the apathy and general disinterest of the English towards their own folk heritage

This is a bit of a moot point here, methinks. What is our own folk heritage? If it's that which takes place in the bucolic hinterlands once dreamed of by the well-to-do Ladies & Gentlemen of the EFDSS then it's hardly the wonder there is a complete disinterest in it on the part of the English people in general - and me in particular! Tailored for bourgeois sensibilities, it is a revivalist fantasy of something that barely made it into the 20th Century, only to be revived by way of a romantic volkish revisionist re-invention that is precisely the same recurring nightmare we find in WAV's wanklore and other even less savoury right-wing manifestos.

There is no English Folk Heritage other than that imagined by The Revival, and subsequently tailored for its disparate needs. In education it was a joke (recorders likewise); to the vast majority of the English people it is still a joke, but at least we no longer have to suffer its indignities at school. This isn't due to apathy on the part of the English people, it is simply because the English people have a living culture of their own, one that has been completely overlooked and, to a certain extent, disparaged by the Folk Revival. Call it English Popular Culture - which is alive and well - and you'll find it everywhere; in every county, in every city, every town, every village, every street and every home - we each and every one of us carry it in our hearts; a wondrous diversity inclusive of all ethnicities, derivations, origins and individuals - Folkies included!