Dear Mr or Ms GUEST. You say that:

"Alex was apolitical like most of the revival and post revival singers."

Well, the Alex I knew was certainly not 'apolitical', except perhaps in the eyes of the far left.   But for them, of course, the only way of being 'political' was to be actively committed to the Marxist revolution.

The Stalinist of the 1950s (like Maoists in the '60s, and Trotskyites in the '70s) insisted that if you weren't part of the solution, you had to be part of the problem. And for them, there was only ONE solution. So, they dismissed those of us (Alex included) who campaigned for peace and social justice on different terms from theirs as mere dupes or stooges of the ruling class. (Naturally, we disagreed.)

Both camps - the hard-nosed Marxist revolutionaries and the wishy-washy liberal humanists - did a lot of valuable work in promoting greater knowledge and understanding of the folk tradition. If the historians choose to argue about who made the greater contribution, let them get on with it. The important thing is that people continue getting together to sing the old songs - and new songs in the spirit of the best of the old ones.

Wassail!