"I've talked with 90-year-old singers about their life and traditions in the Durham Coalfield and have not encountered one single example of anything so much as resembling a folk song in their repertoires."

Looks like old Cecil was right, then. Didn't he think that folk song was (a) dying out and (b) best sought in rural communities?

If all those horrible bourgeois song collectors hadn't bothered with their task, most of us would never have encountered a traditional song in our lives, and mine at least would have been poorer for it. The fact that the populace at large moved on from that repertoire proves nothing except that fashions change and the media are very skilled at creating new thrills. Music hall, jazz, swing, crooners, guitar bands, all get their moment in the limelight, then the world shuffles on. The remarkable thing about the songs Sharp and others defined as 'folk' was how long they'd lasted, not how briefly.

"academics like Lloyd & MacColl taking what they found and adapting (and INVENTING much of it to suit their own theatrical/political straitjacket"

Neither was an academic, and - although some tinkering went on with a small number of songs (already discussed at length here) - I'm not aware that Lloyd INVENTED a single one, although of course MacColl WROTE plenty. Apart from that, bang on the button, Mr Carpet Slippers.