Cap'n
Who said she ran NCS for the benefit of 'professional songwriters. Her aim was to encourage songwriting and to circulate the many good songs that were being written by non-professionals. I can think of very few professional songwriters whose songs would suit the NCS.
Again, as with the Critics Group, it was an example of them being prepared to spend time helping other singers, not a particularly prevalent attitude among professional singers then or now.
How did they 'overemphasise' the importance of NCS. She just did it off her own bat for free and ploughed back anything that was made into the next issue.
"Songwriters wanted to have more control over publishing of their material"
I think you're right, which reminds me of an earlier thread discussing the reluctance to share material.
Sorry about the Ewan/Peggy confusion regarding the dearth of songwriters.
I believe she said something similar on television. Maybe she felt, like me, that much songwriting has become far too introspective and private. Tom Munnelly put it well in The Journal of Music in Ireland when he wrote, "you feel like tapping them on the shoulder and asking permission to come in".
This does not mean there aren't good songwriters about, just not as many IMO.
Not the case in Ireland with Con 'Fada' O'Driscoll, Sean Moan, Fintan Vallely, Tim Lyons et al - and of course Scotland has the magnificent Adam McNaughton.
Ewan and Peggy's contact with the rest of the revival changed radically after the John Snow fiasco, but this didn't mean they were not aware of what was happening - they just chose to work with the Critics - thanks be to whoever!
Having said this, they were leading figures in The Peace Movement, The Anti-Apartheid campaign, various anti-fascist organisations, the Folksingers For Freedom in Viet Nam (proud to say I stood shoulder to elbow with Peggy in Grosvenor Square (would have been shoulder-to-shoulder but I'm not tall enough). It goes without saying they were fairly unstinting with their time and energy - and there are only so many hours in the day.
Of course Ewan wasn't perfect - who is; but he must have been a baaad, baaad boy to deserve to be slagged off eighteen years after his death.
Jim Carroll