THE Tories persist with their attacks on the BBC, despite the fundamentally conservative nature of the institution, and its role as a key part of the state’s ideological apparatus. 

This last is what makes the Beeb problematic for the left. However, the sheer range and depth of its coverage means that some amazing stuff does get past the self-censors.

As a great fan of Radio 3, I was recently delighted to hear the late great Norma Waterson and Alan Bush on the same day. 

The song, Goodbye Fare You Well, by the band Waterson:Carthy was played as a tribute following Norma’s sad death. She was one of the great singing voices to come from these islands, in any genre. 

Then that week’s Composer of the Week was a five-hour conversation with Edward Gregson, composer and past principal of the Royal Northern College of Music, in which he spoke about his work and that of his mentor, Alan Bush. 

You may be wondering: what connects Norma and Alan? Well as this is not a quiz show, I’ll tell you. Alan Bush was one of the founders of the Workers Music Association, in 1936. In 1939 the WMA launched its own record label, Topic Records, on which Norma’s early recordings appeared. 

The very first recording to be released was Paddy Ryan singing The Man That Waters the Workers’ Beer; the flip side was The Internationale, by the Topic singers and band. 

Alan Bush was involved with the label up until the early 1950s. A whole string of popular ensembles, The Topic Singers, the Topic Variety Chorus & Band, the WMA Singers, the Unity String Orchestra, and the WMA Orchestra, were involved, all reflecting Bush’s unswerving commitment to amateur music-making. 

As well as releasing a whole range of music from the Soviet Union, they were in at the very beginning of the folk revival with AL Lloyd and Ewan McColl.  

The back catalogue is mouth-watering: Paul Robeson, Jack Elliot, Dominic Behan, Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee, Peggy Seeger, Woody Guthrie, Davy Graham, The Ian Campbell Folk Group, Willie Clancy & Michael Gorman, Anne Briggs, Shirley Collins, Martin Carthy and many more. 

In 1965 they released New Voices, an album of first recordings which included Mike, Lal, Norma and John Harrison — the Watersons. 

The following year Topic released record 12T136, Frost and Fire by the Watersons, and a legend was born. This seminal album in the British Folk revival was a calendar of ritual and magical songs. 

Bill Leader recorded it: “On crossed D12 microphones and a revox in the back room of my Camden Town flat, except for the drum beat on Hal-an-Tow which courtesy of Dick Sweetman I overdubbed in a shed.”

Despite, or maybe because of, that it is still selling and was rereleased by Topic in 2007.

As for Bush, it’s not often a British communist gets this level of serious scrutiny for their work, especially not on the Beeb. Alan Bush’s life spanned the 20th century: he was born in 1900 and lived until he was 95. A remarkable composer producing over 100 orchestral, instrument and vocal works, together with four full-length operas and four symphonies.

Born into a prosperous middle-class family in Dulwich and just missing out on WWI, he enrolled at the Royal College of Music in 1918, eventually becoming a teacher there. Gregson studied composition with him from 1963-67.

In 1924 he joined the Independent Labour Party and was active in the London Labour Choral Union, a group of choirs organised by communist composer Rutland Boughton.

It was while working with the choirs that he first met Michael Tippett, with whom he would produce the huge theatrical performance the Pageant of Labour at the Crystal Palace, in 1934. 

In 1926 he made his first of many visits to Berlin. It was there he encountered like-minded musicians Hanns Eisler and Ernest Hermann Meyer, as well as writers such as Bertolt Brecht. His experiences in Germany and his growing understanding of Marxism led him to join the Communist Party in 1935.  

In 1936 Bush was one of the founders of the Workers’ Music Association. What happened next is well-documented by Joanna Bullivant in her well-researched book Alan Bush, Modern Music, and the Cold War: The Cultural Left in Britain and the Communist Bloc.

His radical vision for music incorporated modernism, political song, musical theory and even influenced state-sponsored music production in East Germany. 

Effectively, however, being a communist meant Bush was frozen out of the formal musical life of his own country.

Many folkies feel that traditional music gets similar treatment today. Topic has been flying the flag for this music over the last 80-odd years. With just an hour a week of Folk Music on national BBC radio, is there another country that is so alienated from its own music? 

It’s worth pointing out that folk music is not about historical re-enactment — there is a thriving folk scene in Britain. The flow of wonderful CDs still coming from Topic, and other labels that have followed its trail-blazing endeavours, testifies to the vibrancy of the scene. 

Unfortunately, there is no comparable revival in Alan Bush’s music, although there are a few CDs and MP3s of his music available.  

My favourites are the works recorded by the Royal Scottish National Orchestra in Glasgow in 2012 and 2013: the Lascaux Symphony, the Africa Concerto, Symphony No2 & Fantasia on Soviet Themes. 

A personal favourite of mine is his 2nd Symphony, the Nottingham. The symphony was commissioned by the Nottingham Co-operative Society to mark the 500th anniversary of Nottingham’s Royal Charter in 1949. 

Fortunately, the Gregson and Bush episodes of Composer of the Week, including an hour of how Marxism shaped Bush’s work, is still available on BBC Sounds. Catch it while you can, and don’t tell the chair of the BBC — he doesn’t even like left-wing comedians.