My hopes for left unity

I have had various comments about my views towards left unity I seem more for it than a lot of my socialist party comrades maybe they have been through things more with the socialist alliance and seen it all before but for me maybe I’m being naive I think this is new and different and lets be honest exciting. The thought we could have a new left party is something is what we have needed for a long-time. I do hope at some point sooner rather than later TUSC and Left unity could have a proper comradely discussion and an agreement to work together be that a merger or a common mutual agreement to not tread on each others toes. After all surely there is more common ground between the two projects than disagreement? The question for me though is what sort of party it will be. We all know us in the socialist party campaign for a new workers party and TUSC is some sort of start towards that. But never mind my misgivings over TUSC I think left unity could fill that vacuum that labour has abandoned in pursuit of the market and big business. There is room for a new party of the left and I’d argue it should be a new workers party. I don’t buy into the idea the time isn’t right, When will it be right? Not just when the bureaucrats have given up on labour surely if that is the time then we will be waiting a very very long time maybe forever. I think a workers party can start to take shape today even if just in an early stage. But as Nick Wrack of The independent Socialist network wrote http://www.independentsocialistnetwork.org/?p=2148 “Will it be a explicit socialist party, as Ken Loach clearly wants it to be, setting out its aim to create a new form of society based on the democratic, collective ownership of the wealth, natural resources and the means of production – factories, machinery, technology, transport? Or will it be some more vaguely defined ‘party of the left’, a social democratic party that limits its goals to fighting austerity and neo-liberalism but not fundamentally challenging capitalism, as others appear to want? Will it accept the private ownership of the means of production, with production for profit, or will it fight for a society in which we can all participate in drawing up a democratic plan of production for need? Now begins a serious period of debate and discussion, which is exactly what Ken Loach called for. So far, over 8,000 have responded to that call. Such a debate, carried out in a rigorous but comradely manner would show those watching that we are serious about challenging the political status quo. A serious debate on the nature of our society and how we want to change it would draw in many who are fed up with the existing way of things. Pointing the way forward to a society without exploitation, without rich and poor, in other words, without classes, could attract all those who want to fight for something different. What is the party for? Our new party cannot just be against things: against the cuts, against unemployment, against the destruction of the NHS, against tuition fees. It is very difficult to inspire people with a negative. It has to be for something. A new party starts out with inevitable difficulties. It is small, weak, unknown. It has no purchase in the minds of the nation’s citizens. To begin to change that, the new party will have to be bold and confident in its ideas. In the first instance it will have to organise those who want to build a party against the odds; those with a vision that this new party can become a mass party, with the adherence of millions. To inspire the pioneers, the party must have some clear guiding principles. Firstly, it must see its task as assisting the working-class in resisting the unprecedented attacks we see on every front. No other party is prepared to do this. Secondly, it must link the daily battles to the overall struggle for a new society, where there is no longer the need for such never-ending defensive battles. The need for a new party that fights on behalf of and alongside working-class people, who face attacks on every front, is obvious. None of the existing parties represent the interests of the working class. Labour has abandoned any attempt to defend its traditional supporters. The working class is ignored, forgotten or taken for granted. Perhaps the second point – the struggle for a new society – is less obvious. But so long as we have capitalism – the rule of the minority owning class – we will have exploitation and class division; we will have rich and poor, them and us. So long as we have capitalism we will have to defend what we have previously won. We will have to labour for others’ profit. That struggle will go on until we are able to change things fundamentally. So, those of us who have taken up the challenge have our work cut out. Our goal is nothing less than the transformation of the way the world is run. It will not be easy or quick. It will take patience and hard work. But the rewards will be wonderful. There is no short-term quick-fix. Our ideas may be a minority at the moment, but with confidence we can persuade a majority. By being involved in every aspect of working-class life and struggle – at work, in the community, at college, in retirement, in culture and sports – we can show that our party is worthy of support. Linking that daily struggle to the cause of socialism can only strengthen its appeal.” Lastly democracy must be at the heart of everything we do. Fighting for the most extreme form of democracy you may say not allowing things to be decided without the participation of all involved nothing less will do. We cannot create socialism within capitalism but we can start to uphold some important principles and tat is a basic grounding in workers democracy. Democracy as Trotsky once said is the oxygen of socialism without democracy socialism would die.

