Folkiedave

So I contradict them with my own experience. Jim does it with his (much deeper) experience. Nothing to do with fawning devotion but a lot to do with facts.

Shirley Collins, Frankie Armstrong, Reg Hall and The Leveller also had direct experience but they are brushed aside as "waffling", "a tortuous bending of the actualité", "dishonesty" and not being believed (which, I think, is the same thing as calling them a liar).

It is without question that MacColl was a major influence on the folk revival, helped and encouraged a lot of people, wrote some splendid songs and all the other things that Les in Chorlton listed above.

It is also very apparent that he mightily pissed off a number of people. Not just cockneys who wanted to be Leadbelly or Birmingham Folkies who wanted to be North Sea Fishermen but people who were significant players in the revival in their own right.

I cannot see what is to be gained by denying this and rubbishing those who have the temerity to say so.

I wasn't there. I cannot have the direct experience, but as an inheritor of what happened in the fifties I am entitled to know the truth, not just the sanitised version that the MacColl camp want to give me.