As Charley says this seems to come up every year. Before posting to this thread any more and taking Colin Irwin's uncritical words as gospel please read this article. Colin Irwin was plain wrong.

There is a link to the original article here.

Clearly the policy of " If you were singing from the stage, you sang in a language that you could speak and understand" came not from MacColl, but from members of the Ballad and Blues Club. Likewise the policy of that ".....not sing the same traditional song more than once every three months..." came from the members of the Ballad and Blues Club also.