Versus: The Life and Films of Ken Loach Page #4

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I think I can imagine Hayley taking a realistic view of where she is

and doing just what is necessary to survive.

I suppose that's the battle at the beginning, isn't it, between the...?

Getting out of that situation to here... So anything's got to be good.

- But at the same time, there's some real sh*t...

- Yes, yes, yes.

It's like being a spy. It's like being a spy, it's like...

You go, "Is there any sort of, like, script?"

And you go, "Yeah, well, you get two pages in a toilet

"in the centre of Newcastle behind the hot water pipes."

And you go, "OK."

It's really sort of quite...

It's exciting, but it's also a bit sort of, "Oh, God, am I going to...

"Am I going to get the stuff I need?"

But, yeah, you know, he's made plenty of films

so I'm sure the process works, you know.

- I don't like that shirt for him.

- No, no, no.

It was just to get you in a...

- Yeah, nice shirt.

- Yeah.

David is as close as I think we could find

to the Dan that Paul wrote.

He's the right age, he's a working-class man from Newcastle.

He started work laying bricks

and has experience doing comedy and some acting.

It means he's got a real sense of how to deliver a performance.

He communicates very directly, eye to eye.

So, I think what he does is very truthful.

Hi.

We just wanted to show you this.

You got it.

It's the undertaker.

Oh, my God, that's a bit serious.

- Detective...

- I have reason to suspect...

I think this is probably too much, really.

- Too smart?

- Much too much.

- Yeah.

- Much too much.

I mean, he looks like a Labour politician that you want to...

Who's betrayed his promises.

I was pretty surprised at the intensity with which, later on,

all his work is imbued with a political flavour,

very strong political flavour.

So, yes, it was very surprising,

because there wasn't any evidence of that

in the years we were together when young.

Oxford was an extraordinary experience.

It was only then that I became really aware the ruling class

had a face, and it was the faces of these gilded youths

who inherited the world, and who expected to rule it.

And did.

I met Ken when we were both auditioning, I think,

for a play in Oxford,

and you'll see in the photograph a rather slenderer version of myself

in the foreground, but in the background,

giving a character performance, shall we say, is young Loach,

heavily disguised by beard and on one leg and a crutch.

All of which he made the very most of, and I detect,

though I didn't detect it at the time, being heavily upstaged by Ken.

He was much the same shape and size as he is now -

slender, sylph-like indeed, maybe.

Self-effacing.

Apparently self-effacing.

Nimble and brisk.

That was a big event for my mother and father,

to get to Oxford and to do law,

but it became plain I wasn't going to be a lawyer,

much to my mum and dad's dismay.

My father said, "Well, you can go off and be an actor,

"but you'll never have two pennies to rub together."

When we came back from Barnsley, and he shot Kes -

couldn't get it released.

The exhibitor thought, "It won't take a penny,

"so why waste money on marketing?"

They'd open it in six cinemas in Yorkshire, thinking,

"Oh, that'll be the end of that."

And it broke the house record in every one.

Then suddenly, we had a hit.

While we were making it, I literally, sort of...

What's been happening?

And what had been happening were the May events in Paris in '68...

..the Vietnam war was raging...

..and disillusion, even amongst not very political people,

with Wilson and the Labour government.

I was interested in politics since my teens.

I had known a lot of Communist Party members.

Ken was not political...

..but he became more and more interested in politics

as we did our work together.

And, of course, I introduced him to Jim Allen,

which was another political step to the left.

Jim Allen was a Manchester lad.

A lot of people say up North, "He was as rough as a bear's arse."

He'd been a docker,

he'd worked on the barges, he'd been a bus conductor,

and he obviously had this gift for writing.

He was the opposite to Ken.

They were chalk and cheese.

We're very different people.

He's a very private person.

I'm a bit of an extrovert.

I like to get drunk, I love pubs, etc.

I think one thing that brings us together is that...

..we have the same kind of political approach to life.

We would like things to be different.

I don't think Ken had been born with a silver spoon in his mouth,

but I don't think he'd ever had the knocks or the hardship

that Jim Allen had had.

He knew about being blacklisted,

he knew about being on the dole and out of work and stuff like that,

and I think he was able to put it on paper, in writing,

for Ken to understand.

What he got was that there were two powerful forces at work in society.

There is capital and there is labour,

and they are enemies.

If you make a film about a socialist movement,

it's a given what the class conflict is.

It's... How do you win the power?

And who is there to stop you?

CHEERING:

Solidarity!

CROWD:
# Solidarity forever

# Solidarity forever. #

Jim had been through it.

What I want to know is,

what is Brother Hagen doing about our long outstanding claim

for a two and sixpence an hour increase?

He knew about the betrayals of trade union bureaucrats.

Now, listen, half a crown an hour, you must be bloody...

He knew that the role of the Labour Party

was to deliver the working class to betrayal.

I believe that those are the men that can win the struggle,

could win it much quicker only if we can get help from other workers.

Jim made the ideas flesh in his writing.

That drama of political argument, driven by need...

..I think was the essence of drama, it was the essence of conflict.

The problem with the BBC is that I didn't know how far I could push.

If I didn't push far enough or hard enough,

I'd be missing an opportunity.

If I pushed too far, we'd be dead.

As usual, with The Big Flame, I had not shown the BBC anything,

because they would have hit the roof.

I just said, "It's a love story,

"a sort of Romeo and Juliet between the son and daughter of two dockers,

"one Catholic and one Protestant."

And that's what I told the Mersey Docks and Harbour Board,

who owned our location.

Now, everyone in favour of the resolution, please show.

But what we actually did was get a strike going.

And then the dockers stayed on the dock...

..declaring a soviet.

The root cause of our problem lies in the capitalist system of

private ownership and calls for the nationalisation of the dock

and the shipping industry under the workers' control.

I was in London and I got a phone call to say the film was off,

because the Mersey Docks and Harbour Board had seen the script.

And I laughed, and said,

"Do you honestly think the BBC would allow

"a film about dockers declaring a soviet on the docks of...

"Do you think they'd allow that to happen? Come on."

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