I went to my local folk music recently, and at the end of the evening it ocurred to me that the only trad song sung all evening was the opening number ( whichis always the same song).
   As to whether a Ewan Mccoll composition is more acceptable than a Ralph McTell song, well,I would say, that Ewan did try to write most of his songs "in the tradition".
Of course, there is that famous story that McColl tells about singing his composition "The Shoals of Herrng" to a trad singer ( Sam Larner?), and the trad singer saying that he remembered the song from his youth ( i.e. long before McColl wrote it).
   We can never, I don't think, get back to the days when trad songs dominated the folk club repertoire but I think we would all like to hear a lot more trad songs in our local folk song clubs.