Survey survey also showed 48 percent describing themselves as White English and 11 percent as White British. The 2007 Quality of Life survey omitted the White English tick box and offered White British which 72 percent ticked. I don’t know why the English category was omitted, especially as it was the largest single group in 2004. Whatever the reason, the effect might be seen as data discrimination against those in Cornwall who regard themselves as English and is a loss of useful information about a community. I find the the omission regrettable. The Cornwall 2006 social services survey also include Cornish but not English as an open ethnic option; again this might be seen in effect in Cornwall as data discrimination. (The 2001 census had neither English nor Cornish as an open tick-box option; the next one will apparently include English as an open option but not Cornish, an omission which I also regret.)

There are acknowledged difficulties in how representative of the population of Cornwall the populations in each of these data sets are. The response to the quality of life surveys under-represent the younger groups; the pupil surveys naturally are tilted to the young and their largely youngish parents; the 2006 surveys tilt to the elderly and women. The populations of the school censuses are very much larger than those of the quality of life and 2006 surveys.

Perhaps here I might mention that in the 2001 census, which did not have a Cornish or an English tick box for identity, 33 932 people living in Cornwall wrote on the form that they were Cornish, about seven percent of the population, the percentage being higher in the west than in the east. These write-in figures are presumably provided by adults completing the census form. The actual views of children are not necessarily expressed as adults probably write in children as Cornish or fail to write them in as Cornish whatever the children think.

Summary
In summary, based on these sources the proportion of people in Cornwall describing themselves, or describing their children, as Cornish ranges from about a quarter to about two fifths of Cornwall’s population. The proportion is not consistent, varying by age and location. The data is based on people being asked to choose only one ethnicity though, given the choice, many people claim more than one identity. The total population of Cornwall in mid-2008 was estimated at 532 000.

Note that these are people self-describing as Cornish (or parents describing their children as Cornish). Some people consider that there are criteria such as parentage and ancestors which determine whether one is Cornish. There is a tension between these varying ideas of who is Cornish.

I discuss in a later post what these ethnic figures might mean.

Which end do you break your egg?
I’m putting here a paragraph from my post How many are Cornish? as it makes a point I think important about ethnicity and nationalism:

“I understand the point of ethnic monitoring so that we can use the data to try to ensure our public services are genuinely accessible to all parts of the population and so that we can try to provide relevant services. I understand the need to see oneself in particular ways, to enjoy various identities, including group ones. So I am not hostile to collecting and using ethnic data and giving people the chance to identify themselves. However, I have questions. How wise is it to seek out differences among people rather than concentrating on what we have in common? Can stressing ethnic, religious, and other cultural distinctions with no balancing commonalities engender antagonisms? How do we take care that these differences among people do not create unhealthy division and hostility? I suppose I believe it doesn’t matter which end of the egg you open.”
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Note: Original post 16 June 2008; the 2006 surveys added October 2008; paragraph on census write-ins added 17 December 2008.

Related posts

Atomising people

Ethnicity and Cornwall

And biologically speaking -

Blue-eyed Cornish and English are brothers

English and Cornish are sisters under the skin

English and Cornish have same milk gene

“which end of the egg you open” – Jonathan SWIFT, Gulliver’s travels, part 1, chapter 4
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CORNWALL 5460 YEARS AGO

Most males in Cornwall and Leicestershire carry the same ‘Anatolian’ Y-DNA haplogroup

Another strand in the complicated weave of British genetic history has been published: A predominantly neolithic origin for European paternal lineages (dated 19 January 2010). Read it here.

There are two competing broad hypotheses in prehistory: either farming was brought to Europe by neolithic farmers migrating here or farming was acquired, through cultural transfer, by paleolithic people already here. Put simply, this study shows that most European men are descended from incoming neolithic farmers from Anatolia in the near east. Most women, however, are descended from the hunter-gatherers already here.

Put simply — read the study to get the complete picture — the evidence in this study about European males includes data from Cornwall and from Leicestershire which is in the heart of England. Table 2 of the study shows that the most recent common ancestor of the migrant males in Cornwall dates between 3764 and 7777 years ago, an average at 5460 years ago. Definitely not a paleolithic origin. The average date for Leicestershire is 5981 years ago. Table 1 shows the proportion of males carrying the ‘Anatolian’ haplotype to be 78 percent for Cornwall and 62 percent for Leicestershire. This data suggests to me that most Cornish and English males are biologically similar not distinct.

There are reports on this study here and here (this focuses on Ireland). And interesting criticism here.

Also see this post which looks at other studies Ethnicity and Cornwall..

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ONE CORNWALL, MANY CORNWALLS

A report about Sheffield, A tale of two cities, makes an interesting and important point. A team from Sheffield University looked at life in two different areas of the city, Brightside (Labour MP David Blunkett) and Hallam (Liberal Democrat MP Nick Clegg). We are talking chalk and cheese, about serious inequalities between areas in the same city.

I have said often on this blog that Cornwall is not one uniform place, that life differs very much across the county, that there are Brightsides and Hallams here (see this post and this for example). It does not make sense to talk as though there is one Cornwall, disregarding signal differences, and I have indicated some of the mass of readily available evidence that shows the differences even within towns.

