1.  Of the many dozens of UK racial/ethnic/census/cultural groups recognised by the UK state authorities, only the Cornish have been specifically named by government within its state Compliance Reports as a group to be deprived of Convention benefits. The government actually admitted in July 2007 that any attempt to include the Cornish within the Convention will be “strongly resisted”. No other group has been similarly singled out and targeted for such extraordinary adverse treatment.

2. Government say that the Cornish are excluded from the Framework Convention on grounds that they are not a Race Relations Act 1976 case law recognised group. However, government includes in the Convention other groups who are, like the Cornish, not case law recognised. For example, the June 1999 1^st UK Compliance Report stated that Irish Travellers were a Convention group – but this group did not become case law recognised until August 2000. Although the Ulster-Scots are not case law recognised, the 1999 and 2007 UK Compliance Reports treat them as a Convention group. The 2007 UK Compliance Report actually states that Scottish Gypsies are not case law recognised, but that the UK authorities have decided to treat them as if they were and include them within the Convention.

3. The government’s reason for excluding the Cornish from the Convention is clearly based on a false premise. Therefore statements to this effect are false. Yet government, through a succession of government ministers, have consistently repeated this falsehood to the Council of Europe, the Westminster Parliament and the High Courts of England and Wales. Lying to international human rights organisations in order to prevent an endangered minority group from obtaining the protection of international law is indefensible. Similarly, lying to Parliament is usually taken very seriously, and government minister have been forced to resign when found out - but not, it seems, when the matter involves lying to unlawfully repress the Cornish. On a more serious note, lying to the High Court is categorised as a contempt of court, which in the present circumstances is a criminal offence punishable by up to two years in prison – but not, it seems, when it involves government ministers lying to the court in order to deprive the Cornish of due rights.

4. Although government say that the Convention applies only to Race Relations Act case law recognised groups, in spite of numerous request being made to the effect, government says it cannot, and will not, publish a list of such groups. Under the terms of the Convention, government is under an obligation to deliver Convention rights and benefits, “through national legislation and government policy”. In the absence of such a list, how can Parliament, public authorities and other service providers know who to legislate for, and shape policy around? And how can government, NGO’s and the Council of Europe monitoring authority know if implementation is being carried out effectively, or at all?

5. During the 2007 Cornwall 2000 High Court hearing when the Cornish sought to obtain Convention benefits, the government told the Court, “The Convention does not confer any benefits upon individuals recognised under it”.

Yet the Convention itself refers to the many, “rights, provisions and freedoms” bestowed upon individuals recognised under it. Moreover, within the draft 1999 UK Compliance Report the government appended a 1999 Home Office press release [signed by Minister Mike O’Brien] stating that the Convention, “guarantees minorities equality before the law and freedom from discrimination” and “ signatories agree to adopt measures to promote, in all areas of economic, social, political and cultural life, full and effective quality between minority and majority”.

6. Under the terms of the Race Relations Act 1976, government accepts that everyone in the UK is covered by the Act. The Act itself states that a group can achieve ‘racial group’ status on grounds of “colour, race, national and ethnic or national origins”. Furthermore, in 2006 the UK courts determined that the term ‘foreigner’ constitutes a racial group for the purposes of the Race Relations Act. As government applies the Framework Convention to [a] all UK Race Relations Act recognised groups, [b] selected non-Race Relations Act groups of its choosing and, with this recent ruling, [c] every person and group in the rest of the world, we arrive at a situation where just about everyone and every group in the world is covered by the Convention. Everyone, that is, except the Cornish. In other words, the Framework Convention applies to all of the worlds 6,912 known language based cultures bar one - and that is the Cornish.

Point of clarity: It is an offence under the Act for a white person to insult a black person on grounds of his racial difference – in this case, skin colour. Similarly, it is an offence for a black person to insult a white person in the same circumstances. If the person insulted was ‘White Cornish’ [a UK Census 2001 category], he would be protected by the Act – not because he was Cornish but because he was White.

7. The government recognises Chinese as a ‘racial group’ category and this group also benefit from the protection of the Framework Convention. Therefore a Chinese businessman landing at Cornwall’s Newquay Airport finds his billion speaking language community and self-sustaining, state-sponsored culture protected and promoted by a Convention designed to protect and promote endangered cultures; whilst the endangered identity, language, history and culture of the small indigenous community he arrives amongst is excluded from the Convention.

