". . . several earlier folk clubs in England DID have a perform-your-own-national-culture policy."

I've heard about that, WAV. That may be a fact, but it certainly doesn't justify either your position or the restrictive position of such folk clubs. There are major problems with such a policy, not the least of which is that many songs and ballads that people tend to assume are indigenous are not, they're "immigrants." It would take a ballad-scholar-in-residence at each of these folk clubs to pass on which songs are acceptable and which are not.

Folk music is like the vagrant breeze, WAV. It is no respecter of political or cultural boundaries. It goes where it will.

You say "earlier folk clubs." Did it ever occur to you (before you came to your own conclusions) why these clubs abandoned this policy?

Don Firth