Cornwall is known for being one of the most oppressive areas for Deaf people to live in - no official support for British Sign Language, Deaf kids in Cornish schools are forbidden to learn or communicate in BSL leaving school with little or no qualifications and reading and writing problems - the official ideology is to deliverer education orally as an attempt to ‘normalise’ Deaf children. Another impetus for the march was that a local Deaf teenager recently hung himself, and it was felt that he had been unable to communicate his feelings to anybody because of Cornwall’s policy of suppressing sign language.

On the day of the march, Saturday 13th October, about 60 Deaf people turned up, with lots of colourful banners and signs, an excellent turn out for a county like Cornwall, with a fractured, divided and isolated Deaf community. We had pre-arranged with the police to march twice around the city centre but after the first circuit, the police refused to let the march continue. So a group of Deaf activists took the lead and decided to march around again anyway. The police freaked out and started to drag banners away from the Deaf children leading the march - it became a bit of a tug of war... Meanwhile, others took advantage of this distraction and carried on with the march, forcing the police to give up trying to stop the march and trail along ashamedly behind it.

After the march there were several speakers, including all three Cornish MPs, one each from the respective main parties, with sign language interpreters translating. The Tory MP declared his undying support for BSL recognition, and how his party had always supported British Sigh Language (BSL), after which the Labour MP then spoke about his respect for his Deaf constituents, and stated that HIS party had been the first to support BSL.., finally the Lib Dem MP spoke, no claims, but lots of practical advice on how to put pressure on the government. Then a speech was given by an American Deaf activist who told us about solidarity and support from the US Deaf activist community for what we were trying to do in Cornwall and England.

Some Deaf activists felt that just political speeches and marches weren’t really enough, that the seriousness of the situation in Cornwall, with Deaf children killing themselves through isolation, justified taking direct action to empahasise how deeply and strongly they felt about the issues and also spread their message to a wider audience. So about a dozen Deaf activists went and blocked a main road by holding a sit-down protest in the middle of the road.

Some of the drivers were pretty pissed off, but calmed down when given leaflets explaining the situation, and some of them beeped encouragement and passers-by let us know about the imminent arrival of the police. When the police came they tried to talk to us and then realised that we were all Deaf, but carried on trying to talk to us anyway, even though we were asking for an interpreter. We had written a leaflet for exactly this situation, outlining our rights to an interpreter, but it was ignored by the police. After a bit of a conference about what to do, one of the police came into the road block and spoke out a compulsory pre-arrest warning, which of course we didn’t understand, and which should have been written down or given in sign language through an interpreter - amazingly enough they had not arranged to have a police interpreter, despite being given plenty of advance warning of the march.

When we indicated we didn’t understand the warning and asked again to have it interpreted; the police just stepped in and arrested three of the activists in the road, ignoring the others. It was a completely unlawful arbitrary arrest - why arrest these three and not the other road blockers - very suspicious because the three arrestees were the only individuals who didn’t fit their conservative stereotypes of ‘respectable white people’ - two were Indian, one had piercings... :) We were dragged to the police van, and a fourth person was arrested when on seeing her best mate being dragged away by the police, she jumped out and wrapped her arms around him, and refused to let go! So they chucked her in the van as well!

We were taken to a distant police station in Newquay, and left in the van for several hours while they tried to work out what to do with us. At this point, apparently, they realised they’d made a major mistake, as they had arrested us peaceful protesters without giving a lawful warning, without an interpreter, without writing anything down, in fact without communicating to us at all, which they should have done, as required by law.

The Newquay police were very polite to us, in contrast to the attitudes of the Truro police, and we were offered drinks, hot vegan meals, and allowed to smoke in the police van! Eventually they decided to process us, and spent 15 minutes trying to get us out of the police van in the most polite way possible, without touching us - they were a bit freaked out, didn’t know what to do with us, and we kept on playing games by pretending to mis-understand them in amusing ways, holding mock conferences inside the police van and indicating to them that we would all come together or not at all :)

Eventually we were seperated and one by one we were searched in the police station. They finally found an interpreter, but because she had been present on the BSL march, she was a potenional witness, so we refused to accept her - at this point, the police looked absoutley devasted, poor darlings! The police then discovered that all the interpreters in cornwall, all 2 of them, had been on the march, so couldnt be used! After several hours of ringing around, they finally found an interpreter from Exeter, 100 miles away. I considered challenging her qualifications and making her travel all the way back to Exeter to get her interpeting certificates to show us :) but it was already quite late, everyone had been isolated in seperate cells for 7 hours by now, and it was getting a bit tireing.

With the new interpreter, they interviewed us - ‘no comment’ all the way and finally we were told that we would be given a ‘recorded warning’ and released! I asked what a ‘recorded warning’ meant exactly, as I’d never heard of it before. They refused to tell me! So I asked if it was a caution - no it wasn’t, I asked if it was a bind-over - no it wasn’t. Finally I managed to get them to say it meant that they could keep information on me - I wasn’t happy with this and told them (through the interpreter) that I refused to accept this ‘recorded warning’ and that they should either charge me or release me unconditionally. They told me I didn’t have a choice, that I had to accept the ‘recorded warning’! So I asked to be given an arrest receipt, to be given all the paperwork related to my arrest, and they refused! Its a legal right to be given an arrest receipt or number, and after several tries, I finally dragged a copy of my official arrest number out of them and an address to complain to - it was obvious they were extremely embarrassed about the whole episode and just wanted us out of there without any arrest documentation...

Later I spoke to a lawyer and discovered that this ‘recorded warning’ thing is only used by the police when they find children under the age of 7 misbehaving!! Bloody insult to Deaf activists!!