CORNWALL BIAS: Justin Webb is the latest Today reporter to go walkabout to get the perspective of the EU referendum ‘from different places’. His destination was Redruth in Cornwall.
Previous News-watch postings on BBC’ presenters’ handling of the topic of ‘EU money’ have pointed out that they have missed from the equation the vital explanation that such cash is actually from UK taxpayers and only distributed by the EU.
Webb continued further down this route, and again exaggerated the pro-EU bias by over-emphasising at several points its role in the local economy. More seriously, He seemed unaware until it was mentioned by an interviewee, of the Amion report into EU spending in the area commissioned by local authorities and published in 2015. This had severely criticised the way this money was spent and noted that only 3,300 jobs had been created by half a billion pounds of taxpayers’ cash.
In the first of three features, he spoke to Alan Buckley, vice-chair of the Cornwall Mining Association, and Donovan Gardner, who runs a local food bank. Buckley explained that as a result of its metal mines and engineering expertise Cornwall had been the NASA of the industrial revolution, but those days had long gone. Cornwall was now a place of service industry, low wages and zero-hours contracts. Gardner said the demand for his food back service was ‘unbelievable’ because of the austerity problems. He was doing 10,000 meals a month.
Webb then said to Buckley:
And what a lot of people say Alan, is the answer to that, in part at least, is European money which does flow into Cornwall, because of its, its status, if you can put it like that, as a poorer part of Europe, and yet you’re voting Leave?
Buckley said it was a secret ballot and he was not saying how he would vote. But he said of everyone he spoke to, farmers, ex-miners, engineers, he had hardly heard a voice in favour of staying. Justin Webb asked why ‘the money argument doesn’t swing it for you’. Buckley replied:
Well, the strange thing is, recently we were discussing this, among some friends, the money that’s supposed to come from Europe, and nobody, including, in fact, the letters to the local paper – where’s it gone? Nobody ever sees any benefit from it. If it does come here, who has it and where does it go, where is it spent? Because we don’t . . . we see no benefit from it.
Gardner confirmed that he was undecided in the vote. He confirmed that he was, then observed that no-one had well paid jobs any more and were going hungry for their kids. He said he agreed with Alan that it was unclear where the money had gone. There was the Heartlands place, but it did not employ many people.
Webb asked if he had applied for any European money, and then whether it would be available to him. Gardner said he was looking for money for his charity, but thought it was only available to ‘starter projects’. Webb, interrupted by a lorry passing, put it to him that ‘at the moment Europe isn’t a source for you’. Gardner answered:
No, because European money is, is a project money (sic) er, it’s not sustainable money. If, if I want to start a new project, I could probably get European money, but next year it will be there.
Webb noted that Redruth town centre was run-down. He observed:
What, what, you need money injected into the place, don’t you? And if it doesn’t come from Europe, are you confident that it could come from Westminster?
Buckley replied that what was needed was industry, and explained that a hope was that a Canadian company would re-open one of the local mines. He claimed the prospects were good.
The second feature also came from Redruth. Justin Webb set the scene:
we’ve moved around to the side of the town, and I’m at a place that is very much benefiting, or about to benefit from EU money. It was a brewery, in fact, the chimney stack, the redbrick chimney stack is still very much in place, but the rest of it has been flattened and it’s being turned into a new archive centre, Kresen Kernow Archive Centre for Cornwall. Cornwall, of course, is paved with gold provided by the EU, it glitters around me on the streets here of Redruth in the early morning sunlight, well, not quite, in fact, as anyone who’s been to Cornwall and seen more than the beaches will know, there’s no gold on the streets, and in fact, the sun is more often reflected in the empty windows of closed-down shops. There is, though, a huge amount of European development money being spent around here. €6 billion in the programme lasting from 2014 to 2020. And it is money, of course, that colours that debate on the Europe referendum, in a sometimes forgotten corner of England. Well, this to most of us is Cornwall, I’m on the Bodinnick Ferry, it takes just a few cars at a time from Bodinnick to Fowey, and it’s all really picture postcard stuff, there are little boats, the water’s listening, you can come here and you can think, ‘Well, lucky Cornwall, lucky Cornish’ – what you don’t get a sense of is the simple fact that Cornwall is England’s poorest county. It qualifies for and it receives the top level of EU funding, and that’s cash that has an impact far away from the cream teas and the country lanes and the picturesque ferries.