Where is TUSC heading?

I often wonder this myself. The socialist party who I’m a member of are committed to TUSC for the foreseeable future and seem to be the one in the driving seat of the project with the RMT union. Yet I’m no more clearer which direction the project is heading. I know we are not a party and are simply an electoral vehicle for the socialist party and anti cuts campaigners who wish to standing election. So far only a minority of anti cuts campaigners have stood for TUSC with other groups staying away for now. I am disillusioned with our strategy with TUSC and what we see it transforming into. In June’s edition of the Socialist party’s monthly journal Socialism Today Clive HEEMSKERK takes a look at TUSC’s development and gives us his thoughts on TUSC’s results and prospects. I thought I’d give a few comments in reply to his points. “May’s local council elections showed, five years into the worst crisis of capitalism since the 1930s, how deep the alienation from Britain’s ‘traditional’ parties has become. The BBC made a projection of the national share of the vote from the 2013 results – the elections covered 24 million people, but did not include Scotland, Wales, or most big English cities. Despite this element of psychological guesswork, their figures were sobering for the establishment parties. Labour was ahead on 29%, the Tories on 25%, and the UK Independence Party (UKIP) third on 23%, with the Liberal Democrats on 14%. For the first time ever no party had reached over 30% of the vote. These trends were confirmed in the first Guardian/ICM series opinion poll taken after the council elections. It found the three main establishment parties all down four points on the previous month, the first time in the 29-year history of these surveys that all three had fallen at the same time (The Guardian, 14 May). Labour’s 34% is its lowest rating since the immediate aftermath of the 2010 general election defeat. The Tories’ 28% is a low point they had not reached since the 1997-98 Blair ‘honeymoon’. The Lib Dems were on 11%, their lowest score since September 1997. While the poll also showed limits to UKIP’s support – at just 2% in Scotland and 6% in Wales – overall it was up by nine points to 18%. The Guardian editorial correctly described these results as “a rejection of British mainstream politics without modern precedent”.” TUSC’s last few national election results have ranged from 10% to less than 1% more towards the 1% than anything else. In last months county council elections TUSC stood 119 candidates across the country gaining about 8000 votes with 17 of those candidates receiving less than 1% so we cannot pretend we’re having a break through in any shape or form. The lack of direction and analysis of such poor low results is skimmed over by many comrades and a sort of shrug and put it down to working class consciousness just hasn’t caught up. If only we had the trade unions more on side and well we’re only small anyway so we shouldn’t expect too much this side of 2015. Clives analysis of the UKIP vote is interesting and I think underestimates their ability to pull in votes in working class areas. This focus on UKIP just going for council and parliament seats is to miss the point. UKIP as I’ve mentioned before is having an influence in the media and having an affect on the other political parties just to do with its presence. Clive writes “A Guardian reporter interviewed one South Shields UKIP voter who explained: “I was very disappointed that Labour made no effort whatsoever to stand up for ordinary working people’s rights… They ought to change their name. But I’ve found a party now that represents some of the views that I would like”. (4 May) Meanwhile, in Yeovil, a 30-year-old pub worker “said he had not voted before but decided to back UKIP this time. ‘I think the party is the only one that speaks up for the ordinary working man. The rest seem to be more interested in keeping rich people happy’.” The real position of UKIP, for even more brutal austerity in the interests of the capitalist elite, is either not known or shrugged off in the urge to grab the most easily available stick to fight back with. Why not to a working-class alternative? So why is the developing anger not finding a mass electoral outlet in a working-class political alternative to the establishment parties? Clive asks” Well UKIP are not just a protest votes I’ve consistently pointed out they are of course picking up a protest vote element but there is more to this rise. UKIP is tapping into a racist vote element which the Tories used to occupy and have moved away from the working class Tory daily mail reader and are seen as out of touch by many of these former voters. UKIP speaks for the common man many feel now without understanding that they are more in favour of austerity than even the Tories yet they see a savvy politician in Nigel Ferrage who goes in the pubs and talks to ordinary people this is something the etonian Tory can no longer do or connect with the petti-bourgeois nationalist vote. This