Thursday 6 November 2014

What about the North Devonians? NSFC (Not safe for Cornishmen)



In recent months there has been a hang of al lot of talk about national identity, devolved government and independence bought on by the granting of minority status to the Cornish, the rise of bleddy UKIP in the Euro elections and the Scottish independence referendum. I have found this all very interesting and the ructions caused by such events have certainly livened up the debates at the Reform Thursday Lunch club. Now I like to get me facts straight so I have been doing quite a bit of reading up on these matters in order to give a certain perspicacity to my arguments. Luckily, as a lot of it involves national and local identity based upon historical precedents, I was able to bring my studies on the Celtic Saints and  Celtic culture in the Southwest of Britain during the dark ages or the early medieval era as they would have you call it these days as it turns out there was nothing dark about them specially down here in the South West, to the debate. 


Jamaica Inn - Implausible location

The topic that proved to be most lively and stirred up a fiery although rather one-sided debate was that of the Cornish minority status. It had been only a matter of weeks previous when Cornwall had been a subject of debate as we had been discussing the accents in the BBC TV adaptation of Jamaica Inn and the gaping historical and geographical inaccuracies in the plot of both the programme and Daphne bleddy Dumaurier's, original novel. Anne Cawood had read it but most of us based our argument on the Hitchcock film which had been screened at school by the history master Mr Battersby at the end of every other term, I reckon he must have had a thing for Maureen O'Hara.  However, as the minority status decree had come out of the blue and had provoked such controversy we slated our original topic on the future of the Civic Centre and decided to open an extraordinary debate. If Cornwall can have it why not North Devon? 
The ensuing furore was unsurprising given that many of our members see Cornwall as like "home" and it turned out on a show of hands most people had at least a couple of Cornish folk in their family. Although this is probably best not to be regarded as overly conclusive poll as most of us also couldn't exactly say where it starts or begins. For one thing you don't have to cross the Tamar, or at least no so you'd notice, to get to Cornwall if you are up here in North Devon. at Barnstaple Town F,C, they refer to Bideford as being "the cornish" and also at Exeter City, Plymouth Argyle are rather more vituperatively called the same thing. Mind you, I don’t even know exactly where it is. Somewhere or perhaps that should be, anywhere, West of Bideford, Horns Cross way, down towards Kilkhampton. Is that in Devon or Cornwall? I don't know. Bude's in Cornwall. Although it's local news turns up in The Journal and weddings are covered from couples down that way and babies from Bude are delivered at the NDDH For instance that proud Cornishman, rugby star and celebrity Masterchef winner Phil Vickery being a case in point. Thinking about it I suppose that what makes him vociferously Cornish. He's unsure of his identity, always got to keep stating it, having been born in Devon or worse, England! Bude is the Berwick on Tweed of the Westcountry. This puts me in mind of one of my cousins, whose father funnily enough is actually Cornish, who happened to be born in London by a quirk of fate, he never lived there because as soon as my Auntie was able to leave the Hospital up there she was on the Royal Blue coach, babe in arms, back down to Combe Martin. However, to this day we still call him a Cockney bastard, this makes him bleddy livid and he goes out of his way to stress his Devonian roots and heritage, that is to affirm his identity. The mere whisper of a cockney accent within his earshot accent propels him into paroxysms of muttering and gurning. I digress. 
Hartland Point despite TV's Coast still in Devon.
As I was saying it turns out  even the BBC has trouble pinpointing it's exact location as a while back they gave Harland Quay for being in Cornwall on such a venerable programme as Coast no less! I tell you that had me spluttering into me Horlicks and I called up them up but I suppose as I was watching it late in the Signing Zone I only managed to get onto a security guard who said he'd log my complaint and pass it on to the relative department. I don't reckon he did as just the other evening on Autumnwatch during a piece on the immigration and subsequent dispersal of Ivy Bees( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colletes_hederae ) they said that these hardy little apoids had come over from the continent and had established a colony in an area of Cornwall only to illustrate this fact by putting a shaded area over what looked like North Tawton. You'd think they'd get it right as they all look like Geography teachers and Nick Crane himself is a bleddy Cartographer. Wes Twardo went on to tell us how he'd been listening to Radio Cornwall when he was down in his caravan at Welcombe and there was