Webb observed that IT company Headforwards was based in the Pool Innovation Centre, a gleaming new office block that ‘would not be here if it was not for funding from Brussels’. Craig Girvan from the company said it was a ‘great investment coming from Europe that had ’indirectly has enabled us to exist and grow’. Webb said:
Yeah. So there’s no question at all in your mind that the success of your business and that initial funding from the European Union are really intimately connected?CG: Absolutely.
JW: Alright then, if the benefits of membership are so clear, then it’s a no-brainer, isn’t it, on June 23? Well, no, not really. I’ve come to Trago Mills, which is an out-of-town shopping centre near Liskeard. When you ask people here specifically about the money coming into Cornwall, even then their views about the EU are pretty mixed.
The first of two vox pops said that a lot of EU money came and went to the airport, so she would be voting to stay. Webb asked if there was enough to be sure ‘there were benefits from being in the EU. One vox pop agreed.
Vox pop two wanted money put into Devon and Cornwall rather than handed over to the EU.
Webb went to Trago Mills where he said there was a ‘slightly kitsch feel’, cockerels running around and a huge Vote Leave poster, along with a statue of the emperor Nero. There was a caption which said:
‘Nero only fiddled, Eurocrats practice grand larceny.’ – a clue as to the view of Europe held by the boss, Bruce Robertson.BRUCE ROBERTSON: Even by the EU’s own measures, it hasn’t done anything, we’re still deprived. My view would be that . . . our own MPs would be perfectly capable of making a strong case for precisely what Cornwall needs in our own Parliament at Westminster, rather than having a few MEPs who cover from the Scilly Isles to Southampton, who are invariably a minority, because of what we are, in a parliament of 751 people . . .
JW: (speaking over) (fragment of word, or word unclear) But isn’t it simply that with the EU there are set rules about the level of deprivation there has to be for you to get money, and if it were done at Westminster, there wouldn’t be those set rules, it would be all about politics, and you’d be competing with . . . central Manchester, with Scotland, with all sorts of other areas that also want . . . help. And you wouldn’t get it.
Robertson said that ‘we’ were not getting back a munificent bounty, only a small element of what was paid in Webb said that ‘you are getting it, that’s the point’ – under Westminster that might not happen. Robertson said there was nothing to say that would not change.
Webb moved on to Polkerris beach and observed that ‘everyone agreed’ that Cornwall could not survive on tourism alone. He said:
…does the money come best from Europe, or could it come, as those in the Leave camp suggest from Westminster? Dr Joanie Willet works for Exeter University, but in the Penryn campus here in Cornwall.DR JOANIE WILLET: There is absolutely no evidence whatsoever that we would get money from Westminster. We haven’t in the past, historically we really have not. All of the regional inequality measures that the government is trying to do, they’re all focusing on the North-South divide, nobody is talking about the south-west, and even fewer people are talking about Cornwall in particular.
JW: Is the money argument going to settle it in the end? Well, what we got a sense of in a day or two of talking to people here is that actually other things matter too. A kind of sense of sovereignty, a sense of identity, whether you see that identity as being European or whether you see it very much based here in Britain. It’s that feeling, that gut feeling about who you are and where you belong, that frankly seems to be deciding people here, just as much as the money does. (sound of waves).
In the third feature, Webb was at Redruth railway station. He said trains went to all parts of the UK but they were slow ‘and that is part of what what makes Cornwall feel so separate, a separateness that affectes the debate on the membership of the EU’. He spoke to Loveday Jenkin, a former leader of the party for Cornwall and Bob Smith, a UKIP candidate in Carnborne and Redruth at the general election.
He asked Jenkin if she was English. She said Cornwall was a duchy and she was ‘Cornish British and a European’. Webb asked how that affected her view of Europe. She replied:
I think most people in Cornwall would say that erm, if we weren’t in Europe, we wouldn’t trust Westminster to give us more money.JW: Yeah, and that was something that has been said repeatedly to us during the course of the programme, but for what reason? Is it because they don’t care about you, or is it that you don’t care about them, in Westminster?
LJ: I think it’s partly that they don’t even realise that we exist, quite often. I mean, a lot of people don’t realise the Cornish language exists, that . . . they realise that the Cornish are an indigenous group of people within, within the British Isles. But it’s, it’s that lack of consideration. We’ve seen all the money coming into HS2, and we look at the railway coming into Cornwall, and we haven’t had anything like the same investment.
Webb put it to Smith that when Westminster was left to look after Cornwall in the past it did not do a good job. He replied that if you develop a political system where ‘everybody’s forced to go to Brussels’ that is what happened. He pointed out that the Labour government in the 70s created intermediate areas and development areas. He contended that Cornwall would not have more money it would not be filched off by the EU (‘not Europe’). It would not have to be given back with a sticker ‘this is sponsored by the ERDF’- leading to everybody walking around thinking how generous the ERDF is.
