[LINK] "Cornish identity: why Cornwall has always been a separate place"

[rfmcdonald]

Philip Marsden had an article published in The Guardian responding to the recent recognition by the British government of the Cornish as a distinct ethnicity. Cornwall, as Marsden argues, is a region of England that is not just a region of England, but rather a place with its own distinctive ethnic identity.

Why did the resurgence come so late? It might just be a matter of numbers. Only a few hundred people claim the (revived) Cornish language as their main language. The population of all Cornwall is comparable to the number of people in Wales who actively speak Welsh, and the population of Wales is six times that of Cornwall. I do wonder how long this effort can be sustained, but if Cornish wish it, why not?

When I first drove down to live in Cornwall more than 20 years ago, I was met by a graffiti message on a railway bridge near Truro: "Go home, English!" I should have taken it personally. I should have politely turned around to head back across the Tamar. I was exactly the sort of incomer who was swamping the last little islands of Cornishness. But in fact, I found it heartening. Cornwall was not England – that was why I'd come.

Since then, Cornwall's distinctiveness has, rather than being smothered, become resurgent. In those days, the monochrome simplicity of St Piran's flag was an unusual sight, confined to places of nationalist fervour like Hellfire Corner at Redruth rugby ground. Now it is everywhere – in the logos of Cornish companies, on car stickers (usually with some jokey tag like "Pasty on Board"), or fluttering importantly from Cornwall council buildings. In the late 1980s and early 1990s the Cornish language was likewise invisible, a barbarous and long-vanished practice, like piracy and smuggling. Now it receives government funding to be taught in schools and appears on the bilingual signs at the Cornish "border" on the A30, and on street signs for every new housing development.

It is tempting to regard such reinventions as quaint, like Morris dancing or beating the bounds; some of the most vigorous St Piran's flag-waving comes from English, or even American, settlers. But Cornwall's separateness runs deeper than that. It is less folksy and more physical, something from the soil itself, like the radon gas that seeps out of the granite of Carnmenellis or West Penwith.

The survival of Cornish identity can be traced, on one level, to the quirk of geomorphology and tectonics that placed the sea on three sides and made most of the fourth out of the river Tamar. The shape is reflected in the name: the "Corn-" comes from the Cornish "kern", or "horn" ( the Cornish name for Cornwall, Kernow, is now as ubiquitous as St Piran's flag, and has the same root). Trying to identify Cornwall's appeal, Jacquetta Hawkes reached for its shape: "Cornwall is England's horn, its point thrust out into the sea."

Such a position has always made Cornwall tricky to administer. The Romans didn't bother trying, as long as their supply of tin was secure. Saxon villagisation did not extend far into Cornwall. When the Tudors tried to unite the realm, the Cornish proved unbiddable. Two of the fiercest rebellions of the time came from the far south-west. In 1497, a revolt against taxation began in the village of St Keverne on the Lizard; within months, 15,000 restive Cornishmen had reached London, where they were soundly routed. In 1997, the Keskerdh Kernow 500 commemorated the revolt tracing the original route from St Keverne to Blackheath. The smaller, more benign band of flag-waving Cornish that wound through the market towns of southern England helped to re-establish the sense of Cornish identity, at least for those who took part.