"a right-wing vendetta "
Not sure that this is accurate
I was around at the time and particularly friendly with Malcolm Taylor
I was left with the impression that Bearman's tirade was directed at Harker's appalling 'hit-list' approach to folksong scholarship, where he went through every collector and researcher he could lay hands on and tore them to shreds in order to prove there was no such thing as folk song - his vehicle for doing so was his rather shoddy "Fakesong"
Harker's ideas were so 'well received' that at a conference he attended in Sheffield he announced that he would no longer engage in debate due to the overwhelmingly hostile reception they were eliciting
Malcolm's role in all this was very much a case of 'Malcolm in the Middle'
Jim Carroll