Tony Benn & Roy Bailey, The Komedia, Brighton

In the age of Mumford & Sons we should recall that half a century ago, folk music wasn’t so much acoustic pop as agitprop, staunch leftwing propaganda. Singers such as Ewan MacColl and Peggy Seeger toured songs rife with witty, angry social discontent, incidentally setting in place the UK’s early gig and festival circuit.

In the same way, in the broadest strokes, British politics was also a different beast, not a media competition to see who could make the least offensive – or meaningful – statement possible, but a theatre of ideas, the new left battling the old right, the faint whiff of revolution still in the room.

It’s from this milieu that Tony Benn, 86, and Roy Bailey, 76, hail, one of them an old Labour firebrand and permanent bane of the establishment, the other a socialist folk singer of long standing, who gave his 2000 MBE back in protest at Government policy in the Middle East.

The Komedia stage is arranged as their personal socialist living room. Against a velveteen backdrop Benn, clad in a suit and jumper, sits in an armchair with a green throw over it, while Bailey, in a white shirt, scarf and cap, is seated beside his guitar, beneath a standard lamp. They take it in turns to, very creakily, rise from their chairs and approach their microphones, Benn to relate moments from history where people fought for their rights, and Bailey to follow with songs that illustrate. It’s a show they’ve been doing, on and off, for at least two decades and which won them Best Live Act at the BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards in 2003.

During the first half Benn quotes from Poll Tax agitators of 1381, from the 1649 Agreement of the People in the wake of the English Civil War – or “English Revolution” as Benn refers to it, from Agrarian rebel and "Digger" Gerard Winstanley claiming the earth a “common treasury “ and many more. He peppers the quotes with dryly humorous asides. He is occasionally revealed, when he falters coughing or is silent for too long, as an old man, but mostly his sincerity and idealism put his age in the shade.

Roy Bailey takes to the microphone and grumps jovially about Benn jumping ahead of their usual schedule. He plays “Bread and Roses”, a song arranged by his old singing partner Leon Rossellson, stating that the title comes from placards women brandished during a 1912 mill strike in Massachusetts that said, “We want bread but we want roses too.” He encourages the seated, mostly middle-aged audience to sing along to the chorus, something he will do thoughout the evening. The response is very different from a booming rock audience, more like a secular congregational tentatively approached with shy British reserve.

“Children sing, grown-ups sing, the only ones who don’t sing are the ones who aren’t sure they’re grown-up,” laughs Bailey.

Tony Benn, eyes closed, sings along in his armchair then returns to talk of Tom Paine, mustering Jubilee year laughter for Paine’s “What is this metaphor called a crown… what service does it perform, what is its business, and what are its merits… it appears to be something going much out of fashion”. “Disobedience,” he then quotes Oscar Wilde, “in the eyes of anyone who’s read history, is man’s original virtue.”  Benn explains, “He’s talking about agitators – that’s Roy and myself.” Very sedately, it’s magnificent stuff.

Bailey backs it up with a funky take on “Tom Paine’s Bones”, once again with the ghostly congregational. The first half finishes with a number, one of a few throughout the evening, by Brighton songwriter Rob Johnson, who is in the audience. We thus go to our interval drinks with the phrase, from a song about  World War One, that “the enemy is not the other side, the enemy is the ruling class,” ringing in our ears

Part two speeds us up to date with Benn reading about Greenham Common and Bailey singing a clever, funny story-song about a woman selling a Corvette Stingray for $65. He tells us that he and Benn are “like Morecambe & Wise”. If so they are the Morecambe & Wise of socialism’s last stand for he pushes on into an angry song about “medals, bloody medals” and a nuclear-war version of “Johnny Comes Marching Home”. Benn looks like a sleeping vicar but he’s awake, he smiles at the references and occasionally mouths the words. And so it goes on, gently entertaining, educational, full of quiet passion and wit (Bailey on Nick Clegg, his local MP – “the only surgery I want to meet him in is when I’ve got the knife”).

Near the end Bailey sings, “I ain’t afraid of your Yahweh, I ain’t afraid of your Allah… I’m afraid of what you do in the name of your god.” Benn makes a final speech telling us our presence makes the night worthwhile, that in the past these ideas have succeeded “and they have to succeed again”.

“Encore, Roy,” says a quiet voice in the crowd and Bailey finishes with a final hopeful Rob Johnson song, full of springtime metaphors. Then they slowly pack their papers away and disappear to polite applause. In a Britain where mass attention is paid to David Cameron, Pixie Lott and Gok Wan, Benn and Bailey, however ancient, are a heartening proposition.

Tony Benn and Roy Bailey at the Beverley Folk Festival in 2010