Webb said:
But do you seriously believe, when you think of the other competing parts of . . . England, never mind Wales, but just look at Westminster and look at England, the other competing parts of England that would be looking for funding, are looking for funding, are looking for help, are looking for development, that really Cornwall would be able to, to punch its weight in that fight?BS: Well, that’s why we’ve got MPs, and I entirely believe that in a system of government the closer people are to those who govern them, the better we are. And what I believe is that parliamentary democracy is the worst system of government apart from all the rest. We would have that money, we would have more money, and it would be better spent. And if you look at the Amnion Report (sic, it’s the Amion Report) it’s an absolute disgrace what’s happened to the convergence funding.
Webb asked what the report was and Smith confirmed it was a report commissioned by Cornwall Council to look at the efficient of spending of the convergence funds.
Webb put it to Perkins that there was a view that quite a lot of the European money has been wasted, that some projects were a bit ‘touristy’ and were not doing much for people who lived there. He added:
it is that business of whether or not Europe money (sic) is well spent, and whether or not, actually it would be better if they were just . . . controlled closer to home?LJ: Well, I think the problem with that argument is that the European money wasn’t controlled closer to home, the problem was that Westminster government and Southwest Regional Development Agency, and all these different agencies have had their finger in the pie, managing the European money for Cornwall, and actually, if the programme had been managed in Cornwall and we were allowed to manage our own money coming back from Europe, we would do very much better. There are some really good European-funded projects, there are some places where money has been taken off, and the biggest thing in this current program is that all the administration is being done outside of Cornwall, and therefore the 10% administration et cetera, et cetera, all that money is being spent outside of Cornwall, rather than, than in Cornwall, which needs it.
Webb put it to Smith that it was not actually about money, it was about a sense of identity, it was whether you were a person who looked to Westminster, ‘or whether or not your prepared to be part of that ‘European mix’.
Smith said he was right, he had spoken to 19 people in Newquay yesterday and 15 would vote leave.
Jenkin said:
I think if Cornwall returns a Vote Leave vote, it will because of misinformation coming to the people of Cornwall. We do not believe that Cornwall would be better off outside of Europe. There are things that need to be changed in the way that Europe is managed, Europe needs to be more democratic, I’ve just come back from Brussels where we’ve been having a . . . a European Parliament inquiry on language discrimination, and people, the small regions across Europe are working together to improve things, and that’s what we need to do, we need to work together within Europe to make sure that the voice of the regions of Europe are h— is heard.
FURTHER ANALYSIS
In the first report, Webb emphasised as a key point that that lots of EU money flowed into Cornwall – to deal with local relative poverty and lack of work – and suggested to former miner Alan Buckley that despite that, he was sympathetic to voting leave. Buckley refused to be drawn on his own voting intentions, but said that many people locally were going to vote leave and Webb again asked why the money did not ‘swing it for you’? Buckley responded that no-one knew what the money had been spent on, nobody seemed to benefit. The second interviewee, food bank worker Donovan Gardner, agreed that it was unclear where the EU money had gone. Webb, emphasising from a difficult angle the importance of the EU funds, asked him why he had not applied for financial help from the EU. Gardner said it was because it was ‘project money’ and his food bank would not qualify.
In response, Webb changed tack but returned to the EU money theme. He observed that Redruth shopping centre was run down and needed money injected. He asked whether if it did not come from Europe, it could come from Westminster. Buckley replied that investment was needed from commercial sources to get local mines going again.
The editorial emphasis on the importance of the EU money continued to be the fulcrum in the second sequence. Webb opened with a long sequence outlining that the EU funds had been vital in the conversion of a local brewery into an archive centre. He then said a ‘huge amount of ‘European development money’ was being spent in the south-west region, six billion euros was earmarked between 2014 and 2020. He said this ‘coloured the European debate’ in the area, then he noted that Cornwall was England’s poorest county and ‘received the top level of EU funding, and that’s cash that has impact far away from the cream teas’.
For his first interview, Webb visited a ‘gleaming new office’ he emphasised had been using the EU money. Craig Girvan an IT company who worked there, confirmed Webb’s contention that these funds were very important. Webb put it to him that there was no question in his mind that ‘the success of your business and that initial funding from the European Union are really intimately connected’. Girvan agreed.
