"In a similar way we have a tradition of songs associated with people who have been singing in Folk Clubs since the 1950s."

Bang on the money there Les. Stephen Fry used to talk about that age when you develop a signature, arbitrary flourishes of the pen, inventions, conceits that define you thereafter. Folk is similar, a set of ideas, ideals and expectations that accumulate around it like lint on a jumper and eventually become part of the thing itself.

Unfortunately that aggregation of stuff differs very slightly from person to person, or is reduced to such an extent by definitions as to be meaningless. So we have 'The Tradition', capitalised arguments about a thing that never really existed in the first place but dragged a few shibboleths round until they began to look like something substantial.

Now if you're talking about the folk revival as seen through folk clubs since the 1950s you got a reasonable basis for a pub discussion and something with a bit of solidity to it.