If you are planning a break in Cornwall this summer, this man might make you regret it. The angry face of Cornish nationalism can be revealed today and it is surprisingly young, if not a little pasty.

Jack Bolitho, an 18-year-old banjo-playing Celtic folk musician from Bude, hinted he is one of the group of militants known as the Cornish National Liberation Army (CNLA).

When the CNLA announced its existence last month by threatening attacks against “incomers”, including the chefs Rick Stein and Jamie Oliver, it made much of the presence within its ranks of younger activists prepared to use extreme measures to reclaim Cornwall.

At the time, nobody came forward to associate themselves with the group. But now Bolitho, who has been arrested and questioned over nationalist attacks in the past, has stepped out of the shadows to speak of its plans to drive Cornwall-bound holidaymakers back over the River Tamar.

Celebrity chefs told ‘get out of Cornwall’

Cornish separatists have threatened to attack restaurants owned by Jamie Oliver and Rick Stein to drive out English 'incomers'

BACKGROUND

• Locals not welcome

• ‘Liberation army’ threatens holiday homeowners

He admits having daubed anti-English graffiti over the county and says he resents that Cornwall has been “turned into a holiday resort” by the government. He wants tourists who are not interested in its Celtic heritage driven out. Cornwall needs its own government, he says, and calling him English is guaranteed to spark a heated outburst.

“This year or the next two years Cornwall will see a huge change in nationalism. You will see a lot of second homes going up in smoke,” said Bolitho. “If one or two holiday cottages or second homes go up in smoke it will kick off in all the other towns and villages and that is what is going to happen.” At the heart of the CNLA’s cause is a discontent over the disparity between the prices of properties, many of which are now owned as second homes by city-dwellers, and local wages, which can be as low as £9,000 a year.

In Rock, the north coast village that plays host each summer to hordes of privately-educated schoolchildren and their parents, house prices can easily top £5m and the petrol station stocks champagne and caviar.

Stein, who owns a number of restaurants in nearby Padstow, has been criticised for helping fuel the rise in property prices, leading the CNLA to declare him and his businesses as “bona fide targets”. The CNLA, which boasted that its 30-strong membership has been trained by the Provisional IRA, has promised to make the restaurateur experience the “rosy glow of a real fire”. Police in Cornwall have said they are taking seriously the threats against Stein and Oliver, who runs the Fifteen restaurant in Watergate Bay.

Bolitho, who says he is under surveillance by police for his perceived link to the nationalist movement and has had his house raided in the past, claimed: “Locals in Padstow did a drive-by paintball attack on every Stein-owned property in Padstow.”

Bolitho, who describes his band All Folked Up as a Cornish nationalist group, claimed the CNLA’s main groundswell of support was among the young. “I have started to see a huge change over the last couple of years where it is beginning to be the youth in Cornwall now who are kicking up a great big stir and there is almost a real dislike towards the English,” he said.

“Most Cornish youngsters don’t see the beach in summer because they are busy working in the backs of restaurants for long hours and low wages and when they are doing that they can’t afford to rent anywhere or move out of home.”

That resentment has led to young adults such as himself to ally themselves with the new group, which has said it is a composite of two previous nationalist groups, An Gof, named after a 15th century Cornish martyr, and the Cornish Liberation Army. Both have been responsible for attacks on property over the past three decades.

The CNLA has claimed to have funding from the US and connections with other Gaelic groups such as the Free Wales Army, the Scottish National Liberation Army, which last year threatened to poison water in England, and the vicious Irish National Liberation Army.

Bolitho, who said he had recently visited the Basque country, home to the terrorist separatist organisation Eta, said the Cornish shared a solidarity with other such people, particularly in Wales where organisations such the Sons of Glyndwr have attacked English holiday homes.

When asked about the CNLA’s openly lawbreaking strategy, Bolitho, who sports a tattoo of An Gof on his arm was cagey. “I can’t condone that, especially not through my public image, but I think it could help the Cornish movement,” he said at first.

But he later added that he did “take orders” from people he refused to name. “I work alone in a lot of ways and I work with the Celtic League, but I also get advice from other people on what to do, and if I’m told not to do something I won’t do it, and if I’m told to do something I will do it.”

Devon and Cornwall police, which have set up a taskforce to investigate the group, said they took “very seriously any threats to commit criminal offences against individuals, businesses, public services or the crown”.

Times Recommends

• Should Knox’s trial even have reached the courtroom?
• All that glitters is not sold in Wright’s world
• Believe it or not, Big Brother is your friend