" but any time one political belief dominates almost all research and presentation- can that ever be good?"
Does it really, can you give an example of where this happens?
MacColl regarded folk music as 'the music of the people' - the voice of the voiceless- was this wrong? I have on our shelf a series of Topic albums entitled 'Voice of the People', were they deliberately misnamed for political reasons?
MacColl's political views were what they were and he wrote songs to express them, as has every songmaker writing on contemporary political and social themes throughout history has done before him.
Some of the earliest songs ever published are to be found in Thomas Wright's 'Political Songs of England' From the Reign of John to Edward II 1199 to 1327, published in 1839 - half in Latin, half in old English - a bit late to complain about political songs, don't you think?
It's always been my experience that those who complain about the mixing of folk song and politics are usually griping that the political views being expressed do not coincide with their own.
In all my time involved with MacColl's Singers Club (20 odd years) I never once saw a singer asked not to sing songs that might offend the club regulars or organisers, but I was often told at other clubs, "we don't allow political/contemporary/accompanied/that sort of song here. I know members of The Critics Group were regularly offered bookings on the understanding that they didn't sing certain songs that were part of their established repertoirs - makes you think, or maybe not, as the case may be.
By the way; MacColl never claimed to "write folk songs" he always drew a distinction between his own songs and those that had come down through the tradition - though he was often quite chuffed to hear songs like Dirty Old Town and Shoals of Herring mistaken for folk songs.
Neither of his clubs, 'The Ballads and Blues' or 'The Singers Club' ever included the word 'folk' in their title, though they both featured folk songs and songs made in the folk style throughout their existance.
Jim Carroll