Webb next went to the Trago Mills project, where the owner described the EU money as ‘larceny’ and argued that MPs should make decisions about local investment. Webb put it to him that (unlike Westminster), the EU had ruled about the level of deprivation and therefore money from Brussels to Cornwall was guaranteed. Under Westminster that might not happen. The owner disagreed.
Next point of call was a beach, and Webb said everyone agreed that Cornwall could not survive on tourism alone, thus again stressing the importance of development funds. He repeated the question whether the money would best come from the EU or Westminster. His next interviewee, Exeter university academic Dr Joanie Willett, said in response there was no evidence whatsoever that the money would come from Westminster because its focus was elsewhere, for example on the North-South divide.
Webb’s conclusion to this sequence was to ask the Today audience if the money argument would, in effect, be foremost in how locals voted in the referendum. He introduced for the first time that other issues, such as those hinged on local identity and sovereignty could also be involved just as much.
In the third feature, Webb opened by giving Loveday Jenkin, former leader of Mebyon Kernow, the Cornish nationalist party, the opportunity first to say that, if the UK was not in Europe, Westminster could not be trusted to give Cornwall money. Webb reinforced this by observing that this (point)had been said ‘repeatedly to us’ during the course of the programme. He asked whether she believed it was because ‘they’ did not care in Westminster. Jenkin said they did not even realise Cornwall existed, and pointed out that money had gone into projects like HS2 but not Cornwall.
Webb next suggested to local former Ukip candidate Bob Smith that Westminster had not done a good job of looking after Cornwall in the past. Smith replied that this was not true and made the point that ‘EU money’ was actually from British taxpayers. Webb asked if he seriously thought that in competition with the rest of the UK, Cornwall could win funds. Smith replied that this was the job of MPs to handle local interests. Cornwall would get money. The recent Amion report (into the spending of EU funding) showed that it was a disgrace what had happened to the EU’s convergence fund. Webb asked what the report was (he thus appeared to be ignorant of it).
He then moved back to Jenkin and suggested that ‘it was a view’ that EU money had been wasted. Jenkin replied that the problem was really that different outside agencies including Westminster had had their fingers in the pie managing the EU money. If Cornwall had been able to manage its own money coming back from the EU, it would have been well spent. She maintained that there were some really good local EU projects. A further problem in the EU funds equation was that management fees were (wrongly) being subtracted from bodies outside Cornwall.
Webb did not comment further, other than to say such factors would ‘energise’ both sides.
CONCLUSION
What was the underlying editorial approach to these three features?
From the beginning, the prominence in Cornwall of ‘EU money’ was stressed. In the first feature, it was the undoubted fulcrum of Webb’s inquiry. In the second, he opened by heavily focusing that the EU funds were transformative and central in that process. In the third, the local ‘Cornish’ party speaker put the core point that the EU cared for Cornwall, created vital new projects there, whereas Westminster did not care at all.
Webb included guests in the first sequence who both said that they could see no evidence of the benefits of the EU cash, and one said he was not eligible to apply. In the second, the owner of a shopping project called EU funds ‘larceny’. And in the third, the Ukip candidate argued that Westminster, not Brussels should be the channel helping Cornwall. He further pointed out that there was evidence of serious mismanagement of EU funds.
On that basis, the perspective that EU funds were a matter of concern and debate was clearly included. But overall, from the off, Webb stressed in different ways their importance. It was the driving line in the editorial structure. Further, in the first and second sequences, he gave the last word to local figures who underlined the beneficial impact on the local economy. This biased emphasis was compounded by the fact that Webb himself made no effort to explain that EU funds actually originated from the EU taxpayer (it was left to contributors to do so) and also by that there was no editorial effort to explore the Amion report. It is prominent on the internet and could easily have been found by programme researchers., This was of central importance to the local application of EU funds, and to the conduct of the EU.
The bias here is compounded by the fact that in the earlier similar sequence of three features from Northern Ireland mounted by Today, Mishal Husain also stressed the importance of ‘EU money’ without proper explanation (analysed on News-watch here). The programme should be looking at the EU equation from a different, more balanced perspective. The Amion report raised issues that Today emphatically is not.
Full Transcripts:
Transcript of BBC Radio 4, ‘Today’, 3rd June 2016, Cornwall, 6.47am
NICK ROBINSON: Now ahead of the referendum later this month, we’ve been doing a series of reports on the road to get a sense of the perspective from different places. And this morning, Justin, lucky Justin, is in Cornwall, morning to you.
