The Case for Kernow
http://bellacaledonia.wordpress.com/2008/04/03/the-case-for-cornwall/# more-46

“Britain* is divided into four parts; whereof one is inhabited by Englishmen, the other by Scots, the third by Welshmen, and the fourth by Cornish people, which all differ among themselves, either in tongue, either in manners, or else in laws and ordinances.”

– Polydore Vergil (Henry VIII’s geographer)

What is it with the London media? It seems if you email celebrity chefs like Rick Stein and the mockney Jamie Oliver calling yourself “CNLA” and promising a “rosy glow” in their pricey restaurants in Cornwall, you can get coverage in a dozen newspapers, whereas if you manage to collect 50,000 signatures for a Cornish Assembly in two years, you get none. Bear in mind that the Cornish population is only 400,000, and the petition was badly publicised, and you can see the scale of feeling. Cornwall, meantime, has the lowest GDP in the UK, at a mere 62% of the average. An article in the Western Morning News has pointed out “in places like Mousehole, Port Isaac & Cadgwith, it is possible to buy any number of £1000 paintings, but not a pint of milk” thanks to the vast number of second homes there. Rick Stein is part of the problem, and has led to Padstow being nicknamed Padstein, thanks to buying up half the town. Would Stein or Oliver agree with this?

“We, the people of Cornwall, must have a greater say in how we are governed. We need a Cornish Assembly that can set the right democratic priorities for Cornwall, and provide a stronger voice for our communities in Britain, in Europe, and throughout the wider world.”

Most Scots don’t know that Cornwall is not a proper part of England. For centuries, a significant number of its natives have always regarded themselves as non-English, and it is the only “English county” with its own language, laws and nationalist movement. For example, if you die without a will in England, your property goes to the Crown. In Cornwall it goes to the Duke of Cornwall (Prince Charles), and the Duchy has been used more or less as an expense account for the heir to the throne. The story of the decline of Cornish mining, farming and fishing is one with which Scots have first hand experience.



In the post-Roman period, the Cornish were known as “West Welsh” by the English. (“Welsh” being an old English word for “foreigner”). This was retained in Cornwall which means “Welsh Headland”. Cornwall only became joined, bit by bit, in the Norman period. Even so, during the Middle Ages, the phrase “England and Cornwall” turns up in dozens of medieval documents, including the Magna Carta. Henry VIII’s coronation lists his realms as including “ England, France…Cornwall, Wales & Ireland”. The Cornish would rise repeatedly, notably in 1497 under Michael An Gof who raised an army of 15,000.

The Reformation was particularly painful for the Cornish. When the English language Book of Common Prayer was forced on them, they rose in 1549, complaining partly that many of them spoke no English. The upper class converted to Anglicanism, or was dispossessed, but the vast majority of the Cornish peasantry and working class did not “conform”. Even today, Methodism is far bigger than Anglicanism in Cornwall. As in Wales, Cornish radicalism arose from Methodism, and joined the Liberal Party. However, unlike elsewhere, the Cornish radicals did not really take to the Labour party. The battle in Cornwall has been traditionally between Tories and Liberals. This changed however, in 1997, when Cornwall, Wales and Scotland all became Tory-free.

“The Cornish are fortunate in being able to paint their regional [sic] discontents in the attractive colours of the Celtic tradition. Merseyside cannot blow a national trumpet, Cornwall can.” – Eric Hobsbawm

Although much of modern Cornish nationalism originated in bourgeois Romanticism, by the present day, it has come to embrace the entire political spectrum, both republican and monarchist, liberal and conservative, socialist and social democrat. The Lib Dems continue to flirt with it, with the most “nationalist” Lib Dem being Andrew George MP, who took his oath in Cornish. The real voice, other than the defunct Cornish National Party, is Mebyon Kernow, which tends to left of centre. MK has some claims to fame – it participates fully in the local CND and Green campaigns, has engaged in industrial action, and prevented nuclear power stations from being built. It does very well in council elections, but not in Westminster elections. This is partly because it is not entitled to broadcasts, and receives little publicity in local press. While not achieving the levels of Plaid, or the SNP, MK has more councillors in Cornwall, than UKIP has anywhere, and got more council votes than Labour in Cornwall.

