That said, I believe that the current description (as I read about it on Mudcat-of Anglo British folk music (to use the "Anglo" meaning "White"terminology that is known in the United States)

Please DON'T. Many Scots, Welsh and Irish will find that INCREDIBLY offensive. We AREN'T English, not even if you use a Latinate word for "English" to say so. "Traditional music of the British Isles" will do.


lends itself to expropriation by the BNP because it has so few non-White practitioners and followers/fans and because it appears to consider itself the only "traditional music" in Britain.

The Scottish experience suggests differently. Pretty near any political demonstration by forces on the left will have a Highland piper (or band thereof) near the front.   There might well also be a samba school, but the expectation is that at least a large fraction of people involved in Scottish traditional music can be expected to turn up at any event opposing the sort of thing the BNP stands for. (The only kind of music in Scotland specifically associated with the far right is fife-and-drum band music, as used by the Orange Order).

There are a few non-white performers of Scottish music - mainly on the bagpipes (and that's been routine for decades), but one of the best-known Scottish traditional pub singers in Edinburgh is of Chinese extraction.

Getting morris sides at the front of English anti-fascist demos, and covered by the media when doing it, would help.


In addition, the acceptance of songs with the "N" word, if that does occur as I read on Mudcat,

Fairly unusual - I don't think I've ever heard that in a British folk performance, even one of the most antiquarian variety - but remember that the word itself doesn't carry quite the same nightmare emotional freight that it does in the US.

At any rate there is absolutely NO chance that you would hear the word used in a British folk performance in a context where it would lend support to fascists.


and the custom of blackening up don't help answer any charge that might come (and I do believe will come) from people who are/will be far less friendly to your (our) cause than me.

Blackening up really is an irrelevance. It doesn't historically have anything to do with African people or images of them, and it isn't generally perceived to be related to racial issues, even by racists. Blacked-up dance teams look more like mineworkers coming off shift than anything else. It's crazy to try and pick a fight with people who perform in that tradition - more likely to lose allies for the anti-fascist movement and create new friends for the BNP.