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 postand 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.

CORNISH NUMBERS (UPDATE)

In the post How many are Cornish? I collected together data, of varying status, for the number of people in Cornwall who describe themselves as Cornish. That was updated by the post Cornish numbers of 30 October 2008 and this post is a further update to incorporate the 2009 PLASC figures. These now show a clear upward overall trend 2006-2009.

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, presumably so described by their parents:
2006: 24 percent
2007: 27 percent
2008: 30 percent
2009: 34 percent

This data suggests that the proportion categorising as Cornish is rising regularly overall as new primary pupils enter school. Additionally, the percentages of White Cornish for each of the separate primary/nursery and the secondary school categories have risen in 2007 against 2006, 2008 against 2007, and in 2009 against 2008.

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 or intention, 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 total population of Cornwall is currently estimated at 538 000.

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 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

How many are Cornish?

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

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

ATOMISING PEOPLE

This is a general follow-on from the post about national minorities. I shall look at the Cornish particularities and claims in a further post.

The government has got itself in a mess about population groups in the UK: racial, national, ethnic, religious, linguistic, whatever. It is rightly keen to encourage mutual public respect among the different groups that make up the people of Britain and to ensure that everyone gets equal access to public services.

The chosen instruments for ensuring respect and equality began with the 1976 Race Relations Act; subsequent legislation and the Council of Europe’s Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities (FCPNM) have provided the arrangements within which ensurance and compliance works. And this is where the current mess shows.

At present some groups are fully recognised in race law or by the government under the FCPNM and get support and also may get funding for activities that celebrate and encourage their distinctiveness and public service participation; other groups are not and do not. The Welsh and Ulster Scots and Gipsies qualify, the Cornish don’t. The Jews and Sikhs do, the Muslims don’t. It is difficult to see any real-life coherence in this.

The current issue among Cornish nationalists is recognition under the FCPNM which the British government refuses to grant. There are other issues as well; for example, a tick-box for the 2011 census (some groups will get one; others, probably including the Cornish, won’t).

Dissatisfaction is what results when you encourage people to identify themselves in numerous subgroups. Forms do not have enough space to include everyone so some get missed off or have to write themselves in and grievance ensues. Even I was irritated when a form presented to me did not include the group which if pushed hard I would assign myself to but did include other groups that I do not include myself in.

The only way out of this mess is to include everyone or to exclude everyone.

There is another aspect which concerns me. People are pushed into assigning themselves to one group and not several – the school ethnic census does not enable one easily to identify one’s child as adjectival Cornish and adjectival English and adjectival British or whatever; the national census does not make multiple identity easy to assert and be recognised within its sections either. Mono-ethnicity, indeed mono-categorisation generally, is encouraged as the norm though I think many people see themselves as more diverse than that. For example, many people see themselves as “Christian but” or “ex-Muslim”; the census form does not offer those and resources are assigned on the coarse and misleading ethnic and religious (and soon, national) categorisation the form demands.

I don’t wish to overdo this next point but the default assumption of simplistic monolithic group identity can encourage people or a group of people to see themselves as significantly different from their neighbours, it can lead to overemphasis on perceived ethnic and other differences, and frankly the history of mankind is dispiriting about the consequences of perceived difference. At bottom, emphasising difference is unlikely to promote social cohesion.

I think mono-ethnicity is what the Cornish nationalists (and the English and other nationalists) seem to be about. Choose: Cornish or English. I think they are wrong and, if we are to continue officially recording group identities – and while I see the point of collecting the data, I increasingly doubt that this is the best way to be just – I would like to see the Cornish nationalists widen their views to include multiple identities, Cornish and English, if that is how people see themselves. That is genuine pluralism.

Yes, in the present system the Cornats have a good point about inclusion under the FCPNM of those who see themselves as Cornish and I suspect that the government are rationally but unfairly trying to avoid expenditure, wide religious inclusion, and the perceived constitutional issue that may well ignite if the Cornish are recognised under the FCPNM. Nevertheless, one in, all in.

