The opening of the Bater study is a CPS (DA in US) review of a Padstow event which is closer to the Minstrel heritage than anything in the folk world, which was found no to infringe the law on racial discrimination. The only conclusion I can draw from that is that the folk tradition is safely inside the line: or that the Law is wrong. Lex mala sed lex apart, there is a band of grey where one man's sensitivity is another's licence, and the Law must be relatively static. The Law on Racism is NOT there to allow carte-blanche to every minority, but to stop the majority becoming unfair. If these performances were being done with an intent to discriminate, then there would be a case, obviously: but doing it for other reasons does not, and is not therefore illegal. The Law does not address the superficiality, but the reality.

The evidence Bater presents of an association between the Cefyl tradition and the 'oss takes the folk heritage back into the Bronze Age, almost certainly predating the arrival of the first Africans with the Romans (I say "almost certainly" because there was trade in metals up to 500 years before that, initially with Greece, then Rome, but not with the Phoenician colonies of North Africa). The numerous burials found with horse heads indicate that the 'oss/Cefyl tradition is a descendant of a tribal icon, certainly of the Iceni, and probably of the Durobantes and Silures. It is not by chance that these traditions all exist in the areas where the horse was worshiped. It then becomes clear that the remaining questions of things like the Bacup Coconuts were adherences of current trends to a far older tradition, and to ditch the tradition just because of certain accretions is to deny its origins.

The Lucas paper examining the hijacking of an older heritage by the Nationalist right definitely puts the cart before the horse: sort the hijackers out, not the hostages. To do otherwise would actually be racist, giving them credence for something which is arrant, offensive nonsense.

I therefore conclude that as guardians of a far older heritage, we must be aware of certain influences which we may wish to disparage, but at the same time can show that the pre-Christian influences which almost certainly included most of the guising tradition which this is part of, and which had nothing whatsoever to do with people of African origins. Case dismissed, stop trying to throw the baby out with the bathwater, there is a long and dishonourable tradition of racism in the UK we are putting a stop to, but don't go so far as to destroy everything we ever had simply because of a false parallel, our different cultures should live together with a sense of humour. If this were being done with any intent to oppress, diminish or offend the black community, then it would need to change, but it isn't: however, for the black community to make false aspersions or parallels disposes of their case. They might as well ask anyone named Black, Douglas or the like to change their names.