I first met Ewan and Peg in, I think 1960 at their concert in Oberlin Ohio. After that Ewan was barred from entering the US on account of his politics so Peg toured alone. Arriving in England in 1965, they were the first people I looked up and hooked up with at the Singers Club, Festival of Fools etc etc. I had sung alot but was still pretty green, with much to learn.

As others have said, Ewan was complex, often contradictory but, in Peg's words, "a genius" who wrote and performed with Peg's arrangements and accompaniment probably the most comprehensive and moving corpus of songs ever written in Britain. I still sing some and remember others which have passed into history like "The Ballad of Ho Chi Minh." I/we owe Him and Peg a lot. He was kind and generous but also demanding, sometimes terrifying, especially as author/director. He and Peg encouraged me (Peg was glad of a fellow American to work with I think) and sang some of my songs. I and everyone else had to earn their place and if for some reason one fell foul, the master's wrath would know no bounds.   

The Critics Group was Ewan's vision for a revolutionary period in which revolutionary artists would play a vital part. But it was doomed because it was his vision with a veneer of democracy that eventually wore away, because Britain is not Vietnam or Chile and because it was a left wing niche in a country that would soon elect Thatcher and has now elected- ???.

I often meet younger folk who sing his songs, both traditional (even Strawberry Fair, which they think was created by Simon and Garfunkel) and original, third hand with no idea where they came from. With some of the others who "graduated" from that committed but naive hothouse, are still around but getting older, I hope I'm worthy of passing on the inheritance and craft learned in the 60s and early 70s.