It seems clear that most "folk songs" are not overtly political. Songs about poaching often represent an act of resistance. Coal field balladry is something else again.

At the risk of repeating myself:

"Politics is linked to old songs because many of the old songs were kept alive the generations of working people passing them on within and beyond their own communities through good times an bad".

I don't think this was an act of resistance as such but they were not a function of middle or ruling class life. Sharp et al "saved" the songs from extinctinction and locked them up in CSH. McColl, and to be fair hundreds of others, directly or otherwise liberated the songs and endlessly made the point that they had survived for hundreds of years on the lips and in the minds of mostly agricultural working people.

We should celebrate Sharp et al, and we often do, but we should celebrate much more significantly an agricultural working class that had such a rich oral culture. And that is to some extent a political act.

I think

L in C#