However, I come back to my central doubt which I repeated at the “egg” end of this post . Is atomising British people into endless subgroups the best way forward? Can we not celebrate our identities, our different ways and beliefs, and show mutual respect, and ensure everyone gets fair access to services without the present divisive official grotesqueries? It is time to rethink the atomising and emphasise our commonalities.

CIGARETTE-PAPER GENETIC DIFFERENCES

Another genetic study.

Current biology published online on 7 August 2008 Correlation between genetic and geographic structure in Europe by Oscar Lao et al. You can read it here .

This is a study of 2514 individuals in twenty three subpopulations in twenty countries throughout Europe. The central finding is that the genetic differences between subpopulations are small and the differences correlate with geographic areas.

As such studies are subject to much interpretation, you might like to read these comments on it:

Dienekes – the comments arising from his report are interesting too.

Spittoon

Genetic future

BLUE-EYED CORNISH AND ENGLISH ARE BROTHERS

Practically everyone with blue eyes is descended from a single, common ancestor who lived 6 000-10 000 years ago perhaps in the north west region of the Black Sea.

You can read the research report of 3 January 2008 by Hans Eiberg et al in Human genetics here and an article in today’s Independent here.

Look back at the post about the milk gene shared by most Cornish and English people. Now there’s the blue eyes mutation. Practically everyone in England and Cornwall who has blue eyes is biologically recently related whether they call themselves Anglo-Saxon or Celt or English or Cornish or British or…

Oh and here’s some other research about blue eyes. This post goes back to the beginning of our species of anatomically modern humans. On origin for us all.

HOW MANY ARE CORNISH?

There are various measures of the number of people in Cornwall who describe themselves as Cornish. The best at present is probably the county council’s PLASC annual census in schools in January each year (see this post for 5 January 2007).

This collects figures for the ethnicity for about 72 000 pupils in Cornwall. The figures for pupils described as Cornish in January 2007, with January 2006 in brackets, are:

29.8 [26] percent of pupils in primary schools

24 [20] percent in secondary schools

45.8 [38] percent in other schools (special schools and nursery schools).

Overall 27.3 [23.7] percent of pupils were described as Cornish.

The Cornish figures in all the categories are higher in 2007 than a year previously though still a minority. The secondary increase probably reflects primary pupils moving up at eleven and continuing with their established ethnic description. Are the proportion figures for the entry classes higher than the later classes in primary and other schools? If so, the general increase in primary and special numbers will reflect that; and any increased proportion in entry classes may in turn reflect an increased awareness of the possibility and right to describe oneself as Cornish. I do not know why the proportion in other schools is so much greater than in primary and secondary schools or whether the figures are consistent over all the schools in Cornwall.

It will be interesting to see all the figures for the succeeding years.

Ethnic descriptions in Britain are entirely self-descriptions. In most cases in the PLASC in any schools in England the descriptions are presumably given by the parents rather than chosen by the child.

English ethnicity is not yet an option on the PLASC form; the standard alternative to Cornish is British.

What the school figures mean is difficult to say. Are they representative of Cornwall as a whole? Probably not though they may point to the future. They measure parental description of children and young people and do not, for example, necessarily reflect the ethnic self-descriptions of the elderly, many of whom have come to Cornwall from elsewhere and may well retain their previous ethnic descriptions. The Quality of Life survey of Cornwall county council in 2004 showed in Table 5 that overall 48.4 percent of the self-selected respondents in Cornwall described themselves as English and 35.1 percent as Cornish with differing results in different districts of Cornwall. There were about 4000 responses to the ethnic question and the survey generally had a disproportionate number of responses from the elderly rather than the young.

The 2011 census will give firmer information – though see the last sentence of this post – as it will include (for the first time in a census) an English tick box in the ethnic section; but at present there is no intention to include a Cornish tick box which I think, given the other boxes available, is unhelpful and wrong.

