Cornwall's Crow Caws!

The G7 Summit is Boosting Cornish Nationalism. Here's Why.

St Ives, Saturday,

Every summer, the annual meeting of the Group of Seven (G7), brings together some of the world's richest democracies - the UK, US, Canada, Japan, France, Germany and Italy, along with EU bigwigs.

This year, the UK holds the rotating presidency and is hosting the summit in Cornwall, but there have been mutterings from the locals.

Tregenna Castle, where the leaders will be staying, is like many things in Britain, something of an empty facade - a tessellated country house which caters not for soldiers but elderly American golfers. At the best of times, rooms cost over €200 a night but for that price travelers also get typical Cornish meals of chips and sticky toffee pudding.

However, the picture being created here hides a very different side of Cornwall, steeped as it is in a very different and often violent past of opposition to English control. Speak to locals here, and memories of the great Cornish rebellions immediately come back to life.

The Rebellyans Kernow, as the Cornish still refer to the uprising of 1497 as, started in response to hardship caused by the new war taxes raised by King Henry VII to finance his campaign against Scotland - Cornwall's Celtic friend. It culminated with the Battle of Deptford Bridge near London on 17 June 1497.

The rebellion ended in military defeat, execution of the Cornish leaders, and severe monetary penalties, extracted by the English Crown, that pauperized Cornwall.

Valuable lands and estates were seized and handed to English landlords, a legacy that continues to impoverish the county even today.

Yet for many in Cornwall, the leaders' talks will not be addressing the real matter! Because in recent years an unstoppable groundswell of opinion has been building steadily (as in Scotland and Wales) in favor of a long-denied Cornish devolution.

---

The ingredients of today's nationalist Cornish pasty 

Cornish independence has deep roots as the rebel county sees itself as a Celtic nation like Ireland. Scotland and Wales rather than a region on the periphery of England. The 'Mebyon Kernow' independence party, founded in 1951, has since grown stronger and stronger as young, strongly pro-European people join, dreaming of seeing "Kernow" rejoin the EU as an independent country. For them the only remaining issue is what the capital would be, with five potential candidates:

• Truro, the current administrative capital

• Saint lves, the resort town sometimes referred to as "the Cornish jewel", with its many cultural sites

• Saint Austell, the biggest town

• Launceston, the historical capital

• Newquay, the city with the main transport hubs