Join Mebyon Kernow today

The last few months have demonstrated solid progress for Mebyon Kernow – the Party for Cornwall.

At our National Conference in November, we celebrated sixty years as an organisation. Days later, Loveday Jenkin won a fifth seat for MK on Cornwall Council in a by-election at Wendron, out-polling Liberal Democrat, Conservative, Labour and Independent candidates.

In December, we marked the tenth anniversary of the 50,000 declarations for a Cornish Assembly being presented to Downing Street and our ongoing campaign for greater Cornish self-government received a boost when Plaid Cymru tabled a supportive Early Day Motion.

As a consequence of this and the wider debate around Scottish Independence, MK members have been featured on local television and radio, Newsnight Scotland and Radio 5live, and in newspapers including the Daily Star, Daily Telegraph, Financial Times, The Guardian, Independent, Morning Star, Scotsman, and Western Mail.

MK is making advances and I would like to extend an invitation to all readers of this blog – who are not already MK members – to join the Party.

The cost is only £12 for an individual membership, £15 for a family membership and £120 for life membership. There is a reduced rate of £6 for people who are unwaged. Members receive Cornish Nation magazine four times a year while new members will also receive a complimentary copy of the recent MK history and a membership badge.

Join MK today and help us fight for a better deal for Cornwall. Anyone interested in more details can email me on dick.cole.mk@gmail.com.

The latest (January) edition of Cornish Nation has just been and complimentary copies (either as hard copy or as a pdf) are available on request from the above email address.

"Mebyon Kernow sees the future in black and white” - The Guardian

MK has had more positive publicity in recent days. I was featured on Radio 5live and Cllr Loveday Jenkin appeared in a piece on Newsnight Scotland.

The Guardian has also just published an on-line article by Steven Morris titled “Cornish party Mebyon Kernow sees the future in black and white” following interviews with myself, Cllr Loveday Jenkin and Cllr John Rowe in December. It is a positive article, but I really don’t like the accompanying photograph (see above). The article was as follows:

Loveday Jenkin was growing up, the Cornish flag was rarely seen. Now the white cross on a black background is ubiquitous, fluttering outside county hall in Truro and printed on everything from souvenir boxes of fudge to pasty packaging and car bumper stickers.

"I think it shows what a long way we've come in just a few years," says Jenkin, the latest member of Mebyon Kernow (MK) – the Party for Cornwall – to be elected to Cornwall council. "Everyone is so much more aware that we are separate, different, not a part of England and should have the right to govern ourselves."

Scotland has its own parliament, while the assemblies in Wales and Northern Ireland are maturing nicely. And in the far south-west MK is leading the campaign for a referendum on a Cornish Assembly.

It is demanding a meeting with David Cameron and Nick Clegg to ask why a petition of 50,000 names, the equivalent of a tenth of the Cornish adult population, appears to have been ignored. The Welsh nationalist party, Plaid Cymru, has laid down an early-day motion in the Commons supporting the call for devolution.

MK, which has just celebrated its 60th birthday, is beginning to do well in local elections, holding five seats on Cornwall council – four more than Labour. The party hopes that the unpopularity of the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition will lead to it taking a leap forward at the next general election, and believes it is starting to attract younger voters disillusioned with the bigger parties.

"Being Cornish is about belonging to the place of Cornwall but also having a particular way of thinking about things," says Jenkin, a biochemist.

"We do things differently. Our culture is different, we have our own language. People ask why I identify myself as Cornish. It's simply because I am Cornish. We have more in common with Brittany and Wales than the south-east of England but we're subsumed into English decision-making."

Cornwall council has been discussing some interesting ideas that would help set the region apart from the rest of the UK. It has approved the idea of having a Cornish bank holiday at a different time to England. It has moved to stop people who have second homes in Cornwall voting there rather than where they live permanently. The possibility of setting its own tax on visitors has also been floated.

But MK wants to go much further. It does not want full independence but a legislative assembly responsible for health, education, training, local government, housing, economic development, transport, energy, law and home affairs, environment, agriculture, forestry and fishing, sports and the arts.

Like Plaid, MK often talks about social justice. Dick Cole, the party's leader who gave up his job as an archaeologist to become a full-time councillor, says that over the past 40 years Cornwall's economy has been fractured.

"Jobs have been lost, centralised out of here," he said. "Cornwall is now one of the worst places for wages and the living costs are getting ever higher. We are one of the most deprived areas and the over-centralised nature of the British state has done us no good."

MK's policies include more affordable housing, "fairer taxation" under which the richer pay more and the poorer less, and – like the Welsh government – pushing for what it sees as an equitable funding deal from Westminster.

The unpopularity of the coalition could be just what MK needs. Cole says that during last year's election campaign, voters told him they wanted to back MK but felt they had to vote Lib Dem to keep the Tories out, or vice versa.

"Then the next thing was we have a Conservative-led coalition. People think they have been sold a pup and are telling us they will vote for us next time." When the Guardian ran its Disunited Kingdom series of articles about devolution, it asked readers to say how they defined themselves in terms of nationality. The Cornish results were dominated by people who preferred to call themselves "other" rather than English or British. They were not given the option of describing themselves as Cornish.

Both Cole and Jenkin say they are Cornish first but British second. "If you do the history, the Celts are the ancient Britons. Being Cornish and British is completely logical," says Cole.

