This post provides the response provided today under a Freedom of Information Act request, which reveals more of the RSGB's attitude towards Cornwall and its bid for an RSL of its own.
The Cornish contingent had drummed up very wide support from the community, including cross-party political support, for the 'K for Cornwall' campaign. The campaign itself was spurred on by the formal recognition of Cornwall by the government as an official minority group, identifiable with a geographical region. People who understand British history - especially that of the Celtic nations - will immediately understand why this is both logical and important. Sadly, not everybody in the UK is quite so clued-up, and that seems to have included the RSGB.
For itself, I understand the Poldhu club members hadn't conceived of their campaign as something that necessitated RSGB-wide consultation, but were later anxious to embrace democracy and subjected the idea to closer scrutiny by the society. However, to my knowledge, such a member opinion survey has never been carried out, with the whole idea of getting the RSGB involved seeming, in retrospect, a terrible mistake.
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| Was the RSGB flying the flag for Cornwall? Image: Western Morning News. |
So, Cornwall was being recognised as a part of the Celtic nations, something enjoyed already by the Scots, Welsh and Irish since anyone can remember.
And that is where the troubles began. From the very scant information indeed made available by the RSGB through its meeting minutes, it seemed there was some pretty fierce opposition from somewhere to the whole affair. It's not at all clear who was opposed to it - or how many. More on that later...
Unfortunately for OFCOM, it came to support the new RSL - changing its position in October 2014 from not supporting it just a few weeks earlier - at the time
when a consultation on licence matters - which might have included the
new RSL - was underway. That, certainly, was a valid objection from the
RSGB's point of view. There was also confusion due to the suggestion by OFCOM than RSLs should become optional.
But, by the time the RSGB opposition was being made clear, OFCOM had already written to every Cornish MP to tell them the good news about 'K' for Kernow.
But my sympathy with the society only goes so
far. In June - not long before it started complaining - the RSGB minutes only state that the Cornish had submitted their papers to OFCOM - via the RSGB - and no mention of bad timing is made there.
In the January 2015 minutes, the RSGB was using words like "escalation" within OFCOM to press home its point. OFCOM, for its part, was waiting for legal advice about something. It's unclear what leverage the RSGB actually has in order to push OFCOM into doing its bidding, but the society clearly felt it could try. It was on seeing rather banshee-like terms like this that I started asking myself: what on earth was going on?
The response to this matter came a few weeks ago from Graham Coomber on behalf of the RSGB. In short summary, it says that the RSGB was solely concerned with the decision-making process, which it wanted clarified.
Throughout, and including in the documents that follow, the RSGB claimed strongly that a "significant number" of members were said to be concerned about this specific issue (and not the wider issue of optional RSLs), hence pressuring the society to get a response from OFCOM as to why it had changed its position from not supporting the 'K' RSL, to supporting it - and telling all Cornish MPs that this was the case.
When asked by this blog a month ago, Graham Coomber was unable to provide the number of members that had made representations, and no figure has since emerged.
Given the reliance of the society on these "significant numbers", this lack of information on how many were pressurising the society is surprising. One is, inevitably, led to believe that, if it was relying on member pressure as an argument to press OFCOM for so long, yet it now cannot tell us how many those were, those numbers were probably well short of "significant", and/or that those who did write in were mainly concerned about the optional RSL idea, not the Cornish issue itself.
What the FoIA release from OFCOM shows is a pretty strong set of representations from the RSGB. Perhaps most revealing of all is the following from the society to OFCOM:
"As you will recall, this matter was first discussed at our regular forum meeting on 12th June 2014. The minutes state that “Ofcom advised that policy and practical concerns were such that the request is unlikely to be agreed”, a position that we agreed verbally to support. We stated at the time that we had not consulted our Members about the proposal and, to the best of our knowledge, there had been no wider discussion of the proposal." [my emphasis]
Taking all the documents into account, I can agree with the RSGB that OFCOM, as its own representatives accept, were a little unclear about the decision first to not grant, and then to grant the new RSL, and that contact was sometimes lax. In that, OFCOM had struggled somewhat with definitions of what minority groups were, and then rationally worked their way in a reasonable time through to the very proper decision that Cornwall was a special case, unlikely to be repeated in other areas of the UK.
What I am very surprised indeed about is the fact that the RSGB's position was contentment with OFCOM's initial stance not to approve the new RSL for Cornwall. Indeed, June the 12th was remarkable for being when the Poldhu (Cornish) club say the submission was put in via the RSGB, and also being the date the RSGB agreed with OFCOM's position that it would likely refuse to grant it - a refusal that was issued five days later.
One is led to wonder why the RSGB asked Poldhu to submit the application through their offices, only to sit at a meeting with OFCOM and object to it - even though there was no member mandate for the RSGB to take that position. I understand from good sources that later submissions on the K for Kernow issue were made directly to OFCOM and not through the RSGB, although the society had "approved" this route. It's not clear whether bypassing the RSGB was an indication of dissent at Poldhu.
