"I think what we need to do is stop the pointless and unproductive arguments about what is folk music"
To an extent I sympathise with Levellers comment, but it seems to me inevitable that when the subject of clubs or the revival comes up, eventually it will come down to an argument on definitions, simply for the reason that many of us feel the word "folk" has been usurped by something that bears no relation whatever to its meaning. This means that we can no longer go to a 'folk' venue and listen to the music that we like, the way that we could say twenty-odd years ago. This hasn't happened through 'evolution'; much of the music that is being performed under the auspices of folk has its own history, identity and definitions, but has been unceremoniously crammed under the term 'folk' for the convenience of a group of people who, it seems to me, were looking for a pit to hiss in, can't be bothered to dig their own, so the folk clubs were as good a venue as any.
SO'P had declared long and loud that mine, and others like me's idea of folk is the invention of academics and collectors; he is perfectly at liberty to hold that view, but if he is going to make any headway with it, he really is going to back it up with something more than empty declarations. I certainly don't object to his thinking the way he does, but I do feel it more than a trifle arrogant that he should try to wipe the slate of centuries of work with – well – none of his own; he doesn't believe in research!
In the long run it doesn't matter; those who would wish for 'folk' to mean something else have not come up with a viable alternative, a body of work, even a logical argument to back up their claims, and rely totally on the Humpty Dumpty philosophy of "words mean what I want them to mean". This doesn't make for good communication and, as far as it affects me personally, means my freedom to choose what I listen to has been curtailed by the fact that I can no longer trust folk clubs to provide me with what I am looking for as I once could.
As far as the future is concerned, we have our credentials in the form of a workable definition (certainly in need of adjustment) and our literature, recordings and documentation. Our work as researchers and collectors has been carried out (thirty-odd years of field work with traditional singers in our case), indexed, annotated, documented, archived and made available for public scrutiny, and will survive long after the landfill sites have been bulldozed over and parks put in their place. If nothing else, it's comforting to think people will be listening and referring to Sam Larner, Harry Cox, Walter Pardon, Mary Delaney, Bill Cassidy, Tom Lenihan, et al, long after the snigger snogwriters have faded from memory. Even the work of the best of the revivalists, MacColl, Lloyd, McGinn, Tawney….. has been documented well enough to be reference points for the foreseeable future.   
Pip may be right that the clubs will survive as landfill sites for a time to come, but they will have to clean up their act – literally – audiences don't renew themselves indefinitely unless there is something worth making the effort for, and the tuneless mumblings of forgotten words, by 'singers' who don't understand what they are singing and are not encouraged (or think it will spoil their enjoyment and so can't be bothered) to put in the necessary work just won't hack it. This is evidenced by the fact that many of today's clubs are populated by and large by crumblies of my generation who will eventually fall off the twig, leaving nothing. The need for standards was recognised as far back as the seventies and eighties when one of the great headlines which preceded the folk 'holocaust' then was "Crap Begets Crap" and it certainly does.
Jim Carroll