While London-based TV portrays Cornwall as a playground of the rich, surfing, pirates and yokels, based in “South West England”, the reality is a housing crisis, high unemployment, and a rapid brain drain. Coupled with a thousand years of cultural aggression and assimilation, it’s no wonder Cornwall, Cornish and the Cornish are in such a bad way. Some have started to become “Cornish and English”, in a similar fashion to Rangers fans who wear England shirts.

“Smaller minorities also have equally proud visions of themselves as irreducibly Welsh, Irish, Manx or Cornish. These identities are distinctly national in ways which proud people from Yorkshire, much less proud people from Berkshire will never know. Any new constitutional settlement which ignores these factors will be built on uneven ground.” (The Guardian, editorial, 8th May 1990)

Concessions are few, and have come slowly to Cornwall. For example, the Rose has been removed from Cornish road signs, and replaced with the Cornish flag after a direct action campaign. The Cornish language is reappearing, and the national flag is now everywhere. Cornish devolution and investment has not come, instead London links Cornwall into “Devonwall” and jobs are exported eastward to Plymouth and Exeter. Cornwall is also refused European aid, thanks to the government. In 1967, the Liberal MPs, John Pardoe and Peter Bessel complained, “the Cornish people have the same right to control their country, its economy and its political future as the other Celtic peoples of Scotland and Wales.”

Four decades later, Cornish Lib Dems make the same complaint, while the party in London says the exact opposite. When will Cornwall be heard?

by Ray Bell

* The original “British” are the Welsh, Cornish and Bretons. However, there is little connection between the ancient term, and the modern one, which is co-opted and political.

Tweedledum & Tweedledee in the Great British Non-Debate

Nowhere in Europe can the issue of Europe have become so polarised as it has in Britain. Yet the issue of a Referendum on the Lisbon Treaty has been confused (and I suspect deliberately so) with the question of whether Britain should remain or withdraw from the EU.

Whereas there is a strong outcry for a Referendum in certain quarters the prospect of withdrawal remains much less popular. Britain's anti-EU campaigners know this and seek to cloud the issue by using the call for a Referendum as proof of the unpopularity of the EU. It's no accident that anti-EU newspapers like the Sun, the Daily Mail and the Daily Telegraph are all the most vociferous when it comes to demanding a Referendum. And David Cameron's Tory Party, not known for its love of things European, is no different.

During the recent House of Commons debate on the Lisbon Treaty it was significantly the Tories who felt threatened by the prospect of a European Defence Force which they see as a threat to the present Anglo-American 'special relationship' and alliance. Cameron claims that the 'special relationship' is in his and the Tory party's DNA. It shouldn't take much analysis to understand what he means.

And whereas it is perfectly understandable that writers like Susan George should denounce the Treaty as a blueprint for 'neo-liberal' exploitation and for the people of France and Holland to have rejected the proposed Constitution for similar reasons we should be much more cautious with the British Right as well as the caravan of anti-EU nationalists which follows on behind it.

A major reason the British Right is fighting the Lisbon Treaty is because it sees the creation of a European Defence Force as the first step towards a military bloc which would seriously challenge not only the present Anglo-Saxon Alliance but the imperialist military power behind it.


Now Eire is under threat from Nato

When reminded of the paradox in their 'independence' argument the anti-EU nationalists have no answer. For how can they really be serious about a British 'independence' which in the cruel light of day simply does not exist? And if the nationalists on the Left are, as they often profess to be, anti-Nato and against the invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan how can they square this with their hostility to a EU which is feared by US analysts as a growing threat to US foreign policy?

Opposition to the EU in Britain tends to come from a deeper source of resentment than just concern for the threat of unemployment resulting from the Treaty's 'neoliberal' economic policies. It is something to be found in the well-springs of national identity or now rather a lack of one following a post-imperial hangover. It is probably no accident that there exists no serious interest here in a debate about the need for more democracy within the EU. Why bother when you can get your opinions ready-made from the Sun? And yet how many who read the Sun know that Rupert Murdoch, a naturalised US citizen, is a mortal enemy of the EU? And if they did would they trouble to join up the dots?

