[Broadcasters play a propaganda role as does print media such as
the Guardian. An example was the [1984] Miners’ Strike. TV presented
“picket-line violence," while those involved saw police violence.
Another example was the attack on Jeremy Corbyn.]
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KEN LOACH: “THE BBC’S ROLE IN THE DESTRUCTION OF JEREMY
CORBYN’S LEADERSHIP HAS BEEN ABSOLUTELY SHAMELESS”  
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Arthur Neslen
December 16, 2022
Equal Times
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_ Broadcasters play a propaganda role as does print media such as the
Guardian. An example was the [1984] Miners’ Strike. TV presented
“picket-line violence," while those involved saw police violence.
Another example was the attack on Jeremy Corbyn. _

British film director Ken Loach is pictured in front of Bath Spa
railway station as he speaks to protesters who have shown up to
support striking RMT union rail and CWU union postal workers.,
(Lynchpics/Alamy Live News)

 

Ken Loach is one of the most influential filmmakers of his
generation. His films [[link removed]] have
won the Cannes Film Festival’s Palme D’or – twice – and its
Jury Prize three times, both joint records. Loach’s work has also
been honoured at the BAFTAs, and at the Berlin and Venice film
festivals.

Over a career spanning more than 50 years, the British film director
has been a passionate advocate for socialism, and a dedicated teller
of working-class stories. His latest film, _The Old Oak
[[link removed]]_, relates a tale
of Syrian refugees arriving in a former mining town in the UK’s
north-east. It will be released in 2023. In this wide-ranging
interview with _Equal Times_, Loach covers topics including the
challenges of organising workers in today’s film industry, the
British mainstream media’s “absolutely shameless” attack on
Jeremy Corbyn and why, at the age of 86, Loach has no plans to stop
making films just yet.

WHY DID YOU FIRST WANT TO BECOME A FILMMAKER? WAS THERE A PARTICULAR
MOVIE THAT INSPIRED YOU?

The Italian neo-realists put the workplace on the screen and they were
a big influence to begin with. The films set in the north of England
in the late 1950s, early 1960s played a part. But the films that made
the biggest impression on me were the Czech films of the 1960s –
Miloš Forman and Jiří Menzel and those lovely, humanely observed
films in which you were just drawn in and warmed to the characters and
smiled with them, understood what was happening. I think I took a lot
from that and it was a springboard to think about all the technical
aspects of filmmaking.

Really though, I was much more interested in the theatre when I was
young. We lived in Warwickshire near Stratford-upon-Avon [where the
world-famous Royal Shakespeare Company is based] and I used to go to
watch the plays and great actors of the time. I was really
stage-struck and took every opportunity to read plays and to perform
with a group of kids at school.

WHAT WAS IT ABOUT THE THEATRE THAT CAPTURED YOUR IMAGINATION?

It was the whole experience: the excitement of the live performance,
the language, the emotional commitment, and living in a different
world of the imagination. When I left university, I’d read law but
– much of to my dad’s dismay – I went into the theatre as an
understudy in a revue in the West End. I got jobs as an actor – not
many – and worked as a supply teacher for most of the time. I was
taken on as a director by the BBC, when BBC Two was expanding.

My huge stroke of good luck was being part of a group that
produced _The Wednesday Play
[[link removed]]_, which had a brief to
make contemporary fiction. It was prime-time television. There were
only two and a half stations then, so the nation watched if it was of
interest. Our brief was to be challenging so it was like a dream. The
production was like the theatre in that there were huge studio sets
with cameras. But we wanted to be on the streets, creating something
in the middle of real situations and we managed, in rather cheeky
ways, to subvert the system.

IS THERE AN ORGANIC LINK BETWEEN SOCIALISM AND FILMMAKING?

Filmmaking as a medium can do anything. It’s like the printed word.
You can write novels, pamphlets, factual books, opinion. It’s like:
how wide is a library? In those early years we developed a sense of
politics because the sixties was a very political period and as the
New Left
[[link removed]] developed,
one of its slogans was ‘Neither Washington nor Moscow’.

THAT WAS THE SLOGAN OF THE INTERNATIONAL SOCIALISTS
[[link removed]]…

Yes, it was anti-Stalinist and anti-capitalist. After that we read the
books and learned our politics and tried to understand how the world
works. At the same time, we tried to find ways of telling stories that
revealed [what we’d learnt]. The word ‘politics’ sounds rather
narrow. The continual thread has been the link between the way people
behave, their relationships and their choices – deeply personal
choices maybe – and how that is determined by their social and
economic contexts.

WHICH OF YOUR FILMS ARE YOU MOST PROUD OF IN THAT RESPECT?

I couldn’t say really. Pride isn’t a healthy feeling. It’s like
your children. The ones you [most] care for are the ones that are the
least successful – or seem to be.

ARE THERE ANY FILMS THAT, IN RETROSPECT, YOU FEEL WERE INCOMPLETE?

No, because each one is of its time. Filmmaking is the art of the
possible. It’s not like writing where you control every dot and
comma. It’s what you can get on that day, in that weather, with that
group of people, having worked very closely with the writer, whose
work is the foundation of the film. The writer is the prime creator
– not the director – and it’s what you can get when there’s a
thunderstorm in the middle of [filming] or someone’s late or
hasn’t turned up. There are lots of things that can go wrong.

