The socialist graces

Ken Loach is a Commie malcontent who hates his own country and loves terrorists. Such is my understanding from reading the British press since The Wind That Shakes The Barley won the Palme D’Or at Cannes last month. Writing in The Times, Tim Luckhurst declared the film “a poisonously anti-British corruption of the history of the War of Irish Independence… (that) reawakens ancient feuds”. An impressive feat, you’ll note, for a film that, at the time of writing, had yet to be released into cinemas.
“A truly radical film would dare to tell the truth,” raged Michael Gove in the same newspaper. “One which bothered to tell the truth about the British Army - the bravery of the men under fire in Ulster, the courage of those who restored order to Sierra Leone, the ongoing sacrifice of those bringing peace (sic) to Afghanistan and Iraq.”
Simon Heffer went even further in The Telegraph before admitting that he hadn’t bothered to watch the film. “No, I haven’t seen it, any more than I need to read Mein Kampf to know what a louse Hitler was.” Ruth Dudley Edwards hadn’t made it to a screening either, but still felt qualified to denounce it as “a melange of half-truths”.
It’s almost like listening to a World Cup match only for the commentator to remark around 90-minutes in, that he or she wasn’t actually watching the game. In truth, the film bears no resemblance to the two hours of Brit-bashing described by right-wing pundits, and Ken Loach couldn’t be less like a hate-filled parasite.
Now approaching 70, the director possesses a slender, unassuming frame, a suitable anthropomorphic expression of an exceedingly mild and gentle manner. Slightly perched on a chair in the Clarence Hotel, he neither flinches nor angers listening to choice quotes from such half-baked criticism.
“You expect this nonsense,” he sighs. “It’s only a tiny handful of journalists and I don’t blame them. They have to be commissioned by editors, after all. I’ve received many vicious assaults from the British press down the years. That is the line that editors want to push, because that is the line taken by right-wing media barons like Murdoch or the pornographer Richard Desmond. It’s stupid. I don’t take offence or find it hurtful to be compared to Nazi propagandists because I know there is nothing in it. And ultimately, the writers look ludicrous, like parodies. The fact they have not seen the film and are not prepared to engage with it tells its own story. They feel they are born to rule and if someone challenges their right to rule the world then they get hysterical. It probably says far more about the people of Britain than it does about me.”
Mr. Loach has, of course, seen it all before having twice visited the Irish question before with Days Of Hope (1975) and Hidden Agenda (1990). The latter film, a fictionalised thriller based on the Stalker Affair, centred on a British police detective’s investigation of the RUC’s shoot-to-kill policy and was dismissed by Conservative MP Ivor Stanbrook as ‘the IRA entry at Cannes’.
“The films are critical of the British state,” says Mr. Loach. “But that is no more anti-British than criticising Israel is anti-Semitic or criticising Bush is anti-American. I mean, that’s another confidence trick.”
The Wind That Shakes The Barley traces the intertwined destinies of two Cork brothers during the twenties. Damien, played by Cillian Murphy, is a budding doctor who abandons a medical career in London after witnessing repeated harassment by agents of the crown. Together with his brother Teddy (Padraic Delaney), a newly politicised Damien swears an oath of allegiance to the IRA and joins a flying column. As the war rages on, Damien’s socialist ideals clash with Teddy’s pragmatism, until finally, the treaty forces them onto opposite sides of the civil war.
“I’ve been interested in Ireland for a long time,” says Loach. “I remember doing Home Rule in history at school, but it was during the 60s it really seeped into my consciousness. It gradually became clear to me that the struggle for Irish independence was one of those defining moments that needs to be examined.”
Opening scenes depict the startling brutality of the Black and Tans, as a stubborn teenager is punished severely for being surly and uncooperative. While unquestionably the most violence Mr. Loach has committed to celluloid since Ray Winstone battered Crissy Rock in Ladybird, Ladybird, no historian as far as I know has ever disputed that such events occurred, Still, these moments have inspired the greatest number of venomous column inches.
