As always, I can only speak of the clubs in which I have been involved, but from that perspective I can unequivocally state that any black person who dropped in has been welcomed with open arms.

Unfortunately there have been all too few of them over the years, and I have no idea why that is so.

The few that I have seen have been either very good listeners, or very good performers, usually both, and I think the club scene is the poorer for their absence.

I would hope that, in time to come, when more enlightened attitudes (mainly, but not exclusively the attitudes of the white population) allow young black people to feel more comfortable living within UK culture, they might come to espouse the tradition, but this is unlikely to happen until they truly feel that they "belong", and there is yet some way to go in achieving that.

UK folkies, notwithstanding some of the comments about cliques and diehard traditionalists, are generally the warmest and most open to strangers people you can finds, so perhaps visiting folk clubs might help to achieve the above. I don't personally know one racist folkie, and after forty seven years that's one hell of a lot of non racists.

Don T.