is summed up with genuine support in those voting UKIP as 25% of voters in the last county council elections could not all have been ignorant to what UKIP stand for surely ? Not surprisingly, one South Shields voter, a North Sea oil worker and former Labour voter, was quoted in the Guardian as backing UKIP because “I want a change. I know quite a bit about Nigel Farage. I’ve seen how he handles himself on Question Time” (4 May). This suggests people are quite aware in some regard what UKIP do stand for which we must respond to. As for TUSC Clive lays a bit of blame for not building a working class political alternative by trade union leaders yes those pesky leaders again who refuse to break with new labour he cries. Yes the same trade union leaders we are appealing to to go for a 24 hour general strike. Clive continues in his piece In its three years’ existence, 582 candidates have stood under the TUSC umbrella, in a range of contests from parliamentary elections, to city mayoral polls, to local council elections. In the recent county council elections, TUSC stood more candidates than the BNP – “the first time in recent history”, according to the New Statesman, that a left-wing party “will be better represented than Griffin’s mob”. This did not stop the BBC from carrying items on the BNP while refusing to acknowledge on its website that TUSC was standing any candidates at all, until the day before polling day. More than 100,000 votes have been cast for TUSC candidates in that three-year period – still a modest electoral record but not insignificant. Overall, TUSC is still only a ‘pre-formation’, a precursor of a future mass workers’ party that could impact decisively on the political struggle against austerity. What kind of precursor of a future mass workers party it is still not clear. How will we get from here to there? It’s these sorts of vague phrases which frustrate me how do we see TUSC. Sometimes we say it’s a first step towards a new workers party with no plan given how we get there other time we play it down saying it’s simply an electoral banner and something bigger may or may not come out of it. Clive claims but it is the most promising development, at this stage, and certainly not one to be lightly pushed aside for ‘the next new thing’. I beg to differ I can see TUSC being swept aside if say Len Mckluskey of unite pulls funding on the labour party however unlikely that is I can see TUSC being dropped like a stone in pursuit of another trade union leader on an adventure if unite went of a new workers party I could imagine we would head for that. An interesting part of Clives article states TUSC, as the name says, is a coalition, and has written to Respect, the National Health Action Party (launched in May 2012), the SLP, the Communist Party (CP) – and, most recently, Ken Loach – inviting them to discuss participation in TUSC, or at least electoral collaboration. The National Health Action Party and the SLP have not responded. Respect replied but declined the offer even of exploratory talks. The SLP and Respect, unfortunately, share the ‘dissolve into us’ ultimately stance of the Greens. Two meetings have taken place with CP officers and they provided a guest speaker to a 2012 TUSC conference, but they have not taken up the offer to join TUSC, with the full rights of a participating organisation and a place on the national steering committee. What is the problem here? It is not a question of TUSC being ‘narrow’ and ‘non-inclusive’, or that the Socialist Party allegedly ‘dominates TUSC’. The coalition is based on agreement on a quite limited core programme, although with a clear socialist clause for democratic public ownership of the banks and major monopolies, supplemented by policy statements for particular elections. Every TUSC candidate is asked to endorse these before they are issued with the legally necessary ‘certificate of authorisation’ ( Clive miss’s the point her what if these groups don’t want to just join a steering committee which I’m still not sure is the best way to organise things. Clive claims TUSC isn’t narrow and isn’t controlled by the socialist party but I can confirm to him I’ve heard from other independents that that is indeed the feeling from outside the main TUSC component groups at this stage and this must be addressed in my view. Later on Clive as you would expect launch’s into attack on the recent left unity project which sadly has not been taken seriously enough by the socialist party and TUSC in my view. A sense of arrogance that we’ve been here before and you’re doomed to fail is the sense you get from the SP when it comes to left unity. It’s barely been mentioned in our paper and there was no report on its national conference held on 11th of May sadly. “Unfortunately, this attractive feature of TUSC – unity with equal rights, not the domination of one group over others – has been used by some of the founders of Left Unity to dismiss TUSC as ‘undemocratic’. Counter-posing ‘one member, one vote’ (OMOV) to the democracy of organisations electing accountable