No - twenty five years lends enchantment to the view. most people, at the time, were intensely ashamed and upset about the outbtreak of violence in their communities - there was little of the triumphalism of the Blackleg Miner song at the time.

what to do now...? An interesting question, Dave.

We were so damned lucky as a generation in some ways. they'd just had two world wars and for a lot of people we were the golden generation - the first with free healthcare, education, well fed, well looked after - we were the hope of the future.

When we talked about our world, the best of our elders said - well maybe you've got a point - you can't screw things up much worse than we did....

Compare that with abuse that young kids get nowadays for their 'navel gazing' music. Its only if you play dance tunes that no one dances to (outside of PTA social events), work at a lugubrious accent with songs that are written to sound two hundred years old that you well maybe get a pat on the head from the folk world.

donovan was 17 when I first heard him, Dylan only twenty, The beatles not much older.....It was exciting to see your contemporaries having a bash and being successful. And the folkclubs were full of people, inspired and having that same bash.

Seth Lakeman, Liza C, Kate R., - these guys are middle aged (compared to the people who got us into folkmusic) and they and their approach, would have seemed as such to us at the time if they had appeared in the 1960's.

If we want this music to have a future we must start listening to the young, instead of dumping on their heads the burden of this bloody tradition that is so obviously going nowhere.