"There must be 2 JCs on this thread."
We all need to examine the contents of the material as a body and see if your claim floats - your aggressive and insulting responses to any form of challenge leaves me with the feeling that you are not someone I wish to do that with
We have already tried it in an earlier thread and became bogged down in unnecessary incidentals.
I have not tolerated your insulting and patronising behaviour in the hope that I might change your mind - but in the chance that someone with less of an agenda than yours (happy to say that in the light of your already having accused be of having a political one and being an attention seeker) will weigh in with other opinions

None of this can be decided by two people slugging it out on a forum that has made 'what is folksong' a no go area' and discussion on the ideas and achievements of one of the greatest contributors to our pleasure and understanding of modern folk song performance a minefield of 'name-change' and army record.
If we are going to make any sense of folk song and save it from the same fate of the club scene that burned out when its foundations were destroyed by lack of direction, there has to be some sort of meeting of minds from all with an interest - not from messiahs who appear to have stumbled across the answer.
That discussion has to take into consideration what the earlier researchers had to say and if they got is so fundamentally wrong, why they did (without the 'adenda driving' and 'elitist' garbage)
We also need to take into consideration what little we have from the singers themselves.
The positive things that came out of the revival (not the performances or the faddiness, but the writing that was done in the form of magazine articles (when the revival had such things) and sleeve notes
The Critics group did what amounted to nearly ten years research on song texts in order to sing them - mostly recorded.
Parker, MacColl, Lomax, Roy Palmer, Mike Yates.... and others interviewed some of our best sings, some of whom had participated in living traditions - all need to be got together and examined - a life's work for a future generation.
Work done by those researching traditions other than the little tiny dying corner we are talking about here, need to be looked at - Hamish Henderson, Peter Cook, Peter Hall, Hugh Shields, Tom Munnelly, John Moulden....
The last thing we need to be told is that our tradition was created for money and is no different than the output of the pop industry - which doesn't make sense anyway.

With a few notable exceptions, Folk academia seems to have shrunk into an introspective freemasonry talking to each other in "a language that the stranger does not know" and producing books that are sold at prices people don't wish to or are unable to pay.
E.F.D.S.S. should have been at the forefront of of any discussion but it is difficult to see where they stand at present
I am not able to attend T.S.F. meetings (the last one I attended several of us from Ireland spoke at) but I had hopes that they could expand and move outside of their meetings - I'm not sure now.

I don't have any answers, but I'm damn sure that lumping folk songs in with all the musical dross that was accepted for a time than forgotten, to be replaced by more musical dross, isn't one of them
Jim Carroll