"At least half of the clubs I frequented were predominantly, if not overwhelmingly working class based."

Perhaps this is the source of the apparent confusion between us. Clearly we were visiting very different clubs. My experience has been that the overwhelming majority of people I have met in the folk revival have been middle class, by education and occupation if not by origin. If that matters.

The folk revival is of course entirely separate from the actual tradition. It's not often I agree with Jack Blandiver, but here I do. The folk revival is an artificial construct which does not even attempt to replicate the environment in which folk music once existed. Many of the audience are attracted by the modern way of presenting the music and have no interest, and would even be turned off by, authentic traditional singers. I was like this myself, once.

Occasionally the likes of Walter Pardon and Fred Jordan could be found performing at folk clubs and festivals, but on the whole the folk revival exists within itself, and the revival style of performing traditional songs bears little resemblance to the actual tradition. Even when songs are performed unaccompanied they might bear little resemblance to traditional singing styles but rather a generic 'folk voice' (although with more recorded material available I think this has changed in recent years).

Where the real tradition still survives it is (almost by definition) within working-class communities, but I suspect they have little use for folk clubs.