Unlike Eire with its Dublin Castle Forum debate the people of the UK are not being allowed any debate over the Lisbon Treaty. The British must rely on the paucity of --even then grossly distorted-- information it receives from the national mainstream media and a government whose attitude to the European Project is in a word ambivalent. While on the one hand successfully blackmailing the EU with threats to veto the Treaty if not allowed major opt-outs concerning industrial relations and civil rights Gordon Brown returns to our shores claiming these opt-outs to be an "achievement"! An achievement for whom, the people or a reactionary government going busily about turning Britain into a police-state?

There never was a time when Britain more needed an intelligent, informed national debate about where this country is headed for. But that need is not even on the agenda of an unelected Brown government whose deeply undemocratic nature makes even the Tories look like the champions of freedom. Of course, they are not. If Labour and the Tories have one thing in common it is that they share a deep belief in the Atlantic alliance between Britain and the USA.

That Alliance, while in the interests of Anglo-American capital, is certainly no friend of the people. Both Labour and the Tories would like to keep Britain in the EU to act as a trojan horse for US interests and interventionism. And that is why Tweedledum and Tweedledee do not want a national debate on Europe or, indeed, anything else.

While campaigning for a more democratic Europe the reality of the Anglo-American status quo should never be forgotten. What European democrats should be working towards is not only a decentralised and democratic European Federation --one that is truly people-friendly-- but for a Europe that has the economic, diplomatic and military teeth to present itself as a defensive counter-force in a new, multipolar world of powers.

Paul Carline from the Initiative & Referendum Institute, Marburg, comments:

An excellent analysis. There are very good reasons for believing that a federated Europe based on popular sovereignty and direct-democratic rights (citizen-initiated referendums and obligatory referendums on key issues - as is already the case in the Irish Republic) would be a safer and more prosperous place.

There's every reason to think that Britain would also be better off as a federal country, like Switzerland and Germany.

In fact, Switzerland, with its 26 sovereign cantons, each with its own constitution based on popular sovereignty, is a great model for an EU which now has 27 member states.
Academic studies in Switzerland show that the more direct democracy there is i.e. the more the people have real rights of political decision-making and initiative, the happier people are and the more efficient and prosperous the economy is.

When anti-EU people speak of 'national sovereignty', they are talking about an undemocratic claim to exclusive power by an unrepresentative parliament and government in which a tiny handful of people around the prime minister can take momentous decisions such as committing Britain to illegal wars (incidentally making those who promoted and supported those decisions war criminals in international and domestic law. cf. the Campaign to Make Wars History at www.makewarshistory.org).

Is that the kind of sovereignty we want?

A voice for a different Europe

Interview with Susan George
An Phoblacht (The Republic), 24 December 2007

The defeated EU Constitution has been repackaged as the Reform Treaty, which does not say a single word about social Europe. Rejecting it is crucial to save democracy.

EOIN Ó BROIN speaks to writer and social activist SUSAN GEORGE about how important the Irish referendum on the EU Treaty is for democrats and progressives across Europe. With her satirical political novel, The Lugano Report, acclaimed by no lesser figures than Noam Chomsky, John Pilger and George Monbiot, Susan George’s is a voice that should be heard.

“IT MAKES me feel as though I have been spat on. It makes me feel that they have nothing but contempt for the voters. It is as if we didn’t vote, our votes don’t count, our opinions don’t count and we are being told, ‘Just shut up and let the technocrats get on with it.’”

Susan George is not known to exaggerate. Her writing is careful and considered, well-researched and internationally respected. But the decision to repackage the defeated EU Constitution as the Reform Treaty has angered her. She feels “spat on”. That people in France will be denied the right to vote on the new treaty indicates, in her opinion, that EU political elites “have nothing but contempt for the voters”. Of course, she is “not totally surprised” because in, her view, “the EU is not a democratic organisation”.