The talk of one Cornwall is entirely political and entirely unrelated to reality for people who live here. People who believe Cornwall is a political and national entity and should therefore have a devolved/independent government stress the oneness and tend to disregard the important differences. Cornish political nationalism totalises varying experiences and views.

What then do people who live here think?

Look at the post on the dispute in Penzance about the ferry terminal(s) there and about the wind turbines at Davidstow. Apparently not for them a one-Cornwall governing their county and lives and deciding local issues affecting them; they see that as Truro-centric. Listen to a meeting at Wadebridge on 30 October 2009 on the future of the town suggesting that people in distant west Cornwall might be indifferent about north Cornwall.

There are many Cornish identities, as there are many English identities. On the ground people rationally and emotionally identify with their immediate locality: Cornish from Padstow, Cornish from Camborne, Cornish from Troon, English from Newcastle, from Kentish Town. They also identify with other things and people, their social class and work and interests and friends, as I shall explore in a forthcoming post about identity in Cornwall. Of course, some people indeed claim a general Cornish identity and see Cornwall as their home county (or country), especially against another large identity; but to understand that properly look again at the messages from Penzance and Davidstow and Wadebridge.

Cornish political nationalism, seeing Cornish identity as a simple, monotone matter, does not sufficiently understand these complexities and lacks any comprehensive theoretical or pragmatic way of handling them.

Beyond the politicking of one Cornwall there are difficult questions of local empowerment within Cornwall. There are also important inequalities across Cornwall communities that should be tackled robustly and with effect; those are what we should focus relentlessly on, targeting the places and people of most need, and by reducing the inequalities thus make one Cornwall less of a slogan and more of a reality. Nationalism does not seem up to that task.

WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO BE CORNISH TODAY (1)

Look at these figures: more than four out of ten elderly people describe themselves as Cornish. About three in ten schoolchildren are described by their parents as Cornish. Whatever reservations there may be about the methodology and meaning of the figures, they are noticeable. (There is an update for the Cornish numbers post here post.)

Let us assume that the school figures, three in ten, represent the base of adults (people over eighteen) calling themselves Cornish. That is about 129 000 “Cornish electors.” I think this is the very lowest plausible number for adults who describe themselves as Cornish rather than anything else.

Now consider the public tests of the support for political nationalism. The vote for the nationalist party, Mebyon Kernow (MK), was 3 552 in the 2005 general election (1.4 percent of all the Cornwall votes). It was 9 421 in the 2005 county council elections (3.2 percent of all the Cornwall county council votes). In the 2007 district council elections MK took about 3.9 percent of the votes. It is clear that most people who regard themselves as Cornish do not support the Cornish nationalist party. MK has no MPs, no county councillors, and only a very few district and parish councillors.

The numbers signing the various nationalist petitions is decidedly few. The latest FCPNM recognition petition had 259 when I last looked; one earlier calling for an inquiry into Cornwall’s constitutional status ended this summer with only seventy one. I have commented here on the efforts to raise money for a legal case about FCPNM recognition.

There is a dissonance between the numbers describing themselves as Cornish and the numbers voting nationalist and supporting public declarations of nationalist views. Why?

No, I do not believe it is because Cornish people have been befogged, deceived, or otherwise misled about political nationalism and their identity. That seems to take a low view of the capacities of people to understand their world. I think it is because they have understood political nationalism and have freely chosen to reject it while still being Cornish.

Look at the inadequacies of political Cornish nationalism. Many of the policies of MK are naive and confused. Beyond the party the wider Cornish nationalist fudge about independence does not win support by ambiguity: separation from England? from the UK? or a regional assembly/parliament? a souped-up county council? more decisions taken locally? Cornish nationalism simply does not have any distinct and realistic answers to questions about the interplay of government, institutions, and individuals in the creation of opportunities and wealth, questions of social and economic justice like the distribution of wealth and services, and questions of everyday life such as the price of heating the home or filling the car, whether the job seekers allowance scheme works well, by how much we can realistically increase the minimum wage. Indeed, some nationalists seem to show little public dynamic interest in such everyday questions. “Constitutional” issues which engage nationalists have little appeal to people immersed in the problems and possibilities of life.

There is simply no sui generis Cornish nationalist philosophy of these real life things.

Thus, a rational rejection of political nationalism as irrelevant to life as lived today. Cornish people – people who would describe themselves as Cornish rather than only English or only anything else – do not see a necessary link between their being Cornish and celebrating that identity on the one hand and political nationalism on the other, a point that many nationalists apparently have difficulty with. I believe people do understand what it means to be Cornish in a new way which does not require old-fashioned political nationalism. Being Cornish does not mean being a nationalist.

I shall explore this modern Cornishness and identity in another post.

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FCPNM: Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities, often abbreviated to FCNM

CORNISH FIGHTING FUND WAY OFF TARGET

Unless there’s a miracle, the histrionically named Cornish Fighting Fund (CFF) will fail. With eight weeks to go to the cut-off at the end of the year, it has raised less than a third of its target and is about £70 000 short. The most eager have already pledged. Who is left in any numbers?