8.      Entry into the Convention is said to be conditional on groups achieving ‘racial group’ status on grounds of: colour, race, national and ethnic or national origins [Race Relations Act]. On these terms, the Black community constitute a racial group. That is fair. But what of a Black person with an English cultural identity? On grounds of skin colour alone, this person is included in a Convention designed to protect and promote his ‘minority’ culture. Is the majority English culture now protected by a Convention designed to protect minority cultures? And what if the Black person has a Cornish cultural identity? I have been unable to obtain answers to these, and many other questions, from government.

9.      To obtain entry in to the Framework Convention, government say that the Cornish should themselves bring a case of racial discrimination in order to test the attitude of the courts to the Cornish. This advice was not meted out to other groups seeking Race Relations Act ‘racial group’ status. In fact, in all cases where groups have obtained ‘racial group’ status, public funds have been used to bring such cases before the courts. This funding has always been channelled through the former UK Commission for Racial Equality – which had a remit to bring more groups under the Act. For example, the CRE funded cases for Irish Travellers, Sikhs, Jews, Gypsies, the Scots and English – all of which succeeded in bringing these groups under the Act. However, the CRE has consistently refused to fund a case involving the Cornish. The last CRE stated grounds for refusing to fund a Cornish case was that the Cornish were not a case law recognised ‘racial group’. This Catch 22 circular argument was not deployed for the other groups mentioned above who, at the time of their CRE funded Race Relations Act test cases, were not case law recognised ‘racial groups’. In 1991 the CRE supported the non-case law recognised Rastafarians in a Race Relations Act case. However, unlike the Cornish, Rastafarians were not recognised by the Council of Europe, were not a UK Census group, were not a local authority, NHS or DfES ethnically-monitored group and did not posses a legally recognised and protected minority language.

10.  At present, the government asserts that it bases Convention inclusion criteria on the following sequence of events:

The Convention applies to what are called ‘racial groups’.

The courts determine who these groups are.

The determination is made during a Race Relations Act case.

Such cases are brought by individuals alleging racial discrimination.

The Lottery

For the purposes of this argument, we must ignore the governments current willingness to arbitrarily pick and choose which groups it wants to include in the Convention and go along with the myth that government’s stated entry criteria is actually operable. In such circumstances, for a particular minority group to obtain inclusion within the Convention it must also be Race Relations Act case law recognised. For this to become a reality, each of the following entirely random conditions must be satisfied - and they must all come together at the same time:

A person from that group [say a man] must first, quite by chance, find himself in a situation where he thinks he might be a victim of racial discrimination.

He must be acquainted with the Race Relations Act.

He must be aware of his rights under the Act.

He must know how to pursue those rights.

He must have the time and inclination to bring such a claim.

He must be prepared to fund his own legal costs and the other side’s adverse costs. If the case progressed from the County Court, to the High Court, to the Appeal Court, the House of Lords and on to Strasbourg, these costs would be astronomical – possibly as much as £1,000,000.

In the absence of another source of funding, he must be prepared to risk losing his money, his job and his house.

He must also persuade [probably an English judge] that the group to which he belongs constitutes a ‘racial group’ for the purposes of the Race Relations Act

Unless every one of these conditions is met, every member of the group to which he belongs will be forever deprived of due legal rights and status. That is why the present UK ‘system’ of obtaining group rights and status is a lottery.

A Rigged Lottery

In order for the Cornish to obtain entry into the Convention, the government has made the situation far more onerous. Not only must all the above conditions be met, but the following situations must also be considered/overcome:

When ever the Cornish have appeared in a court where the central contention is their Cornishness, the English courts have summarily dismissed each and every case without attempting to give even the slightest impression that the claim was properly considered.

The former Commission for Racial Equality [now the EHRC] has a statutory duty to bring new groups into the Race Relations Act. However, it consistently refused to support cases where an applicant’s Cornishness was the relevant factor. In 2003 grounds for refusal were given as, “Unfortunately, the settled case law does not identify Cornish persons as belonging to a racial group for the purposes of the 1976 Act”. Therefore, the Commission have put the Cornish on notice that while they remain outside of the Act, the CRE will not offer assistance. As we have seen, the state funded authorities do not adopt this approach in respect of other groups.

The Legal Services Commission boasts that it, “helps two million people a year get access to justice”, but consistently refuses to support cases where a person’s Cornishness is the relevant factor. Grounds for refusing Legal Aid to parents trying to overturn a decision that prevented 20,000 Cornish children from registering their identity at school were, “the matter does not have a significantly wide public interest and the likely gains to be made do not justify the likely costs”.

