Bob . . the whole series has been out for some months now . . and if you buy the whole lot you should get them at a discount. Most of them have been reviewed at Musical Traditions (different reviewers; intelegent reviews):

http://www.mustrad.org.uk/

(assuming those reviews haven't dropped off the site yet). There was also a short discussion of this on rec.music.folk a couple of months back in which I posted a couple of other relevent links. And Topic Records have a very informative booklet describing the series (AND my wife has just said she's going to buy the set for me for our aniversary so I'm jubulant).

The link to "Voice of the People" is an interesting one - certainly the two projects complement one another, but they are VERY different; the Radio Ballads drew heavily on "the tradition" but they are (particularly fine) art pieces. Generally, they still stand up well today (I've got a tape of "Axon", and the record - abridged - of Singing the Fishing). They are very important works for anyone interested in the history of broadcasting (sound and TV, IMO), and they were hugely influential to many of the early "revival" performers in the UK; e.g. Roy Bailey cited them as a major inspiration.

But to return to the question - as far as I know MacColl never performed "The Ballad of John Axon" outside the radio ballad itself - although he did perform other songs from that work.

G.