There are about 430 000 adults in Cornwall. We still do not know how many of those (or people from elsewhere) have promised money to the Fund but, on the assumption that triumphs are trumpeted, I think it is likely to be an unimpressive number. Their identity and number should be public. Why doesn’t the CFF website publish the names and numbers of pledged supporters?

The coyness about the numbers and names of supporters contrasts unfavourably with the openness of, for example, the recent atheist bus fund raising where names and thus numbers of supporters (and amounts actually paid over) are published continually. A current online petition for formal recognition also gives names and the number of signatories, which makes the CFF site more puzzling. When I last looked at the petition site the number signing, including those from outside Cornwall, worked out as about one for every two thousand adults in Cornwall.

I suppose St Piran may yet appear disguised as a rich foreigner with ancestors from Tresomewhere, but frankly I don’t think anyone is going to hand over £70 000 to fight a court case with, at best, an uncertain outcome. I suppose nearly three thousand people might yet give twenty five pounds each but it’s unlikely, isn’t it? We shall see. Candidly, though I disgree with them, I think they have done well to have got this far.

What will happen when the project reaches 31 December and falls short? Pledgers will be understandably angry and disappointed and there will be wailing and the gnashing of teeth. An internecine insultfest-and-blamefest, which Cornish nationalism does so well, may break out. There is a risk that the failure to meet the target, assuming that is what happens and that meeting the target is a sine qua non for further action on FCPNM recognition, will be seen as damaging Cornish nationalism by showing the very public exposure of nationalism’s limited appeal. But negativity will not help; let us reflect on why it has failed.

No, it isn’t apathy or miseducation. It isn’t because Cornish people have been brainwashed or celtwashed. It is because people here – including people who describe themselves as Cornish rather than anything else and who value their being Cornish – do not see the world as the pledgers do; they consider that they have the recognition they desire and are confident in their identities.

Claims of suppression and forced assimilation and adjectival genocide are ludicrously wrong and most people in Cornwall can see that plainly.

People who see themselves as Cornish can stand up freely and say so without difficulty. They and anyone else in Cornwall can learn the language in all its varieties (most don’t), read nationalist books and tracts (most don’t), vote nationalist (most, oh, much the most, don’t), and enjoy Cornish events; they can freely be Cornish but they do not in numbers subscribe to the sillier nationalist ideas. They do not believe the tale that the duchy of Cornwall is an independent state established in 1337. They are not separatists wishing to break away from England. They do not see political nationalism as a practical force that will keep them secure, pay the bills, build the roads, and employ the doctors and teachers.

And they are right.

What it means to be Cornish has changed and I shall explore that in another post.

The real pro-Cornish agenda, as I have explained before, the real hope of all the people here, is about practical measures to enable people in Cornwall improve their daily life and working out a localism that maximises genuine democracy and that avoids difficulties like the post code lottery and narrow parochialism. Historical fantasies are not pro-Cornish; they are anti-Cornish because they risk diverting effort away from improving everyday life for all the people in Cornwall.

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Additamentum 4 November 2008
The question of recognising the Cornish under the Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorites (FCPNM but more usually FCNM) of the Council of Europe was raised in the Commons on two recent occasions: see Hansard 6 March 2007 columns 1871W-1872W and Hansard 3 November 2008 columns 116W-117W. Note in the minister’s 2007 reply: “The fact that some groups may not meet the definition of racial group from the Race Relations Act 1976 has not been a barrier to the UK’s many communities being able to maintain and celebrate their distinct identities.”

Previous post on the Cornish Fighting Fund Cornish minority recognition challenge: update

CORNISH MINORITY RECOGNITION CHALLENGE: UPDATE

Update 23 September 2008

The Cornish Fighting Fund appears to be in difficulty, being £74 000 short of its target. I say appears because there are a hundred days to go until the end of the year, the finish date the fund has set, and still time for some very large pledges or a tsunami of small support. However, in the last fortnight the fund has gone up by only £1820 as far as I can see.

To have got this far is an achievement though since we do not know how many have pledged it is impossible to tell whether we are looking at a myriad of small supporters or a few hefty ones or some combination. A myriad of support would be the more impressive scenario.

Original post 11 September 2008

Some Cornish nationalists have set up a fighting fund to explore the possibility of legal action against the UK government for its not recognising the Cornish under the national minorities scheme of the Council of Europe (FCPNM). What are being sought at present are pledges of money. As I understand it, if by the end of this year
£100 000 has not been pledged, the project will be aborted.

I’ll keep an eye on the total pledged. Bear in mind that some of the pledges probably won’t turn into actual money but money not pledged will probably be forthcoming if the project is successful.

At 11 September: £24 005 had been pledged, £5000 of it by an individual.

This is the money pledged. There is no public information about the number of people making pledges which would give an additional indication of support: is it two hundred or five thousand?

In another post I’ll talk about the identity recognition issues and the Council of Europe’s Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities (FCPNM).
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Later post 2 November 2008 Cornish Fighting Fund way off target