Don’t tell Mike Chappell he lives in “the Southwest”. He lives in Cornwall. That’s not “Devon and Cornwall” – as in the Devon and Cornwall Police Authority, the Devon and Cornwall Probation Area, or the Devon and Cornwall Caravan Club – just Cornwall. Devon doesn’t come before Cornwall in the alphabet, for crying out loud. When Cornwall qualified for a subsidy from the EU, it was administered by the South West of England Regional Development Agency. In Devon. Then it went and charged Cornwall for the privilege. It makes a proud Cornishman like Chappell spit.

He’s stuck in tourist traffic on the A30, telling me – in detail – that he carries the MC1R, or “Celtic”, gene. And that he can trace his ancestry back to the bloody warriors who came to Britain when it was still joined to mainland Europe. Being Cornish and Celtic is, to Chappell, about more than wearing a kilt and supporting France when they play England at rugby. It’s about a sense of separateness. As his T-shirt says, “Cornwall is next to England – just like Wales”. Which is why Chappell wants independence.

He’s still behind a caravan. And he’s late for his open meeting in Redruth on “Cornishness”. People have become more interested in Cornishness since last June, when a terrorist organisation called the Cornish National Liberation Army (CNLA) sent an e-mail threatening the celebrity chefs Rick Stein and Jamie Oliver. The e-mail, entitled “directive number one”, said the incomers – and their restaurants’ customers – were legitimate targets in the CNLA’s campaign to remove the “imperialist English flag of St George” from Cornwall. It was followed by a fire at the Redruth brewery. In another e-mail, sent via an Arabic web-hosting service based in Egypt, the CNLA claimed they were testing incendiary devices in “an urban environment”. If, indeed, Redruth constitutes “an urban environment”. But the whole business has put Chappell in a tricky position. As a former policeman, he’s a great respecter of authority, and he doesn’t want to prejudice the pension. But he’s no fool. The CNLA is attracting a lot more press attention than his open meetings on Cornishness.

Press attention isn’t always good. “The IRA?” asked the headline of one tabloid. “No – the Ooh-Arrr-A.” The article ridiculed the Cornish for not being able to run a proper terrorist organisation, and gave instructions on how to distinguish the CNLA from the IRA, Eta and Al-Qaeda. A member of the CNLA would, according to the article, smell of scrumpy, and start any conversation with: “Yer not from roun’ these parts, are yerrrr?” According to Chappell, it’s typical of the racism he encounters every day.

As the traffic slows to a halt, Chappell pulls out a letter he wrote to the Commission for Racial Equality (CRE) on behalf of a bus driver who had heard someone calling the Cornish “a bunch of pissed-off, straw-sucking, inbred wurzels”. But the CRE wouldn’t help. What with the Cornish not being a “race” and all. Some have suggested reclaiming “the W-word” for the Cornish, the way the Afro-Americans reclaimed “the N-word” – as in “Yo, Wurzel, what’s up?” But not Chappell. He doesn’t see the funny side at all.

And nor, it seems, do the Devon and Cornwall police. Since the CNLA’s threats, they have pulled in a significant number of suspects for questioning. They have to be seen to take threats of terrorism seriously. After all, the CNLA’s e-mails have claimed they are receiving “substantial” funding from pressure groups in the US, and practical advice from a group responsible for the arson campaign on holiday homes in Wales.

Hugh Rowe, a member of the Cornish Stannary parliament – the original governing body of Cornwall’s tin-mining community – was taken into custody on suspicion of the illegal possession of a firearm. All because the CNLA talked about having Fifteen Cornwall – Jamie Oliver’s restaurant in Watergate Bay – “in their sights”. As a “stannator”, Rowe is regularly involved in “tackling English cultural aggression in Cornwall”, which can include removing English Heritage signs from tourist destinations. But that involves bolt-cutters. Not a sawn-off shotgun.

The police pulled apart his Camborne home and left with a balaclava (“which I use for fishing or when I’m out with the pigeons,” says Rowe), three flags of St Piran and a book on the commissioning of the twin towers in New York. “I got it in an antique shop in Camborne for £2.” Rowe was released without charge, but the case is still being investigated. He insists his phone is being tapped. “I think the raid was ordered by central government,” he says.

Dave Eddy, a labourer from Padstow, was taken into custody after allegedly making a threatening call to Fifteen Cornwall, demanding to know how many Cornish people worked there. Eddy told the Western Morning News that, while he is happy to be called a Cornish nationalist, he doesn’t condone violence. And he emphatically denied being a member of the CNLA.

The Cornish do have a history of insurgency. In 1980, An Gof – a terrorist organisation named after Michael An Gof, a leader of the Cornish rebellion of 1497 – claimed responsibility for an explosion at a court in St Austell. And, later, for a fire at a hairdresser’s in Penzance, which An Gof allegedly thought was a branch of the Bristol & West. Monopoly capital and all that. An Gof has now, supposedly, changed its name to CNLA. But the CNLA aren’t the only little nationalists looking to devolve from modern Britain. In the Lake District, the self-styled Popular Liberation Army of Westmorland claims it has begun a campaign of arson against holiday homes. In a letter to the press it pledged: “We will one day see an end to the occupation of Westmorland by newcomers, holiday-home owners and the encroaching leech-like scum of that ilk.”

Historically, Cornwall has more right to its independence than Westmorland. The 14th-century Mappa Mundi defines Britain as “Scotia, Wallia, Anglia et Cornubia”. And as late as 1543 it was written that “Britain is divided into four parts, whereof the one is inhabited by Englishmen, the other of Scots, the third of Welshmen and the fourth of Cornish people” (Polydore Vergil, cited by Payton, 1992, 57). Historically, Cornwall is a duchy. Not a county. And it never “officially” became part of England. So it’s distinct from England, but not officially or constitutionally recognised by it. An anomaly.

To those of us in Scotia, Wallia and Anglia, Cornwall is a state of mind – where life passes by a little more slowly, and a little more sunnily, than anywhere else. Every year, 5m people go there on holiday and spend over £1.5 billion in the process. Everyone wants to live there (or own a second house there), according to a recent survey of second-homers, which is why prices are so high. But there’s another story, one that the tourist board likes to keep to itself.

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