Across the Amazon

The M5 and A30 demolish distance. For those up-country, they provide an arrow straight to the heart of Cornwall. Bristol to Bodmin is a journey that takes the same time as Bristol to Bournemouth, despite being nearly twice as far. That is not a plea for more motorways but for careful thought about how the roads and railways of the future are planned, so as to strengthen regional integrity and not erode it. Cornwall is not as remote as it was, and that is as much the work of lobbies in Cornwall as of anyone else. Those who live by tourism can die by it too.

On Saturday it took just over two hours of effortless driving along almost empty highway to reach Bodmin, ancient capital of Cornwall and home to the shrine of St Petroc. The Shire Hall and the Public Rooms dominate Mount Folly, its central open space (left), though administration and justice alike have now gone west. There was much grumbling 20 years ago when the Crown Court, last relic of Bodmin’s days as Cornwall’s assize town, moved to new premises in Truro. The County Hall in Truro has recently been re-designated as ‘Lys Kernow’ (Cornwall Hall) and is firmly the centre of power in the new unitary authority. I am sure that will not have stopped the debate about where Cornwall’s capital lies. Bodmin and Launceston have both had their day and there is a story among nationalists that if the issue were ever to be resolved the capital might well end up being a ship moored in Falmouth Harbour. There must be a lesson for Wessex here.

The reason for being in Bodmin was an event at the Public Rooms, namely the Annual Conference of Mebyon Kernow – the Party for Cornwall. MK (‘Sons of Cornwall’) is 60 years old next January and one of the agenda items was to elect Ann Trevenen Jenkin as Honorary Life President. A founder member, both of the party and of a nationalist dynasty of Jenkins, Ann was also a leader of the historic march in 1997 from St Keverne to Blackheath to commemorate the Cornish rebels who passed that way 500 years before. That was the occasion for which I’d had made what is probably the first example of the Wessex Wyvern in its now standard modern form, which had its first public unfurling at Wells Cathedral on the evening of 6th June that year.

The Public Rooms stand on the site of Bodmin’s Franciscan friary, of which the pillar in the picture (below) is a remnant. They are one of several expressions of civic pride in Bodmin, all bristling with very solid Cornish granite. A propeller from a Vickers Vimy bi-plane hangs on the wall: once the property of a local resident who acquired it to make into a hat-stand.

Cornwall’s premier nationalist party has seen good progress over recent years. Leader Dick Cole is one of four MK councillors on the unitary council and now has his own weekly column in the Cornish Guardian, exposing the stitch-ups on-going at Lys Kernow. More could be achieved were it not for the indifference of Cornish folk to the threats now gathering over their identity and the malice of so very many nationalist English towards anything that clips the edges of their evil empire.

The current insistence is that the borders of Scotland and Wales are sacrosanct but that Cornwall must start sharing an MP or two with England. And this is just the latest of many flagrant breaches of international law to afflict the delectable Duchy. Despite it all, the St Piran flags keep on flying, the Cornish language continues its journey back into the light of day, and nowhere in Britain is there firmer evidence that politics can still be a force for good than in the struggle of Mebyon Kernow.

In the words of Lisa Simpson, “Rydhsys rag Kernow lemmyn!” And what could be cooler than that?