At the start of this year, I wrote about how 2026 is Mebyon Kernow’s 75th anniversary year and I am proud of the work put in by so many activists since 1951. I have been the leader of MK for nearly three decades and I must admit often feeling frustrated with the speed of progress, though it is heartening when people express the view that MK and the wider Cornish movement have helped change Cornwall for the better.
Back in 1965, founder-members Richard and Ann Jenkin produced a book titled “Cornwall, the Hidden Land,” in which they argued that the emergence of MK, fifteen years before, “had been one of the most promising signs that Cornwall will continue as a Celtic country and not decline into merely an administrative division of England.”
Bernard Deacon, Garry Tregidga and I produced a history of MK, which was published in 2003 – shortly after our 50th anniversary – and in our conclusion we argued that the two opposites in the Jenkins’ statement had proved to be quite compatible. We noted that there had been an “unmistakable enrichment and intensification of the Cornish sense of Celtic identity,” while Cornwall has yet to make commensurate political progress. We noted that we had yet to secure a devolution settlement, while we were often being treated as “part of an administrative division of England” rather than even one in its own right.
There is so much more to do. But it right to acknowledge how far we have come in terms of our national identity and culture.
Over the Easter weekend, I spent some time sorting through a significant pile of archival material from the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s, which will hopefully soon be lodged with Kresen Kernow. I certainly found letters, campaign documents and newspaper reports which very much felt like they were from a different age.
In the late 1960s, MK was running a campaign in support of the Cornish flag. I found a leaflet hitting out at a “clumsy campaign” to obstruct “recognition” and use of Cornwall’s national banner, as well as press clippings relating to a Board of Trade official telling the owner of a pleasure boat in Falmouth that he couldn’t fly the Cornish flag. Apparently, the official called it a “load of rubbish,” before the Board backtracked.
And I even found a complaint letter sent to the Race Relations Board in 1978 by MK’s National Secretary following the refusal of the West Briton to publish a bilingual notice announcing the birth of his grandson!
It is good that such considerations are a thing of the past.
Article published in the Cornish Guardian (8th April 2026) and West Briton (9th April 2026) newspapers