I don't think you can separate attitudes to English traditional music from class issues and the question of national identity. Whenever politicians try to define 'English' identity they seem to manage to exclude me. I think of myself as working class, lancashire, english in that order. (leaving aside the human, socialist, world citizen for the moment which is in my case learned rather than bred in). I think that the distaste for folk music in the English establishment is class based and when you look at their definitions of Englishness they always seem to include elements that constitute a middle class lifestyle.

The last thing these people want is to reunite the English working class with their oral history of riots, strikes and rebellion or even sexuality - hence the anodyne, bowdlerised versions of songs sung in schools. The Irish establishment in particular have a greater interest in encouraging this side of their working class history because it is appropriated as 'Irish' and used for nationalist purposes