I, Daniel Blake.

It’s been a long time since I can remember leaving a cinematic screening quite so angry. The last time I can remember was in 1979 after viewing Michael Cimino’s anti-war epic The Deer Hunter. This time it was a movie directed by a great British director at the pinnacle of his career. Ken Loach has in my opinion never made a better film, and I’ve seen them all. I, Daniel Blake (2016) is a brilliant piece of film making that sets out to show the shite system that permeates this country and how the ordinary working class people are treated in such a way that degrades and belittles them if they should fall on hard times – and the only people that are immune from this are those protected by the tory government – the rich and powerful - the rest of us can go to hell.

 

A wake up call to right-wing Britain.

A rare deeply political movie that highlights an increasingly cruel and uncaring officialdom showing the inherent problems with our caring society, the benefits system in general, which is supposed to help those of us that have no where else to turn, the sanctions that are imposed upon people that make life unbearable and the extraordinary lack of social housing which leads to more and more people becoming homeless. All of which degrades working people and leads to the ever-increasing need for food banks. Is this the society that we really want where the bosses can earn 147 times the salary of their workers, where poverty strikes even when you have a job?  And God help you if your not computer literate!

 

The systems bully boys at work.

Written by Paul Laverty who has written some of Loach’s most potent work including Carla’s Song (1996), My Name Is Joe (1998), Sweet Sixteen (2002), The Wind That Shakes The Barley (2006) and Route Irish (2010) amongst others. It’s Laverty’s spot on script coupled with a director that cares about his craft that makes this latest outing so powerful. Certain sections of the movie can bring a grown man to tears and you realise that what your watching on screen is real life, and confirming that more and more people are becoming just one pay cheque away from the same situation.

 

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The film stars stand up comedian, writer and actor Dave Johns who plays the films main character Daniel Blake.  Blake is a widower who has been signed off work by his doctor because he suffered a heart attack. Dan has to prove he is fit to work to receive benefits, which he obviously isn’t and therefore finds himself in an impossible downward spiralling situation through no fault of his own. Katie, played by Hayley Squires, is an unmarried mother who along with her two children moves from a one room flat in a London hostel to Newcastle to hopefully find something better in which to raise her children. She befriends the kindly Dan who does what he can to help her.

 

The Food Bank Sequence.

The most heart-breaking scenes in the movie involves a sequence in a food bank and rivals the closing scene in Loach’s 1966 TV Play for Today’s Cathy Come Home which goes to prove that our greatest living film director has never lost his virulence dealing with life’s most emotive moments returning to what is increasingly becoming the modern day norm.  A desperately important expose of modern day Britain that by winning the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival brought the film to a much larger audience than would normally be the case for such a political subject. Loach was quoted as saying “A movie isn’t a political movement, a party or even an article. It’s just a film. At best it can add its voice to public outrage” and believe me it does just that with the labour leader Jeremy Corbyn during PMQ’s on the 2^nd November criticising the fairness of the welfare system and going on to advised the Prime Minister Theresa May to watch the film – would it really make a difference if she did?

We Are Many.

The power, and therefore the demands of the people, whether it’s through the ballot box or a street protest, tends to be completely ignored by the politicians. The same politicians that we the electorate vote into parliament every five years. Here in Scotland 50% of those eligible to vote voted for the Scottish National Party, which meant that Scotland sent 56 SNP MP’s to the Palace of Westminster which hopefully will give the Scottish Parliament more devolved power and also enable them to fight the worst ravages of the Tory governments austerity programme.  I for one have confidence in these 56 men and women to battle for the very things the electorate voted them in to do – but – and that’s a big but – the record of the British establishment does not fill me with confidence!

 

War Criminals.

After watching Amir Amirani documentary We Are Many (2014) about the global protest against the Bush/Blair illegal war on the Iraqi people and how the UK and the USA completely ignored the wishes of the people from some 72 countries - who it must be said have been proved right exposing the terrible lies that these two war criminals told the public– has underlined the fact that when a government is elected, even in so called democratic counties like America and Britain, when self interest comes first the will of the electorate will be ignored.  Oil is a powerful motivator!

The people of 72 counties marched in protect against the illegal war which was to kill many thousands of human beings.....