Invited to Dublin by the Campaign Against the EU Constitution, Susan George spoke to a meeting of political activists in Liberty Hall in November. The meeting was the first in a series of events being organised by the campaign to highlight their concerns about the content of the Treaty and its implications for Ireland and the EU.

Although maybe not a household name in Ireland, Susan George is well-known in political and academic circles across the world. For three decades she has written and campaigned on issues of debt, global poverty, environmental protection and neo-liberalism.

Greenpeace International

From 1990 to 1994, George sat on the board of Greenpeace International. From 1999 to 2006 she was-vice president of ATTAC France (Association for Taxation of Financial Transaction to Aid Citizens). ATTAC promotes the taxation of international financial transactions in order to curb stock market speculation and provide revenue for development projects in the developing world.

She is currently chair of the Transnational Institute in Amsterdam, an international network of writers whose work seeks to contribute to social justice and who are active in various social movements.

Author of 14 books, translated into many languages, Susan George is best-known for her ground-breaking studies of global poverty, food insecurity and the impact of debt on the developing world. Since the publication of How The Other Half Dies (1976), she has been a trenchant critic of the policies of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund. More recently she has focused much of her attention on the World Trade Organisation and the impact of trade liberalisation on the world’s poor.

John Pilger described her 2003 book, The Lugano Report, as “an extraordinary, original book of exquisite irony, a kind of Catch-22 of capitalism”. Noam Chomsky said, “with acid wit and sombre truths, The Lugano Report brilliantly portrays, through the eyes of its imagined but all too realistic planners, a world that may be heading for deep trouble”. George Monbiot described the report as “a brilliant and innovative means of exposing a world order that serves only the strongest. A compelling satire, packed with information, this is the work of an author in complete control of her subject.”

The EU Constitution

In 2004, ATTAC France took a decision to oppose the EU Constitution. In their view, the treaty was promoting neo-liberalism, poverty, insecurity and mass-unemployment. On 29 May 2005, in the biggest ever turn-out for an EU-related poll, 55 per cent of French voters rejected the EU Constitution. The 70 per cent turn-out was in sharp contrast to the 45 per cent turn-out for the 2004 European parliamentary elections.

As vice-president of ATTAC France, Susan George played a central part in the campaign. Opinion polls had been indicating for some time that the ‘No’ side was gaining ground. There was widespread shock across Europe that France, one of the union’s founding members, rejected the Treaty. George explains the result as a consequence of “the spirit of the French Revolution”.

“It seemed to me to be in the long line of French movements on the left for human emancipation. Once people actually found out what was in the treaty it was quite natural to vote ‘No.’”

The French said ‘No’ because the treaty was “a blueprint for neo-liberal economics and privatisation, giving no protection to public services and very little protection for the environment”.

The Reform Treaty

Following the rejection of the treaty by the French and then the Dutch, the European Commission announced a “period of reflection”. Eighteen months later, the Council of Europe agreed the Reform Treaty, containing 96 per cent of the articles of the EU Constitution. George believes that, during the intervening period:

“The European Council and Commission were trying to figure out the best way to mask the fact that they were going to try and shove the same thing down our throats. You can’t just say that the French and the Dutch voted wrong so we’re going to hand them the same text again. They had to find a way to hide what they were doing.”

That the Reform Treaty is almost identical to the EU Constitution is not in doubt. Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, speaking to the Constitutional Affairs Committee of the European Parliament in July 2007, said:

“In terms of content, the proposals remain largely unchanged – they are simply presented in a different way.” Giscard d’Estaing, former President of France, was chair of the convention that drew up the Constitution.

As a life-long campaigner for trade justice, George is particularly concerned about the implications of the Reform Treaty for the developing world.

“The relationship between developed Europe and the global south is going to be profoundly changed,” she believes. Articles promoting unfettered international trade and transferring power for international trade negotiations to the EU “would enable the EU to push through exactly the kind of treaty that Peter Mandleson is negotiating right now with the African Caribbean and Pacific Countries, 78 of the poorest countries of the world”. The European Commission agenda of seeking to open up developing world markets to European corporations, irrespective of the impact of such policies on the world’s poor would be strengthened if the Reform Treaty is passed.

