I notice that no-one has taken up my point about Peter Kennedy. And before anyone asks why Kennedy is relevant to this discussion I will repeat that, in a very recently published book, MacColl is 'demonised' (to use Jim carrol's term) YET AGAIN, whereas, in the adjacent section, in the same book, another significant figure in the UK folk world, Peter Kennedy (who may have deserved demonisation), is let off the hook.

This contrast is just too striking to go unremarked upon. In my view there are a number of reasons why MacColl has been, and continues to be, demonised (thus unjustly obscuring his considerable achievements):

(i) A lot of people didn't like his politics.
(ii) He was not particularly influenced by contemporary fashions and popular culture. His vision was a lot broader and more mature than that. This meant that, usually by implication, he was seen to criticise some people's tastes in music - in this country the greatest crime that an individual can commit outside of murder and paedophilia. My comment about electric guitars was meant satirically - but I note that some people have taken me literally.
(iii) He was a highly influential figure but he wasn't particularly liberal with his praise - I suspect that quite a few people thought that they deserved his praise - and when he didn't comply their 'noses were put out of joint'.
(iv) He believed in, and practiced, constructive criticism. Criticism is the lifeblood of any developing artform - but a lot of people (with fragile egoes) are offended by it.
(v) He refused to sanction the 'anything goes in a folk club' ethos - in fact his ideas tended to militate against such an ethos. Thus all the comedians, would be rockers and "snigger snoggers" (to pinch Diane Easby's term) etc., etc. who flooded the clubs in the 70s/80s didn't have his 'official sanction' (which, for some unaccountable reason, they seemed to desperately need).

Now I await the comments suggesting that, by advancing these hypotheses, I am somehow paranoid or mad. Some constructive arguments to the contrary would be better - but I don't hold out much hope!