WLD: the middle class didn't steal folk music from the working class. The "proles" (to use your phrase) long ago abandoned their traditional music and became mostly passive consumers of commercial entertainment - along with most of the rest of society. If you want the authentic voice of the working class you'll have to look elsewhere. For a while it was punk, now perhaps its rap or hip-hop, but it's certainly not folk in any form.

No one pretends that traditional folk music is the voice of the working class today. Some find it significant that it once was, but others are simply interested in it as an art form for its own sake. Folk songs address the human condition - love and loss, loyalty and betrayal, trying to find an identity in a changing world - matters which affect all classes.

Some Mudcatters apparently know your real identity but I don't so I can only go on what I read here. I find it surprising that you chose to take your songs into the folk clubs, filled with the middle classes you seem to despise, rather than find some other medium which would speak direct to the working class.