In February 1998, campaigners against the closure of South Crofty, the last hard rock and tin mine in Cornwall, blocked the A30 trunk road into Cornwall using a twenty-car slow-moving convoy.[1][2]
The organisation grew from this protest, and demanded Objective One regional funding for Cornwall, an exclusively-Cornish European Parliament constituency, a Cornish university, support for Cornwall's traditional industries and local control over Cornwall's health service; these demands were broadly similar to those being made at the time by Mebyon Kernow, a Cornish nationalist party that had recently relaunched itself. Cornish Solidarity was consolidated as a pressure group after the closure of South Crofty, the last hard rock mine in Cornwall, in March 1998.[1] Greg Woods was elected the organisation's chairman.[2]
In March 1998, hundreds of Cornish Solidarity campaigners staged a protest on the Tamar Bridge. A convoy of protesters, many waving black and white Saint Piran's flags from their vehicles, drove to the bridge, and used pennies to pay the £1 toll to enter Devon at Plymouth; Woods claimed that "that's all we've got left to pay with in Cornwall".[1][2]
In July 1998, Cornish Solidarity staged its last major protest, in which over 1,000 protestors blocked the Tamar Bridge.[1]
Since achieving many of its aims, Cornish Solidarity has undertaken a self-imposed hibernation vowing to return to fight any attempt to attack or alter Cornwall's ethnic diversity, boundaries or constitutional status.[citation needed]
