Distinct Cultural, National or Ethnic Identity
See also: Cornish people and Culture of CornwallMany supporters will, in addition to making legal or constitutional arguments, stress that the Cornish are a distinct ethnic group or nation, that people in Cornwall typically refer to 'England' as beginning east of the River Tamar, and that there is a Cornish language. If correct they argue the Cornish therefore have a right to national self determination.
Campaigners in 2001 for the first time prevailed upon the UK census to count Cornish ethnicity as a write-in option on the national census, although there was no separate Cornish tick box. In 2004 school children in Cornwall could also record their ethnicity as Cornish on the schools census. Additionally, the Council of Europe has been applying increasing pressure on the UK government to recognise the Cornish for protection under the Council's Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities.
In the world of Cornish sport also can be found expressions of Cornish national identity. In 2004 a campaign was started to field a Cornish national team in the
The notion that the Cornish are a separate ethnicity is sometimes tied up with the notion that the Cornish are of Celtic blood, unlike most people in the rest of England. British geneticist Bryan Sykes has criticised this notion; he claims that the Celtic identity only arose in the early 18th century, and believes that this was invented as linguistic terminology rather than an ethnic group. Edward Lhuyd noticed the similarities between Breton, Cornish, Irish, Scots Gaelic and Welsh, so he grouped them together as "Celtic". However, Sykes questions whether there ever was a Celtic people at all.
In 2011, an e-petition directed at Westminster was launched.
- "This petition calls for signatures to raise the issue of the "Cornish Identity" in Parliament and aims to have Cornwall recognised as a National Minority.." This petition has now closed, it received 851 signatures, (99,149 less than the 100,000 needed for the matter to be considered for debate in the House of Commons.)
In September 2011, George Eustice, Member of Parliament for Camborne and Redruth, argued that Cornwall's heritage should be administered by a Cornish organisation rather than English Heritage. This was rejected.
Read more about this topic: Cornish Nationalism
Famous quotes containing the words distinct, national, ethnic and/or identity:
“I advance it therefore as a suspicion only, that the blacks, whether originally a distinct race, or made distinct by time and circumstances, are inferior to the whites in the endowments of both body and mind.”
—Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826)
“It is accordance with our determination to refrain from aggression and build up a sentiment and practice among nations more favorable to peace ... that we have incurred the consent of fourteen important nations to the negotiation of a treaty condemning recourse to war, renouncing it as an instrument of national policy.”
—Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933)
“Caprice, independence and rebellion, which are opposed to the social order, are essential to the good health of an ethnic group. We shall measure the good health of this group by the number of its delinquents. Nothing is more immobilizing than the spirit of deference.”
—Jean Dubuffet (1901–1985)
“Unlike Boswell, whose Journals record a long and unrewarded search for a self, Johnson possessed a formidable one. His life in London—he arrived twenty-five years earlier than Boswell—turned out to be a long defense of the values of Augustan humanism against the pressures of other possibilities. In contrast to Boswell, Johnson possesses an identity not because he has gone in search of one, but because of his allegiance to a set of assumptions that he regards as objectively true.”
—Jeffrey Hart (b. 1930)