“The EU will use these new powers in the Reform Treaty to do exactly what he pleases,” says George, “and people from Trócaire and other development organisations can complain all they like to the Irish Government but the Irish Government is not going to be able to do anything about it.”

George is also dismissive of those who argue that the Reform Treaty is Europe’s best hope of defending the gains of Social Europe in the face of globalisation. “I don’t see how anybody can argue that,” George says in exasperation. “There is not a single word about Social Europe in the Treaty. On the contrary, this is a treaty to enrich the elites further. It is a treaty that is going to continue to crush democracy. And it is a treaty that is going to break down the capacity of the state to provide for its citizens.”

George contends that the motivations behind the drafters of the treaty are best summarised by liberal economist Adam Smith’s famous phrase: “All for ourselves and nothing for other people.”

Despite strong opposition to the Reform Treaty, Susan George cannot be described as anti-European. In her 2004 book, Another World is Possible If... she argued the case for a strengthened Social Europe as a global counterweight to US-led corporate globalisation and militarisation.

Rejecting the Reform Treaty for George is a crucial aspect of her alternative.

“I want to open up some space. We have to keep saying no until they get the point and we can sit down and have a real discussion about the future of Europe, one which would include electing a convention which would draft a new treaty but only after a lot of debate.”

She adds:

“Europe ought to be an alternative model to the United States, promoting social solidarity, human development and peace.”

With opinion polls indicating that 62 per cent of the Southern Irish electorate is undecided on the Reform Treaty, Susan George’s arguments are a reminder that opposition to the EU and opposition to the Reform Treaty are not the same thing.

• Susan George’s new books, We The Peoples of Europe (Pluto) and Culture in Chains: How the Religious and Secular Right Captured America (Polity), will be published in 2008.

An Phoblacht

APPEAL FOR FAIR REFERENDUMS
http://www.erc2.org/8.0.html


Supporters of the European Referendum Campaign agree to the following appeal:

You cannot build Europe without the consent of the people, that is why we direct the following demands to

* Heads of states and governments
* National parliaments
* the European Parliament

1. The EU Reform Treaty must be submitted to the citizens in a referendum in each single EU member state.

2. If necessary the Parliaments of the EU member states must make the appropriate legal and constitutional provisions for a referendum.

3. A real and unbiased debate on the EU Constitution alias the Reform Treaty must be secured in the framework of a fair referendum.

Fair referendums allow both sides to present their points of view on the same conditions. We want a proper debate which deals with the real topic and brings Europe closer to the citizens.

Although commenting on the Dutch and French rejection of the Constitution (was it as long ago now as 2005?!) Praful Bidwai's article from the Khaleej Times remains just as relevant to the Lisbon Treaty.

It highlights in clear terms why the Lisbon Treaty is unacceptable to democrats and why it is now so important for all Europeans to involve themselves in an evolutionary political struggle.

Apathy or disdain are no alternatives. Indeed they are the very weaknesses the rulers invite and encourage in order to defeat democracy.

____________________________________

The Vote for a Gentler and More Democratic Europe
Praful Bidwai, Khaleej Times, 5 June 2005
http://tinyurl.com/55vrtv

As the powerful impact of the emphatically negative French and Dutch verdicts in the referenda on the European Union's new Constitution sinks in, it becomes increasingly apparent that the vote may not have been driven largely by isolationism, national chauvinism or xenophobic fears about immigration, as many had expected.

These sentiments did form a significant (but minor) component of the reasons behind the ballot in the two countries. But the dominant consideration seems to have been just the opposite: the urge for a more democratic EU that respects, defends and extends its citizens' rights and strives for a humane common future for a Social Europe, which the conservative, pro-corporate Constitution would have negated.

It is equally apparent that the impact of the referenda, which render the Constitution null and void, will extend to the larger world beyond Europe. If a democratic debate now opens up, focused on the aims and purposes of the European project, it will pose major issues about whether and how the EU can contribute to a more balanced, equitable, non-hegemonic world order and provide a counterweight to the United States, or whether it would be content to be an emulator-competitor of the US on Washington's terms, and thus help further distort the global order. So all of us have a stake in the debate over Europe.

