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The theft of Cornish culture |
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Craig Weatherhill reports on how our Celtic culture is being snatched away.
Everything that is Cornish is under threat as never before – our identity, heritage, culture, rights and even our way of life.
A dramatic opening statement to be sure, yet an alarmingly true one. Now we can add to that list of endangered items our unique and most iconic landscapes. The chief culprit in the majority of cases: remote officialdom which is now facing concerted opposition.
The rot has been setting in for years with the media insisting on calling Cornwall a ‘county’ in spite of a Royal Commission recommending the term ‘Duchy’ be used. The Devonwall syndrome, which tied us in with our Anglo-Saxon neighbour led to the oft-used phrase Devon-and-Cornwall (as though we merely rate as an afterthought) and, in turn, led to the current and artificially defined ‘South West Region’. Cornwall’s unique identity gets buried deeper and deeper as time passes.
We were recently told that Cornwall must accept the building 70,000 new houses on its precious soil. The entity dictating this potential disaster is the totally unelected South West Regional Assembly which is spending your hard-earned money and making decisions that seriously affect us all. Cornish residents are fast becoming the great disenfranchised and it is not acceptable. Did you vote for any of SWRA’s members? Indeed, who are they? Were you even asked for a regional assembly covering the ‘South West’? No. Yet even North East England was granted a referendum on that very same subject – and rejected it. Where is our referendum? Should not our local politicians be saying to SWRA: you are entirely unelected: we do not accept your authority?
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