Even according to the BBC News, 6 to 10 million people took part in protests in up to 60 countries, on every continent, over the weekend of the 15th and 16th of February 2003. Other reports estimated that 72 countries and 789 cities were involved and that the actual number of global citizens that took part was closer to 30 million. Protesters from Tasmania to Iceland, New York to Sydney, and London to Rome, marched against the impending war in Iraq. Even at the McMurdo base in Antarctica, 
more than 50 scientists staged a half-hour rally. It turned out to be the biggest and most globally widespread demonstration in human history but still the USA and the UK governments ignored the will of the people.

 

....including thousands of children.....

Although Amirani’s film superbly puts together all the aspects of the planning of the demonstrations and shows the marches, speeches and public comment and testimonies from those involved including the late Tony Benn, Clare Short, Labour leadership candidate Jeremy Corbyn, film director Ken Loach, actor Mark Rylance and author John le Carre it left me with a feeling of despondency because of its underlying sense of failure, but the strength of the peoples voice, which was raised so loud in February 2003, is credited with stopping the UK and US governments invading Syria and we were told that our own government could not afford to ignore a demonstration of people power ever again – if that the case why were the austerity marches through out Britain last weekend ignored by the Tory government?

 

....all for oil blood money!

Jimmy’s Hall.

A painting of Jimmy Gralton.

Perhaps following the success of his latest film Ken Loach can be persuaded to rescind his claim that (2014) will be his last feature film? Along with regular’s producer Rebecca O’Brien and writer Paul Laverty Britain’s greatest living director has made a welcome follow up to his award winning homage to communism The Wind that Shakes the Barley (2006). In this Loach drew a parallel between the battle for freedom and democracy in Spain during its Civil War 1936 -1939 (see Land of Freedom 1995) and the Irish War of Independence (1919-1921), and the subsequent Civil War (1921-1922). It raised the question of what kind of Ireland was being fought for? As the director said ‘both in Spain and Ireland there were two questions. The first in Spain, was how do we beat the Fascists? And in Ireland, how do we get the imperialists out? Then the question was, if we achieve that, what kind of society could we create? If you’re risking your life for something, you want to know what you’re risking it for. It’s a very political event of real consequence’[1] From James Connolly’s[2] famous 1897 essay Socialism and Nationalism. ‘If you remove the English army tomorrow and hoist the green flag over Dublin Castle, unless you organise a socialist Republic, your effects will be in vain, England will still rule you through her landlords, capitalists and commercial institutions’. Change the ‘English army’ to the Westminster government, and obviously change the flag, and Connolly’s quote could refer to Scottish independence!!

 

Persuaded by the local youngsters to rebuild the hall.

In this new piece of work Loach tackles a rather smaller part of Irish history but no less important, the story of Jimmy Gralton (Barry Ward) and his community hall in County Leitrim originally named after two of the leaders of the failed 1916 Easter Rising Padraig Pearce and James Connolly and built by Gralton in the 1920’s. Laverty’s screenplay is based on the true story of Gralton who was an Irish communist leader who travelled to America and became an US citizen in 1909 after his life was put in danger. Ten years after the end of the Irish Civil War (1922 -1923) he returns to Ireland to work on his mother’s farm following his brother’s death. Against his wishes and knowing it would open old wounds, he is persuaded by the local youngsters bored with their mundane lives to renovate and reopen the hall as a place of culture, art, sport and dancing much to the disgust of the ‘masters and pastors’ the local landowners and the Catholic Church in the form of the formidable Father Sheridan (Jim Norton) who believe that the hall will become a hotbed of socialist revolution.  Interestingly this has also been performed theatrically based on a play by Donal O’Kelly.

 

Do we stay open?

Jimmy Gralton witnessed America’s Great Depression 1923-1933 and returned to Ireland to witness its own complicated divisions not just politically but religiously. He was deported from Ireland in 1933 as an ‘undesirable alien’, without a trial, for little more than harbouring thoughts of freedom and fairness. The film makes it quite clear that below the pomp and circumstance of organised religion Christ’s teachings are nothing more than socialism under a different heading i.e. supporting the working class, the underprivileged, the sick and the old and helping others where needed, with the church originally providing education for children, way before the upper class thought it necessary to educate the ‘lower’ class. The movie does give a parallel with what is happening today between the privileged few and the rest of us, and the way ordinary people are treated by the government and their rich supporters -  ‘landlords, capitalists and commercial institutions’. Great Britain has recently seen a million people on strike and the government’s attempt to stop the right of people to withdraw there labour brought on by the austerity measures which deliberately set out to punish ordinary people. Unbelievably we get people grizzling about their children having to miss a day at school! They should think themselves lucky to have free education! If people do not protest at times then we may not have?  Or as Ken Loach put it ‘the central message of Jimmy’s Hall is that it is vital to give space to “dissident voices” who oppose the neoliberal, free market consensus[3].