representatives, they have often echoed the propaganda of the Blairite right-wing in the 1990s as they sought to transform the Labour Party into New Labour. John Prescott, who pushed through the OMOV constitutional changes – which, for example, abolished the role of local union delegates in selecting parliamentary candidates in favour of an individual membership ballot –, saw this as more significant in changing Labour than the abolition of its socialist ‘Clause Four’. The plebiscitary ‘online democracy’ of Grillo’s Five-Star movement in Italy, or the German Pirates’ Party – a cyber equivalent of US-style party primaries – is not a model for the workers’ movement.” I’m not sure how Clive has come to this decision the RMT themselves operate using this structure is it right we should be telling the RMT not to use this form of organisation either? Clive goes on and incorrectly states In fact, Left Unity itself is not operating on an OMOV basis. Eight thousand people clicked an online declaration supporting ‘Ken Loach’s appeal to discuss the formation of a new party’ following the release of his film, Spirit of 45, a Guardian article and other media publicity, and over 500 have been reported as attending local meetings. Its first national meeting was composed of local group representatives from ‘minuted meetings of no less than five people’ (and ‘volunteers’ from yet to be constituted local groups), which elected a committee. Well maybe Clive they haven’t yet had their founding conference or formally launched a party. Criticising them before this has happened which I’ve seen many SP comrades do is foolish. We can’t and should not write off Left unity just yet whatever we may feel about the people involved. Clive goes on to state that the RMT do indeed use the same structure so if it’s good enough for the RMT but not for left unity? Clive says “But how is that fundamentally structurally different to the RMT, with its national officers, executive committee and annual conference delegates all elected by union members, choosing its representatives on the TUSC national steering committee? Except that the RMT has 80,000 dues-paying members and has proved its ability through collective action – its social weight – to defend working-class interests. If a viable organisation emerges from the Left Unity initiative, why wouldn’t it want to come into the TUSC umbrella?” Well why haven’t we asked them? Maybe they don’t agree that TUSC’s structures are the right way of doing things and the direction is vague of how we get to a new party. TUSC has never stated it wants to become a party whereas Left unity has done that from the outset. “‘But TUSC stops individuals from participating’. No, that’s not true. The TUSC national steering committee agreed in June 2011 that individual members would have an elected place on the committee through a ‘TUSC Independent Socialist Network’, duly filled at its inaugural meeting in October that year. Nobody has been excluded from a local group, or prevented from setting one up.” The key in this bit is participating acting as foot soldiers not gaming voting rights or membership rights to join an organisation. I’ve said before there are many socialists who have no organisation who want to feel part of something so far you cannot join TUSC as it is not a party and doesn’t appear to want to be one. Yes you can maybe join the ISN or set up a branch but this still does not mean you’re a member of TUSC and have a voice in terms of influencing policy. Lastly Clive puts a lot of the frustration with TUSC down to the lack of a break through with elections. Whilst this is one frustration of course I don’t think this is the only one. I am glad Clive is engaging with independents who wish for a new workers party but engaging and being sectarian when it comes to left unity is an old habit of which the socialist party is finding hard to break with sadly. TUSC is still far too small with only a handful of RMT members involved in building TUSC. Clearly we need to be doing more. I’m glad a national branch officer has been appointed in Pete Mclaren I hope he can get something going on a national scale for those wishing to join TUSC. But now with left unity springing up TUSC will be forced in to discussions and vice versa both groups must find a way of discussing co orperation and genuine unity on a socialist basis. Not to water down our programmes or remain a limited organisation but to state our intentions are clear to remove this failing rotten capitalist system and replace it with a genuine democratic socialist order of society. If we keep watering our programme down to not scare off the working class they will never know what we truly stand for. That’s why I support the idea of a mass revolutionary Marxist party which is needed for now and the coming struggles. Marxism is the science of socialism and a party is necessary. I thank Clive for this article which you can read in June’s edition of socialism today I encourage Marxists to read it and respond in the debate for new workers party.