this woman who had phoned in from Wales, evidently they get both Radio Devon and Cornwall over there, same as we used to get Welsh TV here, who had called to express her solidarity with the Cornish. The caller was a Welsh bard who during the course of her bardic activities had visited Cornwall on many occasions and said she'd always felt a great affinity with the Cornish people she could tell they were fellow Celts and she went on to say that it gave her great comfort to look out over the sea from her South Wales coastal home and see the cliffs of Cornwall looming sublimely on the horizon. Wes paused a moment here for effect....Eh? we questioned in unison. How did sheee manage thaaat? Mazed old fool wasn't looking at bleddy Cornwall! No she got that wrong as their coast faces the wrong way so she was more than likely looking at Morte Point, Hangman in North Devon. She'd need a strange old telescope to see Cornwall or perhaps, I added, she only had one of Nicholas Crane's maps. Also on the same show was Jethro and it turns out he lives in Lewdown.... Devon. Oh we had a laugh.  Annie Cawood then went on to say once again that there is no physical border.It’s an arbitrary line like many borders. She went on to say how her Auntie who lives in Lifton told her that local legend has it that at some point in the Victorian era the border was drawn up by a group of local dignitaries after a lengthy liquid lunch in Launceston convened to verify such matters of delineation where the River Ottery was mistaken for the Tamar and so thats where the border lay for a time. 
Basically, the criteria that give Cornwall it's "separateness" and have been partly used to justify it's minority status can be applied to Devon and parts of Somerset. For instance, the Prayer Book rebellion and the Poll Tax rebellion started in Cornwall but picked up people all the way along so it wasn't exclusively Cornish and subsequently they were joined by other rebels from all other the country. So by way of conclusion we were all happy to agree that the Cornish appropriate everything and claim it for their own. They have even nabbed St Piran who was once considered to be the patron saint of the whole of the Westcountry and they tried to do the same with St Petroc until it was pointed out that there are only two dedications to him in Cornwall and seventeen in Devon. By my reckoning the symbolic bird of Cornwall shouldn't be the chough it should be the bleddy magpie!. They've even claimed this bird, the red billed chough which actually has breeding populations up and down the British Isles and is actually more likely to be found in Spain, as their own and bestowed upon it up some Arthurian mystique. Apparently, King Arthur turned into one when he passed away. From pasties, recently proved to be a Devonian invention, and clotted cream, fudge, cream teas, cheese with nettles in it, Cornish sardines i.e pilchards, lobsters to rugby naive art, smugglers tales and sea shanties you can go on and on.You name it, they take credit for the lot. You'd probably find someone down in Newquay who would be prepared to claim in the West Briton that they'd invented surfing and exported it to the polynesians! Tin mining that's another one. I once read in a copy of the Metal Bulletin which I found lying around in the surgery an article on mining in the South West and it said that over the aeons more tin had been extracted from Dartmoor than anywhere else.Plus, you also get tinner's hares in churches all over the south west. Morwhellham Quay sounds nicely Cornish... in Devon. 
The Tamar has two banks, one of which is in Devon but you wouldn't know it the way the Cornish tell it!
Morwellham Quay a fun day out for all the family - in Devon!

If it's only geography that has earned the Cornish their minority status we had to ask ourselves what about the North Devonians? Bleddy Cornish. Not that we were particularly bothered for ourselves as we know who we are but we just didn't like the idea of the Cornish getting one over on everyone else as they tend to do. We grumbled on into our pints of Doombar lovely drop of Cornish beer, it was on offer were not not going eat Cornish pasties or drink cornish beer.  I don't even deny their right to feel a minority in a rather ill informed romantic sense but what they use to justify this is actually all a part of a shared history and culture for the whole of the Southwest and therefore a part of British culture as a whole. It serves to legitimate in one specific area and not another a cultural and historical heritage. None of it is exclusively Cornish other than the geography and the lines drawn there at times can be rather hazy Of course, it ain't all about location and pasties is it?. There is the question of a separate Cornish Celtic people which raises thorny issues about race and ethnicity, This had to be left alone down the Reform as from bitter experience such questions of race are now banned as a subject for debate, they are taboo. 

To be continued.........
Here's a photo of Jamaica Inn before they diverted the A30 around it
This is how I remember it on trips down "home" to see Cornish relatives.