WHAT DO YOU SEE AS THE BIGGEST CHALLENGES CURRENTLY FACING WORKERS IN
THE INDUSTRY?

It’s very casualised and finances are often very insecure.
Youngsters coming into the business are ripped off. They’re asked to
work for nothing to improve their CV or get experience, and of course
that’s just a way of employers getting free labour. The broadcasters
that still support films now subcontract almost everything. But the
money given to production companies is inadequate to provide a proper
crew, or union rates and so on. That’s a big problem, particularly
in documentaries. We need a good union. Our union [BECTU] is now part
of Prospect [[link removed]], and that’s been very
unsatisfactory.

WHAT HAVE BEEN THE PROBLEMS?

The senior figures in Prospect don’t really understand how our
industry works so there’s a constant battle and, as has happened in
many unions over the years, the rank and file have different needs to
the ones that the officials say they’re trying to resolve.

YOU’VE MADE FILMS ABOUT THIS IN THE PAST, WHICH HAVE BEEN CENSORED
[[link removed]]. IS
SELF-CENSORSHIP NOW A BIGGER PROBLEM, IN TERMS OF WHAT STUDIOS WILL
INVEST IN: BLOCKBUSTERS AND SPECIAL EFFECTS ABOVE NARRATIVE?

I think that’s always been the case. It’s a conflict between a
commodity and a communication. Investors want commodities and if they
take a chance, it’s on something that appeals to them. There’s the
old idea that when times are hard, films should be a distraction not
an investigation into what’s really going on.
The broadcasters also play a very significant propaganda role. The BBC
is a prime example and ITV [the UK’s oldest and biggest commercial
network] generally follows suit. One of the clearest examples was the
[1984] Miners’ Strike. The line the BBC pursued was “picket-line
violence”. That was all you heard about, while everyone that was
involved saw police violence,
[[link removed]] and
that of course has emerged.

The other significant event was the destruction of Jeremy Corbyn’s
leadership [of the Labour Party, from which Loach was expelled as a
member in 2021 for his support of other expelled Corbyn supporters]
and the BBC played a prime role in that – an absolutely shameless
role – and now that whole political project, that nearly became the
government three years ago, has been wiped out of the public
discourse.

HAS IT BEEN DELEGITIMISED?

Yes, they’ve rewritten history so that it doesn’t exist. It’s
like the photograph of Trotsky that Stalin cut out. The man doesn’t
exist in history. Jeremy Corbyn doesn’t exist in history now
[either], and all the purges [of the Labour party],
[[link removed]] the
manipulation of the rules and the straight aggression has been
unbelievable. It should be unbelievable: the manipulation of rules
against the left, the imposition of candidates, expulsions and the
fact that at least 200,000 people as far as we know – and probably
more – have left the Labour party under [the current Labour leader,
Keir] Starmer. It’s not even a news story! If ever we needed a clear
example of political manipulation by the broadcasters, there it is.
And of course, the Guardian is a joint [offender] in that as part of
the liberal media, when those two [media] lead the silence on this
extraordinary story, then of course the right-wing press will make the
most of it.

YOU’RE STILL MAKING FILMS AT 86. WHAT KEEPS THE FIRE IN YOUR BELLY?

It’s a privilege. Why would you give it up? The struggle continues.
Obviously, there comes a point where your faculties decline – that
happens to everyone – and your memory isn’t as good. Everybody who
reaches their mid-eighties knows what happens. But you just keep
pedalling as far as you can.

NOAM CHOMSKY’S STILL GOING STRONG AND HE’S TEN YEARS OLDER THAN
YOU…

Well, he’s remarkable but he’s set the bar very high. I’m not
sure I’ll get that far. Mind you, I love Noam, I respect him –
he’s a lovely man – but I doubt if he, at his age, has ever stood
in an Irish bog [while filming the 2014 film _Jimmy’s Hall_] with
his feet wet, early in the morning, thinking: “Why am I here?”

WHAT ADVICE WOULD YOU GIVE TO A FILMMAKER STARTING OUT TODAY?

Get a job in the business. Earn your living at it somehow. Join a
union, even though we’ve got to change them, and get to know people.
Make friends. Be good. Turn up early. Work as a pro. If you want a
craft, then you need to learn a specific amount of technical knowledge
but… if you look at films you like and think, “How could I have
done that?”, then you can learn most of it.

DO YOU FEEL THERE ARE STILL THINGS YOU NEED TO SAY IN YOUR MOVIES?

Yes! There are so many things but whether I will get another feature
film made, I don’t know. I think that’s open to question now.

ARE THERE ANY HINTS YOU CAN GIVE ABOUT THE CURRENT PROJECT YOU’RE
WORKING ON?

No, I’d rather not. We did two films in the north-east: _I, Daniel
Blake_ and _Sorry We Missed You_ and it’s a third one to make it
three. But the problem [with hints] is that you set up false
expectations. It’s nicer when an audience just walks in, sits down,
and doesn’t know what to expect.

_Arthur Neslen writes about the environment for The Guardian. He has
previously worked as a correspondent for Thomson
Reuters, Politico, Al-Jazeera and others._

* Ken Loach
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* British Miners Strike
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* Jeremy Corbyn
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* corporate media
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* Films
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