…It is a sad truth that many English inmigrants into rural Wales are out-and-out racists. In the north of the country, they have usually moved from the urban sprawls of Liverpool and Manchester, in mid Wales their provenance is usually the West Midlands and in the west and south it is often London. The common defining feature is that their principal reason for leaving the English cities was to get away from multi-cultural society, from black and Asian people in particular, and they see rural Wales, with its largely white population, as a safe haven. It is a simple matter of colour: there is little sophisticated understanding of racial issues going on. The irony here, of course, is that these people themselves become the immigrants that they have grown to hate and sought an escape from. But they don't see it like that. Such is their "majority culture" arrogance that they see, and treat, the host Welsh culture as just another "minority" to be ridden roughshod over, to be treated with disdain and scoffed at behind closed doors.

This realisation has been one of the biggest shocks to me since moving to rural Wales. As another English inmigrant myself, racists have assumed me to be on "their" side, before I've had the chance to say any more than where I originate from. Such hubris is often the preserve of bigots - so steadfast are they in their views that they assume anyone and everyone sharing their provenance will agree with them. Just as in the stereotype of a prejudiced taxi driver assuming that any white passenger in the back of his cab is fair game for racist views, so many of these fellow inmigrants have poured out their unreconstructed racism to me within a minute of first meeting…

Sadly, such attitudes are not the sole preserve of older and more outwardly conservative inmigrants. Liberal, middle-class English émigrés - from the waves of hippies escaping it all thirty years ago to the uptight Jeremys and Jemimas who live in their own hermetically sealed bubbles in villages almost devoid of local people - are often just as culpable. I have been amazed by some of the views proffered by younger incomers, people of my own age and similar backgrounds in relatively comfortable Middle England. If you have not grown up in such circumstances, you cannot appreciate the certainties and the absolutes with which such an upbringing is imbued. There is much talk in these devolutionary times of the English struggling to establish and understand their own identity, or set of identities. While this may be true on a macro scale, it is still undoubtedly the case that to be born and raised in reasonable comfort in England - even, as I was, less than forty miles from the border - is to be granted a very self-assured hand in the poker game of life. We may no longer have maps of the British Empire gracing the walls of primary schools, but the vestiges of old attitudes linger: it is "we" and "us" against the ubiquitous "them". "They" can be just about anyone different: the European Union, new Commonwealth immigrants, "the enemy within", intellectuals, the Irish or, increasingly these days, the Scots and the Welsh.

The resultant condescension reveals itself in many ways. I have heard, and heard of, many soi-disant liberal-minded English inmigrants who, by an all-too-telling aside when under pressure, have let the mask slip and revealed a latent Cymrophobia. This often shows itself quite subtly: their common assumption, for example, that they have far more to teach the Welsh than the other way around, that they bring into the relationship with their new locale the lion's share of valuable qualities - a certain sophistication, liberal cosmopolitanism, "progress", a breath (as they see it) of much needed fresh air. By implication, this assumption rubbishes the qualities of the indigenous culture, its spirited survival, its longevity, its rootedness, its emphasis on community over rampant individualism, its creativity, its spirituality, its less strident - but very present, nonetheless - pluralism and tolerance. All too rarely do the more arrogant incomers stay quiet long enough to hear such delicate (and increasingly fragile) qualities breathe. At best, this is supremely patronising, and, at worst, downright hostile…