“Those scenes were incredibly loud when we were shooting,” recalls Loach. “But the guys we had playing the soldiers were ex-soldiers and they assured me that that was how these were done. It’s part of their training and technique. The truth is, we could have shown far worse. Women were shot dead. Men were tied to trucks and dragged along the ground. I could have spent the entire film documenting horrors, but I didn’t.”
If anything, the film contextualises the actions of the Black and Tans by mentioning the time spent "up to their necks in blood and vomit" during the Somme.
“Exactly,” he nods. “I wanted to make it clear that they had been brutalised too. But a story about the struggle for independence must be told by those who seek it. It is much more interesting that way, much more complex, dealing with how allies become opponents. The need for money to obtain weapons in order to pursue the war immediately compromises the revolutionary aims. The treaty drives characters apart because some are die hard republicans and the others sees it as a stepping stone. Those shifting alliances and tendencies within the republican movement drive the film.”
Contrary to many reports, The Wind That Shakes The Barley, the director’s fifth feature film collaboration with screenwriter Paul Laverty, works hard to include all perspectives. Even an unpleasant Anglo-Irish landowner, played by Roger Allam, is allowed the prophetic suggestion that an independent Ireland will be nothing more than a "priest-ridden backwater".
Indeed, the film’s primary target has less to do with partisan or colonial politics than the betrayal of the revolution’s socialist principles.
“Our first responsibility was to try to be accurate about what happened at the time and not create characters who have the benefit of hindsight,” explains Loach. “But it was a very strong part of the republican tradition. 1916 was only one year before 1917 so it was very much in the air. I don’t think West Cork was a specific hotbed of socialist republicanism, but most would concede it was a legitimate strand of the movement. I think it’s especially relevant now. In the 1918 election, the people of Ireland democratically opted for a programme that would structure the economy so land would be held in common. Bearing in mind what has happened with the Celtic Tiger, the disparity between rich and poor if you read the papers seems to be increasing. There was a suggestion back then of prosperity across the board. Now, the power is with the multinationals, not the people. Even if there is a flurry of prosperity, it won’t change the overall economic structure.”
Loach’s lament for opportunities past also includes an elegiac tribute to the role of women in the struggle. Often discarded by history in favour of Bold Fenian Men mythology, the film restores their place at the frontline and recalls a bright, shining moment when they were no longer to be, as Connolly suggested, "the slaves of slaves".
“When we researched the Spanish civil war for Land And Freedom, we found exactly the same thing,” says Loach. “The first militias were often women. In those revolutionary moments equality is taken for granted. It is only when the bureaucrats get hold of it they stifle it.”
There is further overlap between these two historical dramas. Land And Freedom, like The Wind That Shakes The Barley posits the gloomy notion that the ruling classes will always triumph.
“That’s certainly true to an extent,” he says. “The allied forces who stood against Nazism during the war actually wanted Franco to win. I believe the British foreign office supplied the plane that got Franco back to Spain and an oil tanker was turned back in the Atlantic so the port was delivered into fascist hands. Behind the urbane British gent, the ruling class always know where its interests lie.”
There seems little in the pensioner’s background to predict his politically charged, conscientious film output. Born in Nuneaton, Warwickshire, he can vividly recall the fallout when neighbouring Coventry was bombed during World War II but almost nothing about films from that time, preferring the theatre from an early age. His father Jack, an electrician who the director reckons may have voted Tory, if at all, was delighted when his son won a scholarship to Oxford to study law. But Ken’s heart wasn’t in it and he departed to pursue a career on the stage.
Bizarrely, he found himself working with such grand dames as Sheila Hancock, Kenneth Williams and Lance Percival before a move into stage direction.
“I have always loved the theatre,” he grins. “As a child I used to cycle to Statford-Upon-Avon and I’m still a bit star-struck about it if I’m honest. And when I finally got involved they were exciting times with a lot of Brecht and the Angry Young Men and so on. I suppose I’m an Angry Old Man now.”
