"The same could equally be said about those involved in the so-called Folk Revival which bears little functional, cultural or socio-economic relation to The Tradition it is claiming to Revive."

I'm not sure that that's true. I once heard a lecture from the folk scholar, Chris Bearman about the communities in Somerset from which Cecil Sharp collected many fine folk songs and which produced singers like Louie Hooper and Emma Overd. I seem to remember that the point of this lecture was that these singers tended to live in little sub-communities and I got the impression of one or two people in a sub-community gaining an interest in old songs and inspiring their neighbours to take up singing them as well. This is not so very different from the traditional song circles that I move in, although modern communications means that we no longer live 'cheek-by-jowel' as Sharp's informants did. The main difference today is that there are professional singers around and rich sources of material such as records, CDs, books and the internet.
I acknowledge that the material circumstances of the 'old style' traditional singers were very different to mine, as were their relationships to the society of their day (although not all trad. singers were poor or destitute by any means). But the more I read about them, the more I am struck by the realisation that the reasons why they sang old songs were not so very different from reasons why I and many of my friends sing old songs. After all trad. singers were people just like you and me and if they were lucky enough to have their material needs fulfilled (however inadequately) I would bet that they had the same needs for novelty, entertainment, self-expression etc. as we do.