The English folk club obsession of booking acts a long time in advance, sometimes upwards of a year, effectively prevents a lot of foreign acts from putting tour together, however interesting they may be. A lot of local acts, too, come to that. This is often justified by "it's necessary to get the big name acts secured", but a quick glance at a lot of club's schedules will show this is not actually the case. They book very small names singer, who only live down the road, months or years in advance as well. The folk music scene in Ireland, I always felt, gained greatly by booking weeks or a month or two in advance, rather than many months or years. Acts in Ireland are also much more cooperative with each other in switching gig dates around to aoccommodate each other's touring schedules.
   Having said that, you can get gigs in England, not everybody books that far in advance, luckily, and not evrybody is ultra-cautious. A good Myspace is good. A good demo is good. Even better, I think, is evidence of having done gig before, and what kind of gigs. If I want to book an act into a pub, I want to know if they've done pub gigs before, and how they have gone. If I want a band for a barn dance booking, I would like to ring a caller who's worked with them to get the lowdown. Etc etc.
So be prepared to say to a potential booker "give the organiser of the XXX club a ring, I played there last week".
If you haven't got a track record: well, like everyone says, get out and play for free as often as possible. If you are any good(or more accurately, if people like you), you will get offered work.
And be prepared for a lot of disappointments!