"The connection between the left and folk music, in the USA...."
The politics of folk song in Britain is a multi-faceted one.
It was certainly the left who set the ball rolling there with the left wing Workers Music Association introducing MacColl and Lloyd to the public and later setting up Topic Records.
Alan Lomax, on the run from McCarthy's thugs, prodded the BBC into embarking on the mopping up campaign of recording what was still to be found in the field.
Lloyd and MacColl, both left wingers, were in the forefront of the revival involved in setting up one of the earliest folk clubs.
However, the concept of an artistically creative working class making their own songs and claiming them as their own was a revolutionary concept in itself - still difficult for some people to get their heads around.
This is not to say that all our traditional singers queued up at the polls to vote for the Labour or Communist parties, but many of them where aware of the social and historical significance of the song. Go and listen to Harry Cox spitting feathers about the forcible enclosure of common land after having sung Van Dieman's Land, or commenting "that's what the buggers thought of us", after singing Betsy the Serving maid (son of wealthy family falls in love with a servant, parents deport her to America, son dies of grief).
Richard's quote:
"If living was a thing that money could buy
Then the rich would live, and the poor would die"
was recited to MacColl and Parker by Sam Larner during the making of 'Singing the Fishing'
Walter Pardon sang the Agricultural Trades Union Song, The Old Man's Advice, and spoke with pride about his family's part in re-establishing the union in East Anglia.
I find it offensive that anybody should attempt to censor our folksongs because they don't happen to fit into their own particular mindset - they have always been a part of peoples' self expression and long may that continue to be the case.
Jim Carroll