"In most cases, using accents that are not your own is totally unnecessary and often detrimental to your being involved in the song - how do you relate to your voice if it is not your own?"
MacColl imo failed miserably with his attempts at a scottish accent.
"I'm surprised nobody has mentioned the MacColl myth of making a rule that you must sing songs from your own region.
When Alan Lomax came to Britain in the 1950s he found the scene was ful of wannabe Woodies and Huddies and all the American stars of the time, including Ewan and Bert Lloyd (still have a recording of Ewan's 'Sixteen Tons'.
The great BBC mopping-up project had not long taken place and Lomax berated them, pointing out that if all those wonderful songs weren't sung they would die.
Ewan and Bert became born-again English speakers and insisted that the resident of his club should sing songs from their own country (not region) in accents as near to their own as possible - it's all written up somewhere.
Ewan was lucky - his home environment was Scots so, while by that time he was speaking in a middle-of-the road English accent, he has his home environment to fall back on."
Ewan MacColl insisted in his over bearing way that singers at the singers club should sing in the following way and here is a quote from peggy seeger
..This policy was meant for OUR club, not for other clubs. The policy was simple: If you were singing from the stage, you sang in a language that you could speak and understand.
what was ridiculous about this policy and rather peculiar coming from a communist like Ewan MacColl, it meant that if an English born singer wanted to sing a song from America for example Dark as the dungeon, This land is your land, OR any other Guthrie song they would not be allowed to at the singers club, if they were english, if that was the case it was proscriptive and ridiculous .
MacColl, was a very good songwriter, but in my opinion this policy of the singers club was flawed.