"isn't the picture I posted a few minutes ago a wonderful bit of history of those years?" Greg - Yes, it is, but nothing like the complete picture. I have seen it before, but I have also spoken to some of the people who were there at the time and got very mixed interpretations of how Dylan was received. I know Bert regarded the evening as an "interesting non-event", certainly when we asked him about it.
It would have been taken around the time when Martin Carthy claimed Dylan 'stole' Scarborough Fair from his singing; when Joe Heaney was being boo-ed off stage in Dublin, when we were still surrounded by the blandness of the 'folk boom' - the revival was very much in flux at the time and one of the few influential constants was The Singers Club, which continued to be the case right up to Ewan's death.
"he has done more for music than MacColl ever did"
Wow - never heard that one before Cap'n - you might as well claim the same of Elvis - MacColl and Dylan were out of totally different stables, making such comparisons somewhat silly; the only difference being MacColl persisted at what he was doing while Dylan.... well - work it out for yourself!
Now if the rest of us went around claiming "Perhaps people generally don't know what's good", we'd all end up as fully qualified member of The Folk Police - I really wouldn't go there if I were you.
Putting criticism down to "jealousy" is a sure path to what you graphically describe as "crawling up each other's arses" - wouldn't go there either!
Jim Carroll