JUSTIN WEBB: (laughter in voice) Morning Nick. And yes, it is lucky, and yes, it is a lovely place, and we’re in Redruth, right in the heart of Cornwall, but, at the same time it is a poor place – according to European statistics, in 2014 the second poorest region in the whole of northern Europe, after West Wales, so it’s erm, it’s very easily England’s poorest county. And I’m joined by two people here will know all about the nitty-gritty of life in Cornwall, and the kind of things that will be . . . going to play, coming into play, when it comes to making a decision in June 23rd. Alan Buckley is with me, former miner, vice-chairman of the Cornish Mining Association, good morning to you.
ALAN BUCKLEY: Good morning.
JW: And Donovan Gardner, Donovan is, er, runs the Camborne-Pool-Redruth manager (sic) morning Donovan.
DONOVAN GARDNER: Good morning.
JW: Now, erm, just tell us a bit about the mining first of all, as everyone knows, there was mining in Cornwall and there isn’t any more, Alan, but, but when was the high spot, and what was this place like when it was at its height?
AB: Well, for over 200 years Cornish mining was extremely important to the . . . to the, all British industries, in fact, without it the industrial revolution wouldn’t have happened, because of the copper and the tin they produced, but also because of the engineering, they led the world as steam engineers, and some of the finest engineers and inventors came from Cornwall, (words unclear due to speaking over) Camborne . . .
JW: (speaking over) And this place, Redruth, Camborne et cetera, this was a wealthy place?
AB: Absolutely, in fact, it has been said that Pool, between Camborne and Redruth was the NASA of the, erm, 200 years ago, because people came from all over the world, engineers came from as far away as Russia, came back from America just to . . . to see the machines they were making and to discuss with the engineers what they were doing.
JW: And Donovan, what’s it like now?
DG: Unfortunately industry has completely disappeared. Engineers have gone, we are a service industry now, poor wages, zero hour contracts, part-time work, it is really a serious problem in this area.
JW: How much demand is there for the service that you run at the food bank?
DG: It’s unbelievable. We started six years ago, six years ago next Monday actually, and we were going to run a food bank for two years, because of the austerity problems, and the financial problems. We’re now into six years, it’s getting bigger and bigger, at the moment we’re doing ten thousand meals a month from our three food banks in this area.
JW: And what a lot of people say Alan, is the answer to that, in part at least, is European money which does flow into Cornwall, because of its, its status, if you can put it like that, as a poorer part of Europe, and yet you’re voting Leave?
AB: Erm, I didn’t say I was voting Leave . . .
JW: Oh . . .
AB: . . . it’s a secret ballot, as we know, according to the law . . .
JW: (laughs)
AB: But erm, the strange thing . . .
JW: (interrupting) You’re leaning . . . you’re leaning towards, you’re sympathetic to Leave, let’s put it that way.
AB: Well, but it this way, everybody I talk to, whether they’re farmers, ex-miners, engineers (word or words unclear) or whatever, I haven’t well, I’ve hardly heard a single person in favour of staying. Erm . . . and that must be significant . . . (fragment of word, or word unclear due to speaking over)
JW: (speaking over) But why doesn’t the money argument swing it for you?
AB: Well, the strange thing is, recently we were discussing this, among some friends, the money that’s supposed to come from Europe, and nobody, including, in fact, the letters to the local paper – where’s it gone? Nobody ever sees any benefit from it. If it does come here, who has it and where does it go, where is it spent? Because we don’t . . . we see no benefit from it.
JW: Donovan you’re nodding?
DG: Yeah, yeah (words unclear due to speaking over ‘I agree’?)
JW: (speaking over) You’re undecided, aren’t you?
DG: Yeah, I’m undecided because I believe that the rhetoric that we hear of one day to another, er . . . the people I meet in the food bank, to be honest with you, all they want to do is survive. Er, you know . . . I see these people, dads that . . . don’t eat for three days to feed their children, you know, this is the . . . the disaster, er . . . years ago, when we had industry, they were well-paid jobs . . .
AB: Yeah.
DG: . . . er, we had people that could plan their life, have a mortgage . . . they can’t do it today, er . . . and as Alan said, where has the money gone? As it gone to . . . er, we’ve got Heartlands, you know, a tourist place, it doesn’t employ many people.
JW: Have you applied for any European money?
DG: Er . . . no. Erm . . .
JW: I mean would it be available to you?
DG: I’m not sure, I’m not sure . . . unfortunately, I’m looking for money, well . . . as a charity, to sustain the project, er . . . I find the big money is only to starter projects.
