"Jim, does that mean MacColl was against newly composed songs being sung in a folk club, if they did not use traditional forms."
I was never aware of any prescription of of any type of song being enforced in the club he was involved in.
Visitors sang what they wished and were booked on the basis of what they sang and how well they sang them.
Residents became residents on the same basis - confirmed club policy.
Whether either chose to sing other types of songs occasionally during a performance was a matter for them as long as they didn't interfere with the main policy of the club, though I can't honestly remember residents straying too far from the general folk-repertoire style (the occasional music hall piece being a exception) - matter of personal taste rather than a 'rule'.
I have known audience members complain about singers from too many the floor singing non-folk style songs - seen a letter of complaint to the committee about this.
MacColl occasionally wrote non-folk-style songs himself - 'Nightmare' springs to mind.
Several of the songs for first radio ballad, 'John Axon' were jazz bases and 'The Cabin Boy's Song, from 'Singing the Fishing' was based on Gilbert and Sullivan.
A nuber of the residents sang and recorded songs composed by London songwriter John Pole - not all in folk-style by any means.
It was never a "rule" - just club practice to confine an evening at the Singers Club to folk and folk-style songs - just as it was in many hundreds of other clubs I visited.
I have seen singers (and experienced myself once) specific requests not to sing contemporary songs and I regularly visited several in the North of England which displayed "no instruments" notices on the wall.
All cubs have and are entitled to have their own policy, even if that policy is "we have no policy here".
The dominance of what you find at a club determines what type it is and the quality of the residents is a measure of whether it is a good or bad club IMO.
As for what 'folk style' means - as has interminably been pointed out, if you don't understand folk styles enough to articulate them (not sure I do fully) you tend to recognise them when you hear them.
It's not necessarily a question of style anyway - function and utterance can be a determining factor in the uniqueness of folks song.
Jim Carroll