"trivialising unexceptable behaviour."
I have said all I intend to say on this - I suggest that, unless you wish to continue to make this a one-to-one on this thread we take it elsewhere, otherwise let people decide for themselves on the basis of what has already been written - I very much doubt if either of us is likely to change our minds.
As far as the Stewart's book is concerned, I'm afraid I find all this somewhat Kafka-esque
I have read the book with great pleasure twice, and when the controversy surfaced I re-read the authors' notes searching for the offending commentary - and failed to find it; I wonder if anybody can enlighten me?
The few references that touch on personal matters and may have given offence are accompanied by transcriptions of speech from members of the family - is it being suggested that the authors forged these transcritions - or that the conversations were recorded surreptitiously - what??
I am not disputing that offence was taken, but I am totally in the dark as to what that offence was, and as far as I can make out from the lack of information, so is everybody else not directly concerned.
I certainly do not believe it was either intended or manufactured - why should the authors set out to deliberately offend a family who, as has often been said by both sides, had total respect for each other? As far as I know they remained friends right up to MacColl's death in 1988.
I do know from personal experience that making public, information you have been given as collector can be a minefield. Our first efforts in doing this was spoken commentary from Clare singer Tom Lenihan, who described to a friend whose recordings of speech we used for the album, how a local dancing master would "hit the pupils' legs hard with his walking stick if they got a step wrong".
We were gently corrected by a family member of the D.M. for including this (it might have been more serious if the family member had not been a friend).
We have recorded hours of information from Travellers that we will never use publicly because we have been asked not to - including the best Traveller-made song we have ever come across.
I am somewhat uncomfortable debating this on an open forum - it has always been our practice not to drag traditional singers into public arguments - it really isn't what they signed up for when they generously gave us their songs, stories and information. One bitter experience by a vengeful reviewer who was quite happy to take his spite out on our singers some years ago has reinforced this opinion.
I am only pointing this out to explain why my input into this topic will be limited.
Jim Carroll