JW: A truck is just going past us, a lorry is going past, us and I think it’s going to pause for a second here, oh no . . . things are being delivered in the centre of, of, of Redruth. Do you have a sense, will carry on, because I think it’s actually going to stop and then move on, yeah, there it goes, there it goes. Yeah, so you . . . you basically, you need money from wherever you can get it, and at the moment Europe isn’t a source for you?
DG: No, because European money is, is a project money (sic) er, it’s not sustainable money. If, if I want to start a new project, I could probably get European money, but next year it will be there.
JW: Alan, what needs to happen to re-energise this place, because we’re here in the middle of Redruth, and it’s a perfectly nice morning, we’re in the shopping, pedestrian precinct, but there are quite a few shops actually, well not exactly boarded-up here, but I’m just looking down, there are charity shops . . .
AB: Hmm.
JW: . . . and there are shops that are obviously quite temporary. What, what, you need money injected into the place, don’t you? And if it doesn’t come from Europe, are you confident that it could come from Westminster?
AB: (speaking over) We need . . . we need erm, industry, obviously, and we need mining, and unfortunately, South Crofty Mine, which closed in 1998, March, and I, like many others finished mining, erm, that now has money coming from a Canadian source, they’re investing in it, because tin is a rare commodity, and where it is, they’ve got to mine it, and because it’s becoming a diminished supply throughout the earth, and because the stockpiles in China and America have gone and the prices going up through the roof, erm, the prospects for South Crofty are very good. And men have continued to work there since the mine closed to prepare for the opening (this may be ‘reopening’ – but there’s a slight glitch in outside broadcast)
JW: What an amazing prospect, that actually mining comes back here.
AB: Oh yes, we feel it will, because the tin is needed and it’s, it’s here, and there’s a lot there. When the mine closed, there was still a lot left there.
JW: Okay, well Alan Buckley and Donovan Gardner, thank you both very much for talking to me here in Redruth.
SM: Justin, thanks very much . . .
JW: (thinking he is off mic, to interviewees) That was great.
SM: (laughs) That was great, thank you very much.
Transcript of BBC Radio 4, ‘Today’, 3rd June 2016, Cornwall, 7.34am
SARAH MONTAGUE: Well, as we heard earlier, Justin is in Cornwall this morning for the latest in our series of reports on the road, head of the referendum later this month. Good morning Justin.
JUSTIN WEBB: Yes, hello again from Redruth, we moved around to the side of the town, and I’m at a place that is very much benefiting, or about to benefit from EU money. It was a brewery, in fact, the chimney stack, the redbrick chimney stack is still very much in place, but the rest of it has been flattened and it’s being turned into a new archive centre, Kresen Kernow Archive Centre for Cornwall. Cornwall, of course, is paved with gold provided by the EU, it glitters around me on the streets here of Redruth in the early morning sunlight, well, not quite, in fact, as anyone who’s been to Cornwall and seen more than the beaches will know, there’s no gold on the streets, and in fact, the sun is more often reflected in the empty windows of closed-down shops. There is, though, a huge amount of European development money being spent around here. €6 billion in the programme lasting from 2014 to 2020. And its money, of course, that colours that debate on the Europe referendum, in a sometimes forgotten corner of England. Well, this to most of us is Cornwall, I’m on the Bodinnick Ferry, it takes just a few cars at a time from Bodinnick to Fowey, and it’s all really picture postcard stuff, there are little boats, the water’s listening, you can come here and you can think, ‘Well, lucky Cornwall, lucky Cornish’ – what you don’t get a sense of is the simple fact that Cornwall is England’s poorest county. It qualifies for and it receives the top level of EU funding, and that’s cash that has an impact far away from the cream teas and the country lanes and the picturesque ferries.
CRAIG GIRVAN: So this is one of the eight rooms that we’ve got here at the Pool Innovation Centre (words unclear due to speaking over)
JW: (speaking over) I’m with Craig Girvan, one of the founders of Headforwards, which is a software development company and it’s based in the Pool Innovation Centre, it’s a gleaming office block. It would not be here if it wasn’t for funding from Brussels.
CG: Being in this building has enabled us to grow our offering very, very quickly. (word or words unclear) in Cornwall aren’t . . . great, you know, so it’s not a great investment to create a building and put it there, so honestly, coming from Europe has enabled this to happen. Erm, and . . . indirectly has enabled us to exist and grow.
JW: Yeah. So there’s no question at all in your mind that the success of your business and that initial funding from the European Union are really intimately connected?
CG: Absolutely.