From a Cornish perspective, the only possible means of securing Race Relations Act case law recognition, and hence Convention status, is by way of ethnic or national origins. In regard to ethnic origins, the Cornish claimant is required to initiate a case in the full knowledge that the Cornish have historic parallels to the English and Scots, and the courts have already ruled that the English and Scots are not ethnic groups for the purposes of the 1976 Act. Regards making a case on the basis of national origins [stemming from a nation], the claimant must initiate a case in the knowledge that the state has artificially distorted historical perceptions by removing from schools, the wider public domain and hence the common pool of knowledge, evidence showing that Cornwall was formerly considered to be one of the four nations of Britain.

In many areas of public authority activity, there is a statutory requirement that policies must be properly formulated. Housing authorities, for example, must have rules for determining priority between applicants in the allocation of their housing accommodation. Education authorities are obliged to publish their policies and criteria for deciding upon the allocation of school places where there are too many applicants for the place available. Not so, it appears, for minority rights.

The law requires Government to operate in ways that provide clarity and legal certainty. Government is required to formulate policies, particularly in the sensitive area of establishing or classifying minority group status. When properly formulated, it must also operate these policies in a rational, fair, inclusive and non-arbitrary way. The present means of minority classification satisfies none of these requirements.

11. Government do not deny that the Cornish people exist. Indeed, during Framework Convention correspondence, and in UK Compliance Reports, government recognised that, “the Cornish people have their own language, and their own sense of cultural and regional identity” and, “government is very much aware of the strength of feeling about Cornwall’s separate identity and distinctiveness”. What government has done, however, is preside over administrative practices and judicial procedures that appear, at first glance, to be fair, but are actually discriminatory in their operation and effect. This gives rise to a situation whereupon the Cornish are, for all intents and purposes, unable to obtain the status of ‘racial group’ and be included within the Convention. This is in itself an unlawful practice.

12. As we have seen obtaining minority status in the UK is not based on any properly formulated procedure. In the absence of state assistance, recognition is based on a chance concurrence of random factors i.e. a single person’s individual circumstances which include situation and opportunity, legal awareness, inclination and vast personal wealth. If these factors do not fall into place in unison, an entire minority group can be condemned to a legal no-mans-land, face statistical oblivion and almost certain ethnocide.  The government, and its various agencies, have ensured that the Cornish find themselves in these circumstances.

13. The series of unprecedented discriminatory measures outlined above arise from the fact that the Cornish are a pre-English indigenous group with a long-standing, suppressed and unresolved but nevertheless bona fide territorial claim. By rendering the Cornish statistically invisible, by keeping them in a legal no mans land and by excluding them from the provisions of international treaties such as the Framework Convention [which purpose is to prevent forced assimilation of peoples], their ‘inconvenient’ history can be prevented from entering schools, the public domain and hence the common pool of knowledge. By this means, the Cornish to English assimilation program can be kept rolling and the Duchy/private estate deception maintained.

14. Supporting, and some would say driving, this behaviour is a standing Westminster Parliamentary injunction preventing UK Members of Parliament from asking questions about the Duchy of Cornwall, and the Duke of Cornwall’s unprecedented right, under the UK Crown Proceedings Act 1947, to control or intervene in any ‘procedings’ that might affect his rights, property or profits. 

This sinister and undemocratic Act of Parliament allows for HRH Charles Windsor, Prince of Wales and Duke of Cornwall, to secretly intervene in, and covertly control the outcome of, virtually any UK administrative or judicial process in order to secure a result favourable to his own interest. This means he can intervene and control the decision-making outcomes of administrative bodies, formal tribunals, public enquiries, judicial reviews and other court cases – even if a different outcome might have served the interests of natural justice, or favoured a whole community such as the Cornish. 

Self-interest, sycophancy, deference and royal patronage all have their place in decision-making processes in the UK. For example, although decision making bodies are meant to be independent, when the former UK Commission for Racial Equality last rejected an application to fund a Race Relations Act case on behalf of the Cornish, it was later discovered that three of the CRE’s leading decision-making Commissioners were not only in the patronage of the Duke of Cornwall, but also acting in his interests. 

Implementing a covert policy to eradicate the Cornish identity is the equivalent of conducting community-wide retribution against a vulnerable cultural group that has committed no crime. In summary, it cannot be lawful for a minority group to undergo extinction simply because of its association with a Crown dependency now masquerading as a commercial enterprise.

Note: The above information is taken directly from ‘Scat t’Larrups?’ - which carries reference sources for the material used here.

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