Jenkin points out that there had never been an act of union between Cornwall and England as there was between England and Scotland and England and Wales. She thinks of the monarch as "the queen" rather than "her queen", though MK would be prepared to let her open an assembly building if they get one. Jenkin also believes Prince Charles, the Duke of Cornwall, could do more to help champion the cause of Cornish separatism.

Cole and Jenkin are veteran MK activists but believe a new generation is beginning to take an interest; people such as John Rowe, a 25-year-old MK parish councillor.

Like many young Cornish people, Rowe admits he did not understand his identity until he left his family farm to go to university in Bath. "It may sound trite but I did not realise what Cornwall was all about until I left it," he said.

Rowe noticed not only the cultural differences – the language, the art – but also the economic differences between a relatively wealthy city such as Bath and the former mining town where he grew up, Camborne.

So will he see a Cornish assembly in his political career or even lifetime?

"I feel the tide is turning in our direction," he says. But he concedes that the turn could be slow.

I oppose the sale of the Council Offices in St Austell

Today, Cornwall Council’s Cabinet voted to sell the former Restormel Council Offices to a developer, so that they could build yet another supermarket.

I fundamentally disagree with the decision, which I believe is short-sighted and does not make financial sense.

The Council owns significant land in this location and the offices are good. And yet the decision was to sell off three-quarters of the land, knock down perfectly good offices, and use the receipt from the sale of the land to build new (smaller) offices with less car parking, squashed up on the remaining land, with no space for future expansion.

It makes no sense and I will continue to oppose this sale.

We need an accommodation strategy for Cornwall Council that reflects the needs of Cornwall Council – and is not driven by developers and supermarkets.

A bad day and an agenda-rant!

This morning, I had car problems. I won’t go into the boring details, but thought it would get sorted and I would be able to get to the Cabinet meeting by ten. This did not prove possible and I dived onto the 597 bus to Truro, knowing I would get there by 11.00.

It was my intention to speak on items relating to the sale of the Restormel Offices (see next post) and Old County Hall in Truro. There were many significant items on the agenda, including the development brief for land to the west of Truro. I knew that if I was there by 11.00, I would be in plenty of time to make my contributions.

I was therefore horrified to arrive to find that both items had been debated and voted through. It turned out that the Leader and some of the Cabinet members were not present at the start of the meeting in order to meet with representatives of the Local Government Chronicle. Something about nominations for awards!

Due to their absence the agenda was rejigged and the most controversial item deferred until later in the meeting – which led directly to me being denied the ability to make the representations that I had wished.

To say that I was angry would be a massive understatement.

For the record and apart from anger at the agenda shift, there were some positive decisions taken at the meeting. Members voted, for example, to increase funding to safeguard bus services (I still have to study the detail); and also to add mixed plastics and tetrapaks to what would collected as part of the kerbside recycling contract.

But this may be overshadowed by the blogosphere outrage at Alec Robertson’s decision to “ban” tweeters from Cabinet meetings. You can read about all that elsewhere …

How many new properties for Cornwall by 2030?

In this week's Cornish Guardian, my column is a "balanced" attempt to encourage people to comment on the draft Core Strategy. It is as follows:

How many properties do you think should be built in Cornwall over the next twenty years?

The unitary authority’s Core Strategy document, which is out to consultation until 2nd March, recommends that 48,000 new housing units should be constructed between 2010 and 2030.

Before Cornwall Council’s ruling Cabinet agreed on this figure, it undertook a consultation exercise in which it sought views on three possible housing targets: 38,000 (described as low), 48,000 (medium) and 57,000 (high). Individuals and groups were also invited to put forward their own alternative proposals.

Most written responses from Parish Councils and local groups supported the low to medium options. Developers meanwhile mostly argued for the high option, while a number of them proposed even higher levels of growth.

Following this initial consultation, council officers presented a report to the Planning Policy Panel at Cornwall Council, which I continue to chair. It recommended a housing target for the Core Strategy of 54,000! The Panel did not agree and proposed a lower target of 40,000 new homes, which was more in line with the early soundings taken in local communities. This was, however, over-ruled by the Council’s ten-strong Cabinet, which plumped for 48,000 new properties.

There are many groups arguing for lower levels of housing growth, including the Cornish Social and Economic Research Group.

CoSERG points out that over the last 50 years, Cornwall’s population has grown by over 200,000 people and the number of houses has doubled from 132,000 to 255,000.

Back in 1989, this organisation produced a book titled “Cornwall at the Crossroads.” It called for a breathing space so that “Cornwall and its communities could cope with this unprecedented growth, safeguard the environment and retain what makes our place special, its Cornishness.”

Over these last two decades, approximately 45,000 new properties have been completed in Cornwall – something CoSERG has described as a “juggernaut of housing and population growth.”

CoSERG strongly argues that the proposed levels of growth in the Core Strategy are unsustainable and would lead to “the loss of significant areas of countryside, the urbanisation of our towns and villages, much more traffic and congestion, and the irresponsible depletion of our natural resources.”

So what do you think? Who do you agree with – CoSERG, Cornwall Council, developers?

Please take the time to find out more about the arguments and have your say on housing, the environment, employment land, and so much more.

The Core Strategy documents can be viewed online at www.cornwall.gov.uk, where there is an online consultation system, or in libraries and one stop shops, where feedback forms are available.

You can also call 01872 224283 to request copies of the documents and feedback forms to be posted out to you.