From the rather insistent response by the RSGB, it seems that it was certainly not content with the new RSL subsequently being granted in October 2014.
This opposition to the new locator is emphasised later in the same RSGB response:
"Our interpretation (and I believe the custom and practice over many years) is that the “different constituent parts” to which you refer are the separate nation states, separated legally and governmentally from England. Scotland, Ireland, Wales, Isle of Man, Guernsey and Jersey all meet this criterion. Cornwall, however, will continue for the foreseeable future to be an integral part of England, and so to allocate a permanent RSL to it will set a precedent."
Sadly for the RSGB, it was not until fairly recently that Scotland (1999), Northern Ireland (1999) and Wales (2006) had their own more-or-less fully fledged governments, who operate in compliance with UK-wide law, not entirely dislocated from it. All this devolution came very long after regional locators had been in use in those areas. For example, I was granted MW (Wales) in 1997 - a fully nine years before the Act that established the Welsh Government, and two years before the more administrative body of the Welsh Assembly.
So the RSGB's understanding and interpretation was fundamentally flawed.
What the RSGB failed to comprehend throughout, I think, is that the national minority status granted to Cornwall was a very big deal for the Cornish. Relating directly to their identity, it's something they have been chasing for a long time, and, just as has been the case earlier for the other national regions of the UK, has often met with strong and persistent resistance from the English establishment. It's a sad thing to see the RSGB apparently perpetuating that resistance, albeit, ultimately it would seem, to no good effect. This is how they put it:
"From our understanding of the Framework Convention on National Minorities, there appears no imperative for an RSL in this case unless it can be shown that RSLs are normally used to designate sub-country groups, which they are not. We, therefore, do not believe Ofcom was under any legal obligation to accede to this request and indeed the implication in your email that, had there been the risk of other cases, you would have refused this request, confirms that."
The RSGB also failed to see - and then to accept, it seems - the entirely logical and rational conclusion drawn - yes, rather belatedly - by OFCOM, that the national minority status awarded to Cornwall was extremely rare and unlikely to be repeated soon, if ever. The RSGB just kept on bleating that there would be a proliferation of requests for new RSLs:
"We believe that if Cornwall is allocated its own RSL this will have repercussions far beyond the boundaries of that county."
Well, the granting of the minority status wasn't ever county-based, as the RSGB still held at that point, and I've yet to hear a stampede calling for new RSLs and hence the doomsday scenario of "repercussions" for the wider world, which the RSGB elsewhere stated would cause "confusion." If it's one thing hams don't get confused much about, it's geography and the chance to bag a different callsign! Many in the former British colonies, of course, are extremely interested to contact areas from which their forefathers came, and this is a very frequent topic of conversation with folks in those 'new' lands.
So, a difficult and potentially sensitive issue for OFCOM, certainly, but not one made any easier by the RSGB, which seems to have taken the view, at least during the period of these contacts, that Cornwall ought not to have its RSL. The RSGB had a view that, to many outside England, and some within, is highly offensive, and fails to have regard for the national minorty status granted by the government itself:
"Cornwall, however, will continue for the foreseeable future to be an integral part of England, and so to allocate a permanent RSL to it will set a precedent."
For sure, we can confidently say from these documents that Graham Coomber was not fully representing the society's position when he said in his response to me that the society was only concerned with the decision-making process by OFCOM. He also failed to show, as I think any transparent, member-based organisation should - how many members justify the use of the word "significant", and just exactly what those representations actually said.
I think it's fair to say the society was quite firmly opposed to the new RSL over many months as the situation changed at OFCOM, and its reasons are at least reasonably laid bare in the release. It does seem that it went a fair way beyond simply not having canvassed the members, and into territory where the RSGB leadership dissented from the whole concept from the word go.
If that wasn't the case, then it has to explain why, having not canvassed its members, it nevertheless opposed the RSL issue throughout anyway; it ought to have simply stated it had no view, whether opposition or support, until the members had been asked.
Certainly, there is no document that shows the RSGB supported the idea at any stage, and inside sources suggest that whilst the RSGB appeared to be supportive at first, there was never any open announcement to that effect. As to asking members about the Cornish issue, it never seems to have done so.
Allegations were later made that the rationale for the opposition might have been based on concerns about relative positions in radio contests, and how the 'K' RSL might give those operators an 'advantage'. If true, that really would be very sad and unjust.
The full FoIA release by OFCOM can be read here. [No longer hosted - 2022]
RIGHT OF REPLY.
This article is published in good faith and in the public interest, drawing on documents provided by OFCOM, the RSGB and Poldhu radio club. OFCOM's release is not expressly copyright protected, but in any event journalistic exemptions granted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act permit such publication.
Anyone wishing to put forward their reasonable views can submit them under 'Comments', which are not currently moderated. Update, 02/2022: no views received since publication.
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