JW: Alright then, if the benefits of membership are so clear, then it’s a no-brainer, isn’t it, on June 23? Well, no, not really. I’ve come to Trago Mills, which is an out-of-town shopping centre near Liskeard. When you ask people here specifically about the money coming into Cornwall, even then their views about the EU are pretty mixed.
VOX POP MALE: I’ve lived in Cornwall for 30 years and I think it has benefited Cornwall for sure. I work at the airport and . . . there’s a lot of European money that comes in and out of there. Yeah, I will be voting to stay.
VOX POP FEMALE: I have seen projects that say they’ve been funded by money . . .
VPM: So partly-funded. (laughs)
VPF: Yes, well partly-funded, yes, so . . .
JW: But you’ve seen enough of them to make it look to you as if there are benefits from being in the EU?
VPF: It looks like it.
VOX POP FEMALE 2: Definitely exit, because we put money into the EU, so why couldn’t we have put money into Devon and Cornwall, before handing it over to those Brussels people?
JW: Trago Mills is peculiar in some ways, it’s got a kind of slightly kitsch feel to it, there are cockerels running around, there are water features, there is a huge Vote Leave poster, and a statue of the Emperor Nero. And just looking down to the inscription underneath, it says, ‘Nero only fiddled, Eurocrats practice grand larceny.’ – a clue as to the view of Europe held by the boss, Bruce Robertson.
BRUCE ROBERTSON: Even by the EU’s own measures, it hasn’t done anything, we’re still deprive. My view would be that . . . our own MPs would be perfectly capable of making a strong case for precisely what Cornwall needs in our own Parliament at Westminster, rather than having a few MEPs who cover from the Scilly Isles to Southampton, who are invariably a minority, because of what we are, in a parliament of 751 people . . .
JW: (speaking over) (fragment of word, or word unclear) But isn’t it simply that with the EU there are set rules about the level of deprivation there has to be for you to get money, and if it were done at Westminster, there wouldn’t be those set rules, it would be all about politics, and you’d be competing with . . . central Manchester, with Scotland, with all sorts of other areas that also want . . . help. And you wouldn’t get it.
BR: We’re not receiving some munificent bounty, we’re actually getting back a small element of what we pay in, and we’re not (words unclear due to speaking over)
JW: (speaking over) You’re getting it, that’s the point, you’re getting it, and under Westminster you might not?
BR: Look, we’re getting it at the moment, but there’s nothing to say that that could change.
JW: We’ve come back to picturesque Cornwall now, this is Polkerris beach, and it’s a lovely site, children playing in the water and lovely Sunshine and all the rest of it. What it really comes down to is this, everyone accepts that this isn’t enough, Cornwall can’t survive and prosper in the future by tourism alone, but does the money come best from Europe, or could it come, as those in the Leave camp suggest from Westminster? Dr Joanie Willet works for Exeter University, but in the Penryn campus here in Cornwall.
DR JOANIE WILLET: There is absolutely no evidence whatsoever that we would get money from Westminster. We haven’t in the past, historically we really have not. All of the regional inequality measures that the government is trying to do, they’re all focusing on the North-South divide, nobody is talking about the south-west, and even fewer people are talking about Cornwall in particular.
JW: Is the money argument going to settle it in the end? Well, what we got a sense of in a day or two of talking to people here is that actually other things matter too. A kind of sense of sovereignty, a sense of identity, whether you see that identity as being European or whether you see it very much based here in Britain. It’s that feeling, that gut feeling about who you are and where you belong, that frankly seems to be deciding people here, just as much as the money does. (sound of waves)
NR: Justin splashing about in Cornwall there.
Transcript of BBC Radio 4, ‘Today’, 3rd June 2016, Cornwall, 8.29am
JUSTIN WEBB: We’ve moved again round to Redruth Railway Station now, and you can go from this pretty little station, you can go west to Penzance, you can go east to Devon to London, further afield there’s a train about to leave for Glasgow in a few minutes’ time, that’s going to take its time because, of course, the trains here are very slow, and that is part of what makes Cornwall feel so separate, a separateness that affects the debate on the membership of the European Union. We heard a range of Cornish views during the course of the programme this morning, I’m going to finish with Loveday Jenkin, who is former leader of Mebyon Kernow, the party for Cornwall, and with Bob Smith who was UKIP’s candidate for the Camborne and Redruth constituency in the general election in 2015. Morning to you both.
LOVEDAY JENKIN: Myttin da.
BOB SMITH: Good morning.
JW: First, Loveday, that separateness, how do you describe yourself, what’s your identity? Are you in any way English?
LJ: No, no, no, and I have to take you to task about what you were saying . . .
