>> GUEST,Bob
>>
>>Why is it that you dyed in the wool MacColl groupies NEVER discuss his
>>treachery during the second world war? The man was an Army deserter >>for God's sake! He should have been shot!
>>Using your logic, if HITLER had warbled away with a finger in his
>>ear, you lot would be discussing his music on mudcat today.

I have to say I was quite shocked by this as I hadn't heard this before. While I think it's hysterical nonsense to say that his desertion equates him with Hitler, I find it hard to reconcile his actions with what I understand about his beliefs.

The Nazis were anti the indigenous cultures of the nations they conquered and the forms of expression of such culture (such as folk music), and they brutally persecuted Communists and Trade Unionists. So even for somebody who did not believe in "King & Country" there would still seem to be ample reasons for fighting against them.

It will be interesting to find out if there is any record of an explaination of this by him during his lifetime, but it's hard to see how any opinions expressed by him later regarding the preservation of folk culture, or the promotion of socialist/communist ideals, could not be viewed as having at least the whiff of hypocrisy if, when the time came to defend these against a force commited to their destruction, he ran away.