According to an appendix in Harker's book (Open University Press, 1985) his parents were suitably 'horny-handed' sons and daughters of toil. But his father built up a, "firm of speculative builders which never employed more than a dozen or so other workers." Harker won a scholarship to grammar school and then went to Cambridge. At one stage he was, I believe, a lecturer at Manchester Polytechnic (bourgeois and academic??). He hoped that his book would be judged (favourably) by his comrades in the Gorton Branch of the SWP. Gorton is a suburb of East Manchester - it is not very leafy - I suspect that, in the 1980s, Mr Harker may have actually lived somewhere a bit leafier.

Perhaps these facts might add a bit of perspective when considering the merits of a book which, I have always believed, seriously distorted views of folk music and folk song collectors. Then again ... perhaps not ...?