The radicalisation of Ken Loach would continue at the BBC. Joining in 1963 just as the organisation was set to launch its second channel, Loach made his directorial debut with Catherine, a 1964 domestic drama, before taking the reigns at Z Cars, a grimy Merseyside police show. His breakthrough, however, came in 1966 when Cathy Come Home, made for the Wednesday Play slot, led to a change in legislation on homelessness and the foundation of the Shelter charity.
“I think it would be much harder for that to happen now,” he says. “Back then, there were only two channels and the generation that saw Cathy Come Home hadn’t grown up with television. It was still a novelty and people were much more easily impressed with it. Now, it’s just the box in the corner projecting freak shows and oddities, only much cruder.”
By 1967, Loach, frustrated by the bureaucracy of the BBC, made his first foray into feature films with Poor Cow. Influenced by the French New Wave and particularly Italian neo-realism, he continued with the heartbreaking humanist drama, Kes (1969).
His place as Britain’s pre-eminent social conscience seemed assured, but the 70s and 80s would mark a difficult period in Loach’s career. His work became heavily censored. In Black And White, a film made for the Save The Children Fund in 1970, was pulled from television schedules. In 1984, his four part documentary series about British unions, A Question Of Leadership, was blocked by the Independent Broadcasting Authority.
“In the 70s and the 80s I tried to make documentaries, which got banned. It was down to the bureaucrats who run the television stations. The whole consciousness of those people was to accommodate Thatcherism and that rightward shift. I was seen as too left, but also the programmes were very sharply critical of trade union leaders. If they had been more militant and organised in the way members demanded there could have been a real challenge to the government. Thatcher could never have eroded them without their help. Even by the time Scargill arrived, it was all over. There had been a whole series of defeats before the miners, such as British Leyland, which enabled her to take them on. It left them high and dry.”
Happily, the 90s would re-establish Loach as the great cinematic champion of the disenfranchised. He followed the controversy surrounding Hidden Agenda with Riff-Raff and Raining Stones, two darkly humorous award-winning films, before turning to international affairs with Land And Freedom, Carla’s Song and Bread And Roses.
Throughout, he has remained faithful to the political analysis of the 60s.
“I think the essential argument does not change,” he tells me. “Class forces have changed but the essential theme does not. If anything, it’s more important than ever. The world has moved on. We live among ruthless corporations, illegal wars and torture is condoned around the planet.”
In his acceptance speech at Cannes, Loach invited comparisons between the events depicted in The Wind That Shakes The Barley and the Iraq conflict. Certainly, it’s impossible to watch scenes depicting fingernail pulling in a British Army barracks without thinking of Guantanamo or Abu Ghraib.
“Well, these are the events that must keep socialism on the agenda,” he says. “Capitalism has created an ecological disaster. If our kids are going to survive, we need to rethink everything. People are growing restless about the power of major corporations. They know they no longer have a say. They’re starting to realise that it’s all a confidence trick to keep the rich in power, while they, like the old joke, are turkeys voting for Christmas.”
I wonder then why he doesn’t call himself a socialist?
“Oh, it’s just so debased now,” he sighs. “Yes, I would be happy with the term socialist if people mean the same as I mean. But they don’t, so the label has become a hindrance rather than saying anything useful. And if you hang a label around a filmmaker’s neck then people see the films through that label and don’t go into the cinema with an open mind.”
But surely, if the decent folk of the left-wing don’t reclaim the term, then we’re leaving it for the apparatchiks.
“Yes. But the word apparatchik makes me think of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown and I’m quite sure they would disavow it completely.”
There’s a memorable scene in Riff-Raff, when Ricky Tomlinson declares, “Do you know what you want? A fucking revolution.” Does that neatly summarise the director’s entire oeuvre?
“I do think Ricky had a good point there,” laughs Loach. “But he was baring his arse at the time and I think I’m too old to get away with that sort of thing.”