The school figures hardly reflect a political standpoint as the election results for nationalists plainly show. A Morgan Stanley survey in 2004 apparently showed about two fifths of people in Derbyshire identifying firstly with their county rather than with the country so I do not think one can say in themselves the Cornwall figures suggest support for views about Cornwall as separate from England. I suspect that while some people in Cornwall are clear about their identity/identities and their opinions about what Cornwall is, many have complex views about both which cannot be done justice in a choose-one-answer multichoice question.

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 in the end I believe it doesn’t matter which end of the egg you open.
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Later post

A later post, including later and other figures, is here: Cornish numbers 30 October 2008

LIBERATING CORNWALL

Life’s getting better

I’ve said before that people here differ in how they see Cornwall. Some see themselves as Cornish not English and Cornwall as in sundry ways a separate country. Others see themselves as English or Cornish-and-English and Cornwall in 2007 as a county of England; there are other identities and combinations too. I’m sure most of us get on with our lives and one another and don’t fret about our identities. We are concerned with seizing life and opportunities ourselves and encouraging others to do so.

And life and opportunities are improving in Cornwall and are there for the seizing. The economy is growing, there are more jobs, British and EU funds are making a difference, Cornwall is not the worst-off place in England. In large ways and in a thousand small ways Cornwall is going forward: see the Vorsprung Cornwall posts for the latter.

Oh, of course Jerusalem is not yet. For example, housing for those starting out is a serious problem, as it is elsewhere in England; and the obvious solution of building enough housing specifically for them is costly and hampered by a variety of unconvincing objections. Many wages are debilitatingly low but objective one and convergence EU funds together building the economy are our best hope of raising them significantly.

However, overall there is very much about twenty-first century Cornwall to be upbeat about. Be of good cheer. This is the liberation of Cornwall.

Nationalist difficulties in the face of more prosperity

Faced with the demonstrable improvements in life nationalism has a problem. A common argument is that Cornwall is at the bottom of every league and suffers from deliberate neglect and unfairness by the British government and only nationalist solutions can work. This nationalist argument is falling apart. More and more people here can see with their own eyes it is not true. Cornwall is doing well as a county of England. The economic grievance agenda is looking ludicrous and surreal.

Of course, the argument that “we’re ethnically different and that’s important” still persuades some people here and I am happy for people to identify themselves as Cornish and celebrate their Cornishness. However, the vast majority of people here, whatever ethnic label they give themselves voluntarily or if asked or pressed and whatever they celebrate, are not agitated about ethnicity and genetics and happily get on with their lives and one another. It is a small minority that sweats about labels or minisculely different DNA. Most people walking down the street or drinking in the pub cannot tell who is Cornish, who is English, who is whatever; and for most people it is not an everyday concern at all.

Devastatingly for nationalism, most people are able to celebrate Cornishness without signing up to nationalist politics. The constitutional argument does not touch them; they celebrate Cornishness but do not believe Cornwall is a separate country from England and instead believe that Cornwall is and has been for centuries a county of England. Only nationalism links contemporary Cornishness with some form of Cornish political separateness.

I believe the nationalist constitutional argument, the belief that Cornwall is truly not a county but a country and the county arrangements are illegal as would be clear if only a court could be found to say so, is of interest to only a handful who look backward to a contested history.

Nationalism in fact largely stresses localism and a claimed administrative efficiency as the argument for devolution, though this apparently can incorporate the belief that using the word Cornish in front of an institution necessarily makes it work better, and the claim that Cornwall is a “Celtic nation” is still advanced as a reason for devolution.

Electoral nationalism fails

Real life gets in the way of nationalist theory. Hardly anybody votes for explicit nationalists or, as far as I can see, joins their organisations. Mebyon Kernow (MK), the largest and most public nationalist group, has made no serious electoral progress for years. The other political nationalist organisations here are distinguished for their insignificance in the lives of most people in Cornwall.

Electoral nationalism has failed.

The changing improved circumstances of real life and the failure to make headway among voters and people generally have, however, energised some on the nationalist spectrum. I shall look at these in another post.