JW: (speaking over) I thought you would.
LJ: . . . earlier about Cornwall being a county of England – Cornwall is managed as a county, within England, but it’s a Duchy and I’m Cornish and I’m British and I’m European.
JW: And how does that affect your view of Europe?
LJ: I think most people in Cornwall would say that erm, if we went in Europe, we wouldn’t trust Westminster to give us more money.
JW: Yeah, and that was something that has been said repeatedly to us during the course of the programme, but for what reason? Is it because they don’t care about you, or is it that you don’t care about them, in Westminster?
LJ: I think it’s partly that they don’t even realise that we exist, quite often. I mean, a lot of people don’t realise the Cornish language exists, that . . . they realise that the Cornish are an indigenous group of people within, within the British Isles. But it’s, it’s that lack of consideration. We’ve seen all the money coming into HS2, and we look at the railway coming into Cornwall, and we haven’t had anything like the same investment.
JW: And Bob Smith, it is a fact, isn’t it, that when . . . Westminster is left to look after Cornwall, as it was in the past, it didn’t do a very good job?
BOB SMITH: Well, if you’ve developed a political system where everybody’s forced to go to Brussels, er, that’s what you end up with. But if you remember, the ’76-’79 Labour government, we had a policy then of intermediate areas and development areas. We’d have had that money, we would have more money, because the money we give to Europe is filched off by the EU, not Europe, the European Union, and given back to us, with a sticker, saying ‘this was sponsored by the ERDF’ – and everybody walks around thinking how generous the ERDF is.
JW: But do you seriously believe, when you think of the other competing parts of . . . England, never mind Wales, but just look at Westminster and look at England, the other competing parts of England that would be looking for funding, are looking for funding, are looking for help, are looking for development, that really Cornwall would be able to, to punch its weight in that fight?
BS: Well, that’s why we’ve got MPs, and I entirely believe that in a system of government the closer people are to those who govern them, the better we are. And what I believe is that parliamentary democracy is the worst system of government apart from all the rest. We would have that money, we would have more money, and it would be better spent. And if you look at the Amnion Report (sic, it’s the Amion Report) it’s an absolute disgrace what’s happened to the convergence funding.
JW: Which is a report that says what?
BS: It’s a report commissioned by Cornwall Council to look at the efficiency of spending of the convergence funds.
JW: Yes, there is a view here, isn’t there, Loveday, that quite a lot of the European money has been wasted, there are some projects that are a bit touristy people say, well, actually they’re not really doing much for people who, who live here, it is that business of whether or not Europe money (sic) is well spent, and whether or not, actually it would be better if they were just . . . controlled closer to home?
LJ: Well, I think the problem with that argument is that the European money wasn’t controlled closer to home, the problem was that Westminster government and Southwest Regional Development Agency, and all these different agencies have had their finger in the pie, managing the European money for Cornwall, and actually, if the programme had been managed in Cornwall and we were allowed to manage our own money coming back from Europe, we would do very much better. There are some really good European-funded projects, there are some places where money has been taken off, and the biggest thing in this current program is that all the administration is being done outside of Cornwall, and therefore the 10% administration et cetera, et cetera, all that money is being spent outside of Cornwall, rather than, than in Cornwall, which needs it.
JW: (fragments of words, unclear) In the end though, it’s not about money is it? It’s, it’s about a sense of identity, isn’t it, Bob Smith, there is this sense of whether you regard yourself as being primarily a, a, a person who looks to Westminster, or whether or not you’re happy to be part of that, that European mix?
BS: I think you’re right, and I’ve been going round Cornwall a lot in the last few weeks, and er . . . what most people tell me, I was in Newquay yesterday, spoke to 19 people – 15 are going to vote Leave, 2 vote in, and 2 are undecided. I think Cornwall’s going to return a Vote Leave vote in this referendum.
JW: Loveday?
LJ: I think if Cornwall returns a Vote Leave vote, it will because of misinformation coming to the people of Cornwall. We do not believe that Cornwall would be better off outside of Europe. There are things that need to be changed in the way that Europe is managed, Europe needs to be more democratic, I’ve just come back from Brussels where we’ve been having a . . . a European Parliament inquiry on language discrimination, and people, the small regions across Europe are working together to improve things, and that’s what we need to do, we need to work together within Europe to make sure that the voice of the regions of Europe are h— is heard.
JW: Alright, the decision not that far away now, the people of Cornwall energised by it on both sides, so thank you very much to Bob Smith and to Loveday Jenkin as well.
