Part 5: Crackers and Coconutters

The debate soon turned into a Town vs. Country clash with a Cornish twist, pitting critics from 'up-country' against the salt-of-the-earth 'Westcountry'… "politically correct zealots in the big cities" vs. "two or three dozen Padstow people"… and the "London media" vs. local papers that were "Flying the Flag for Cornwall" (the motto of The Sunday Independent).

Most importantly, the uproar seemed to reflect the ancient conflict between the English, the offspring of Anglo-Saxon invaders, and the Cornish, who regarded themselves as the country's true natives.

Whereas callers to a radio chat show in London loudly condemned Darkie Day, most letters to newspapers in Cornwall supported the tradition. For natives, Darkie Day became a symbol of their dying culture.

"Some people will always try to put us Cornish people down," wrote a man from St. Columb. "If there are people out there not liking 'Darkie Days', they can always cross the Tamar Bridge and leave us Cornish people in peace."

What's more, the controversy came at a time when many traditional aspects of British life were being denounced as "politically incorrect".

A couple of years earlier, Granada TV reportedly imposed a "blackout" on the Britannia Coconutters of Bacup, Lancashire, because they darkened their faces with boot polish as part of their Easter dance routine.


The Bacup Coconutters

The "Nutters" argued that it had nothing to do with race—in fact, the blackface routine may have been imported in the 19th century by Cornish miners who were mocking morris dancers (though one theory holds that the word "morris" comes from "Moorish", which may explain why morris teams such as the Flag Crackers of Yorkshire still wear black makeup).

In their defence of Darkie Day, the Cornish kept coming out with statements of shock and dismay that were just too innocent to be believed—at least from an urban perspective.

"It is an old Cornish custom, and they are not taking the mickey out of coloured people," a woman from Plymouth said.

"They just go round singing and dancing dressed up with their faces darkened," shrugged Padstow's mayor.

"Although the word nigger in several songs could be seen as inflammatory nowadays, it is not meant in that way," another Padstonian explained.

One local admitted that as a girl, she didn't know the day after Christmas was called Boxing Day; she knew it only as "Darkie Day".

The Western Morning News blamed the uproar on "an increasingly censorious urban attitude": "To brand the people of a small Westcountry fishing port redneck racists who deserve to have their town turned into a minefield is a disgraceful slur and entirely counterproductive to genuine racial harmony."

By the end of the article, the paper turned things around, somehow arguing that the condemnation had been "so offensive and bigoted" that it was effectively a "racist attack" in its own right—against the Cornish!

Against this "racist attack", Padstow found an unlikely defender in a big-city black journalist. "You can make yourself see racism anywhere, if you look hard enough—even in a Cornish town on the day they celebrate the abolition of slavery," wrote Darcus Howe in The New Statesman.

The pundit and broadcaster had first visited Cornwall back in the 1960s and returned many times since. Chiding Grant, who was the MP for Tottenham—"not exactly a Cornish constituency"—he added: "May I offer a little local history lesson for our metropolitan radicals?"

Then Howe regurgitated an unlikely tale about the event's origins: "Slave ships used to anchor in Padstow to avoid storms. The slaves would disembark and entertain themselves and the local people in a song and dance routine," he said.

Citing a "local expert", Howe concluded that Darkie Day was really an anti-slavery celebration: "The critics maintain that Darkie Day is some time-warped throwback to the bad old days of The Black and White Minstrel Show. The reality is the opposite; but the politically correct brigade never stopped for long enough to find that out."

Britain's Black and White Minstrel Show

©J.R. Daeschner

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