"and folk music in general, should be to so considerable an extent a haven for lefties"
Those who got the music noticed way back when considered it the music of 'the common people' - social rather than political.
Personally in forty years of researching, I've never had any reason to challenge that concept, you only had to spend five minutes talking to Walter Pardon or any Traveller to confirm this.
Fine to separate that music from its roots if that's what turns you on, but surely you can have no objection to others who would do otherwise.
"quasi·Marxian agendas."
I would expect no other response from those on the right, who would rather regard working people as a cultureless "salts of the earth".
"True, but they do not think it is."
Doesn't alter the fact that it is - proof of the pudding.
Don't know where 'The Mirror' enters into this - just as much a right-wing bumwipe nowadays.
As I said - Lady Gagga and Corrie are indications of mass taste nowadays - effects of Capitalism controlling our media.
A few years ago I started taking 'The Times' (for Codeword) - slightly better written, but a pale shadow of 'The Thunderer' it once was.
Recently, the sewer level they have stooped to in political debate (particularly about Corbyn) has confined me to Codeword and The Crossword.
"Sorry, but left wing views are a minority,"
The level of interest in parliamentary politics and the well-desrved contempt that all politicians are held in by the mass of the people as a whole is the majority view nowadays - minority governments elected by a minority of the electorate is a reflection of the state of democracy today.
Come back Edward Gibbon - we need you!
Jim Carroll