 

Barry Wood as Gralton with....

....Simone Kirby as Oonagh....

and Jim Norton as Father Sheridan.

With Loach’s realist direction, Laverty’s superbly rich writing skills and the authentic period detail, this wee drama is another great addition to Loach’s oeuvre and hopefully not his last feature film  - what would I have to look forward too, cinematically at least, very few films stir my political juices quite as much as Ken’s?

Jimmy's Hall trailer.

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[1] Harlan Jacobson ‘On the Job’ Film Comment 2007

[2] James Connolly was one of the executed leaders of the 1916 Rising.

[3] Ken Loach speaking at the Cannes Film Festival.

Which Side Are You On?

Most of us would have been brought up to respect the dead. But sometimes its difficult to respect people that have no shame about drastically affecting the lives of hundreds of thousands of ordinary families that ask very little except a living wage and a decent warm home to bring up their children, and when these children grow up to have a good chance of employment. Margaret Thatcher was an individual that perhaps give the impression of caring for her fellow countrymen, but only for a certain section, and it was not the working class. Her main crime’s against decent hardworking citizens was instigating a culture of greed and selfishness that lead to the closing down of industries, the decimation of communities, mass unemployment and the obliteration of social housing to name but a few. If todays overindulgent funeral was the end of what has become known as Thatcherism maybe we would have something to celebrate but her shameful legacy lives on in the unfair policies of David Cameron and his Cabinet of millionaires, the so called Con/Lib coalition, with its wicked attempts to annihilate what’s left of the welfare state whilst giving tax breaks to the rich. Poverty and homelessness are on the increase as will be crime and civil disobedience already witnessed around this country in the summer of 2011. 

To remind me of the terrible injustices that Thatcher and her government inflicted on the country’s labour force I had a look at a documentary that Ken Loach made in 1984 about the struggle the keep the mines open and the industrial action that legally took place to further this cause.  Which Side Are You On (1984) is a stunning documentary on the UK Miners strike where, it is alleged that international capital used Thatcher’s Tory government to mount a vicious campaign of violence, intimidation and pure hatred on the British working class. The film features the experiences of the miners and their families told through songs, poems and other art. Loach successfully highlights the fact that the people involved and supporting this industrial action are ordinary, honest working individuals, their not shirkers or lazy bastards just people who want to work. The scariest part of this documentary is the action of the police; they’re quite clearly shown to side against there own class. We see them stopping legal pickets (how can you picket through three lines of Bobby’s?)  and inciting the strikers by inflicting sickening violence, appearing far to eager to crack sculls with there ‘sticks’. Your also notice that many of them did not have the legally required identification numbers on their uniforms! Five miners were killed on the picket line during this struggle!

I have also included a piece from Ken Loach from a recent interviewed he did regarding his views on Margaret Thatcher’s demise when he spoke about this documentary. You can now see this as part of the extras on the DVD release of The Spirit of 45 a documentary that will hopefully be part of the next programme at the Robert Burns Centre Film Theatre in Dumfries:  

----I also had a South Bank Show film, Which Side Are You On?, about the miners' strike, withdrawn for political reasons. I was desperate to make a programme about the strike because the news presentation of it showed the opposite of what was actually happening: the brutality of the police, the subterfuge of the government, the power of the state, the fact that the other trade union leaders were turning their backs on the miners. None of this kind of thing was talked about at the time - it was a parallel universe.

But the strike was also a time of cultural explosion in the mining areas. In almost every pit I went to there were creating writing groups. Women were active - suddenly finding that they could stand on their feet and address a couple of hundred people. It was a time when people stood tall. My film was about the miners' songs and poems. I made it in a week, and cut it quickly. Melvyn Bragg came to see it with Nick Elliott, who was a member of the LWT hierarchy. There was the sound of breath being sucked in through teeth, and heads were shaken, and I was told that they wouldn't show it. The film included some amateur footage of police brutality, which hadn't been seen. They told me that if I cut that, it could be shown.

It was screened at a documentary festival in Florence, where it was given a prize, and was eventually shown on Channel 4, but the quid pro quo was that immediately afterwards they screened a programme in which Jimmy Reid, the shipbuilders' union leader, who had become a newspaper columnist, spoke directly to camera, attacking Scargill and the miners' leadership.[1]

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[1] Ken Loach April 2013.