"I know of one morris team whose new members for a while consisted of members of the local camera branch!"

Did they ever dance in-camera?

Bringing Morris into it reminds me of a couple of (Australian) things. In 1973 Peter Parkhill organised a group of us into a mumming play that 'toured' around Melbourne's CBD. Only one of us was expert at Morris and I can't now remember his name but he taught the rest of us enough to do it respectably enough. Our performances were just before Christmas and after that we went on to other things. One of the group was an International Socialist (he's now a respectable lecturer in ethnomusicology and married to the expert on the Menzies history) and most of the rest of us were rather "left". All of us had come into it as singers, though.

In about 1983 (when I was in the company of my lady, who danced with Plenty Morris) I was accosted by a very small (but putatively adult) member of the Sydney Morris Men who aggressively asserted that Sydney Morris Men had started all Morris Dancing in Australia (in about 1975, from memory) and that mixed sides were an affront. He was most upset when I told him that our effort had predated his and, worse, the first Morris side then known to have danced in Australia was a mixed side from Beaumaris (a Melbourne bayside suburb) in the 1930s.

To return to Les' proposition, the evidence supporting the notion of many (most?) singers being leftish seems overwhelming and several posters have presented arguments suggesting 'why' that seem eminently reasonable to me.

Dancers and 'rightish'? I am still intrigued. A good topic for the Session Bar at the National over Easter, I reckon.

Cheers, Rowan