Jim Mclean and GSS.

All media programme makers have to attract an audience. That means folk programmes end up using big names such as Billy Bragg or Martin Carthy, rather than people who can claim to be experts in their field. Yes, I don't doubt Martin knows a lot about the folk scene of the sixties. But an expert on the Critics Group he is not.

I don't think hatchet job is quite the word to use here. More a case of picking out the salacious bits, which the producers knew would pull the punters, but which nonetheless gave rise to an unbalanced and unfair programme.

Regarding the question of MacColl's "opinionated bullying". I've mentioned further up this thread that the recordings were too few and too selective to be fair to the man.

However, another thought has just struck me. Could it be that what came across as bullying on the recordings might simply have been commitment.

MacColl was a very passionate man who, rightly or wrongly, believed that the retrieval of the folk song tradition was absolutely essential for "the furtherment of social progress" (his words). In other words he was prepared to work as hard as humanly possibly to raise his own perfomance standards, and those of other people, thereby helping to turn the folk revival into an instrument for improving the lot of the entire human race.

I don't think we need to start to another flame war on the viability of his beliefs, or on his attempts to ally folk music with socialism. But let's at least respect MacColl's memory for the things he did, and for the work he put in, and for the sincerity of his convictions.