leeneia, it's about certain communities having their own unique traditions, and not necessarily wanting to "lose" those traditions to people who might not understand or respect them, or who might turn them into something else.

Take the Abbots Bromley Horn Dance. If you see what's been done to it when it's performed in other places in the UK, or in America, you will see that it deviates pretty substantially from the actual tradition (which belongs to the people of Abbots Bromley, and is a living tradition). I would argue that, when a version of the dance is performed in these other contexts, and completely differently from how it is performed in Abbots Bromley, it's no longer the Abbots Bromley Horn Dance. But there are people who have never seen the real thing, who dance a version of it that they've picked up elsewhere, and they tell other people (who aren't to know any better) that what they are seeing is Abbots Bromley.

Similarly, Bampton Morris has had people tell them that the way they do their steps is "wrong", because they are not precisely as Sharp noted them a century ago. But the Bampton dance tradtition belongs to that community. However they choose to dance the dances surely becomes the right way, by default. It's their tradition.

The Bacup Nutters were protective of their tradition because they did not want to see it become "folked up" (my term, not theirs), as so many of these formerly local traditions have been. Whether you agree with them or not, it's their tradition and their point of view deserves respect. And it keeps the tradition special.