From the first post in this thread:

<< the greatest ballad singers of the Twentieth century tended to be Travellers - people who, for much of that century, were at the opposite end of the social scale from the Lords and Ladies they sang about.>>

Not at all. My work brings me into contact with travellers from the traditional travelling community. They do not consider themselves to be at the botom of the scale, any more than they assume lords and ladies are at the top. Like every community, they have their own social scale. If members of the travelling community ever think about it at all, I imagine they think of themselves as operating completely outside the mainstream, in a parallel society of their own. In some ways, they look down on "us".

Be that as it may, is folk song really political? If you want it to be.

Folk song just exists. People who want to find politics in it can; people who want to find social comment in it can; people who want to find separate strands or categories in it can. But folk song just is.

We are folk too, you know.