This chapter is on the theme of local identity, exclusion and what I am calling ‘the culture of local xenophobia’. ‘Xenophobia’ is an unattractive word, although perhaps that suits its meaning – it is defined as a fear or dislike of things foreign or strange. I shall use it here as prefaced by ‘local’. In other words, this chapter is not dealing with anti-foreigner or anti-outsider sentiments in the more modern international, ethnic or religious senses. In fact, the word ‘foreigner’ was widely used in the past, even as late as the 1940s, to refer to somebody from another parish or locality, and I will normally use it in that local historical way. Such usage connects back to, and further justifies, the term ‘local xenophobia’.

Wider national xenophobic attitudes, whether racist, religious or nationalist, have been much analysed by historians and other academics. Given modern problems, it is very important that study of these issues should occur. By comparison, almost nothing has been written by historians about the subject of local xenophobia, even though that subject bears so much on how, and when, humanitarian attitudes broached parochial confines.