First, the 70 and 62 per cent turnouts respectively in France and the Netherlands mean that the EU seems important to its ordinary citizens and evokes strong emotions - not just of anger (at ruling governments and persistent unemployment), and fear (of a loss of identity), but also nobler ones like defence of humane values. These latter probably played a far more important role in the overall "no" vote. They certainly explain the success which the pro-integration Left and progressive social movements had in forming the core - and the coherent part - of the "no" coalition and in mobilising large numbers of people, including the youth, not to speak of fence-sitters at the last stage of the campaign.

The EU vote, especially in France, reflected a class divide. The upwardly mobile professionals voted "yes". But the working class, facing 10 per cent unemployment and grave economic uncertainty, rejected the "Europe of the Bosses".

The public debate generated by the Constitutional referenda has clearly reflected a conflict between two ideas: that of a kinder, gentler Europe, and a Europe that projects power and wants to dominate. There's a tussle here between two agendas: one of the people and social rights, and the other of "free markets" and corporate privilege.

The Constitution was basically dominated by the second agenda. The Convention which drafted it was established through nomination. It was mainly comprised of representatives of governments and national/European parliaments, and generally excluded civil society organisations. This was in keeping with the EU's evolution in recent years, especially after the elitist Maastricht treaty.

The Constitution is an unwieldy 400-page-plus document, with 448 articles. Very, very few people have read it. Nor has the media summed up its provisions accurately or fully. The Constitution is almost impossible to amend. Any change requires a consensus at three levels virtually impossible to achieve. It perpetuates top-heavy structures like the democratically unaccountable European Central Bank. It would also have created an individual EU president with a term of 30 months in place of the more democratic six-month rotating presidency.

Similarly, by amending the consensus rule, under which all EU decisions had to be unanimous in the 25 member-states, it gives excessive powers to the Big Four (Germany, France, Britain and Italy) and discriminates against smaller states by stipulating a majority of only 65 per cent of citizens and 55 per cent of states.

The statute erodes the democratic decision-making space on immigration and social policy and grants the veto to national parliaments only for defence, foreign policy and taxation. The emphasis, however, is on a common foreign and security policy. An especially egregious feature of the Constitution is that it contains policy prescriptions especially "free market" dogmas. Policy is a legitimate function of the government of the day, not the Constitution.

The Constitution subordinates hard-won social rights to so-called free competition, and treats corporate interests as sacrosanct. For instance, it whittles down the fundamental right to work, to the right to look for a job! It removes valuable social protections. And it mandates that public services like water supply, healthcare and education be thrown open to "competition" and thus be privatised. The Constitution would have completed and sealed the long under-way transition from social Europe to corporate Europe.

At a seminar in Amsterdam, which I attended, Susan George, the famed author of How the Other Half Dies noted that the word "competition" occurs 47 times in the text. While "market" occurs 78 times, "social progress" is completely missing!

Equally disturbing is the obligation of each member state to "improve its military capabilities". The EU, which spends half as much as the US on the military (in GDP terms) is being asked to compete with America and match its spending on military research too.

A related EU defence strategy paper calls for military "intervention anywhere", which is "early, rapid, and when necessary, robust". It says: "We should be ready to act before a crisis occurs." This is similar to the obnoxious Bush doctrine of pre-emptive/preventive war!

The ultimate irrationality is that the EU's new militaristic orientation is unrelated to any external threat!

The Constitution's defeat precipitates a fresh crisis. This can be resolved only by deciding one central issue: what kind of Europe is desirable - an arrogant, powerful superpower unkind to its own citizens, or a federal entity that respects equality, caring-and-sharing and justice, and wants to reform the iniquitous world order?

We can only hope that such a debate gets going soon and that the EU emerges as a genuine alternative model to the hegemonic American one. Only thus can it live up to its original promise of creating an order where nations don't go to war, execute people or subject them to the market's brutalities.

Copyright 2005 Khaleej Times