But if you go back to Steve Harris's original post, what he was complaining about was that no one had explained what "the cause" is. Why should you expect people to stick around if you haven't done enough to grab their attention?

Not all folkies are on Mudcat or indeed any of the other folk-related forums. Not all folkies read the Guardian, believe it or not. At least one person at the event apparently did not know what it was all about, and didn't get it explained to him, so he left. Possibly others did too.

While everyone's patting themselves on the back about what a great event it was (and no doubt it was) it doesn't seem to have been 100% successful in communicating its message.