Philip Hosking (Cornwall, The Cornish Democrat): Over the last 3 centuries Cornwall has gone from being on the leading edge of the industrial revolution to being one of the poorest regions of Europe, receiving objective one funding from the EU as a result. In the October 2001 Business Age Magazine Kevin Cahill, an author and investigative journalist for the Sunday Times, wrote the "The Killing of Cornwall". He notes that the London Treasury extracts £1.95 billion in taxes out of Cornwall's GDP of £3.6 billion. The Treasury returns less than £1.65 billion - a net loss to Cornwall of 300 million pounds - to an area where total earnings are 24% below the national average. Is this some form of negative Barnett Formula? Low wages, unskilled McJobs, poverty, social problems and rocketing housing prices are the often hidden face of the optimistically named "English Riviera". Coupled with this we have seen the centralisation of services, institutions and government (followed by the skilled jobs they entail) out of the Duchy, much to the benefit of various undemocratic and faceless ‘South West of England' quangos.
Due to a complex nexus of factors over recent years there has been an increase in Cornish ethno-regional awareness. But little respect has been shown by central government for Cornish territorial integrity or Cornish identity, a phenomenon which sadly has a long historical precedent within the UK. Take for example the recent debate about the Union flag; not only are the Cornish excluded from the Union Jack, but it is not so long ago that you needed planning permission to fly a Cornish St Pirans flag in Cornwall. Following government regulations one could have flown the flag of North Korea in the Duchy with no problems, but not the Cornish flag.
Considering recent developments within the Duchy (death threats sent to Cornish activists, the targeting of symbols of English identity for vandalism / protest and the creation of clandestine Cornish nationalist groups), I think it worthwhile posting the findings of a study on inter ethnic violence undertaken at the New England Complex Systems Institute - Global Pattern Formation and Ethnic/Cultural Violence. The concluding remarks are:
We identify a process of global pattern formation that causes regions to differentiate by culture. Violence arises at boundaries between regions that are not sufficiently well defined. We model cultural differentiation as a separation of groups whose members prefer similar neighbors with a characteristic group size at which violence occurs. Application of this model to the area of the former Yugoslavia and to India accurately predicts the locations of reported conflict. This model also points to imposed mixing or boundary clarification as mechanisms for promoting peace
This is not an apology for Cornish terrorists, nor is it an attempt to over state the scale of the problem, but it is a call for reflection. Were the CNLA / CRA inevitable? When you throw into the mix the ease of communication via the internet thus facilitating the creation and coordination of clandestine groups, poverty and housing problems are we still so surprised by the CRA? Wasn't the writing on the wall?
