The Q&A

The Q&A Ken Loach ‘‘We need a left movement, if not a party, united on a few basic principles’’

Ken Loach is a film director who has spent his career of more than half a century chronicling the lives of working people in Britain and beyond.

We’re talking the day after the general election. How do you feel about Labour winning power? When Corbyn stood down, and to ensure he won the Labour leadership, Starmer promised to continue the party’s radical agenda, but he has now broken most of the commitments that he made then. For example, private health companies are set to make even more profit from the NHS. He demonstrated to those with wealth and power that he was no threat to them. And now he’s there [as prime minister]. It emphasises, yet again, the vacuum on the left.

But following the example in France [with the emergency formation of the left-wing New Popular Front alliance, which won the most seats in July’s snap election] there may be a left here in Britain again. We may finally get our act together and at least have a movement, if not a party – a left movement united on a few basic principles.

What are those principles in your view? It’s a society based on social justice and not exploitation, and that means the infrastructure, public services, public utilities and strategic industries have to be in public ownership. No gig economy, no precarious work, everyone with trade union rights from day one, repeal the anti-union law, so the unions are able to negotiate fairly on a level footing with employers.

If we think of migration, we get to the heart of it. Britain has to acknowledge our role in creating mass migration, but climate disaster will cause great migration in itself, so we also need the principle of protecting the environment. So: common ownership, social justice, a new welfare state to end poverty and hunger, and then international law, human rights, protect the environment. The wording needs to be refined, but that’s the essence of it.

Your last film, “The Old Oak” (2023), revolves around the legacy of the 1984–85 miners’ strike and completed an informal trilogy that exposes the effects of the gig economy and unemployment on ordinary people. Do you see a straight line from the strike to our contemporary working conditions? Yes. I, Daniel Blake [2016, following a man suffering health problems who is denied unemployment benefits to which he is entitled] and Sorry We Missed You [2019, centred on a self-employed delivery driver] do both relate to the miners’ strike. Because the strike was the pivotal event in the postwar period. When Thatcher won the election in 1979

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New Humanist | Autumn 2024