Some initial thoughts on left unity

Over the last month or so groups have been popping up on the back of Ken Loach’s film the “spirit of 45” getting all nostalgic over the labour government of 1945 and trying to recreate this as if 1945 is 2013. Left unity a new political party/formation whatever you want to call it has been dropped from the sky. Trying to create an alternative to the labour party. Already 80 odd groups have been set up from the top down local organisers have been appointed by who I don’t know as no meetings have taken place yet as such. Democracy seems to be a odd concept when you have no members, no organisational structures yet local and regional organisers are being appointed from up on high. You could say this alternative electoral project is already happening with TUSC standing widely and having been backed by a major trade union already in the RMT and bob crow among others. Will left unity crash and burn like other previous left party projects? In fact, doesn’t TUSC already occupy the territory that Left Unity wish to operate within? My initial cynicism was exacerbated by the announcement of the countless local groups that popped up almost overnight. All of which had ready-made, centrally appointed organiser’s parachuted in – before any local meetings or discussion had taken place. Left Unity has been created following an appeal by the film director, Ken Loach, to build an alternative to the Labour Party. His recent film ‘the Spirit of 45’ apparently – “Gives us a perspective on the achievements of the post-war generation, transforming the lives of ordinary people by bringing improved health, housing, education and social security to the people of Britain”. What Ken Loach, Left Unity, and the many people who report being “brought to tears” after watching his film (phoney emotion if I have ever heard it), fail to mention is the true spirit of 45…… Comparisons of the 1945 economic circumstances to the current ‘deficit’ are disingenuous at best. Whilst Labour and their apologists may ‘wax lyrical’ about the 1945 government, about Clem Atlee, the NHS, the welfare state, the house building programme – and then question why the Conservatives cannot achieve the same in similar economic circumstances – they do not mention how in 1945 the UK had access to several cash cows, ripe for milking. At the time Britain was making the most of its colonial powers taking as much commodities and resources from the iconologies as they possibly could. In the years of that first Atlee government over 60% of all exports from the UK to the US were commodities such as rubber and tin, stolen from the colonies. There is no mention in the film of how the UK was able to hugely augment its GDP in the post-war period, by subjecting the working class of the colonies to horrific oppression, and stealing of their produce. There is no mention in the film, of the Atlee sanctioned concentration camps in Malaya, used to house disruptive trade unionists that had the audacity to complain about the UK stealing all of the rubber they produced, which was then sold at a 1500% mark up in the international market? Is there any mention of how Atlee’s government sanctioned the massacre of striking workers on a plantation in Malaya, so that the flow of money into the UK did not slow down? Another key feature of the true Spirit of 45 that is omitted is how on at least 18 occasions Clem Atlee sanctioned the use of troops to attack workers in order to break their strikes. Such the friend of the working class I see. It is difficult to see what the left unity project can do it seems like a bit of nostalgia for a by gone e era of social democracy capitalism with a human face in affect. This today is simply utopian given the scale of the global economic crisis. There is no nation or industry which could drag capitalism out of the mud on this occasion and sewing illusions in a better form of capitalism does nothing for workers facing austerity right this very moment. A new workers party is needed of course but not sent from high above and with centrally controlled top down non democratic movements. New parties and formations will be thrown up during the class struggle they will be put to the test against the situation and thrown on to the rocks if not the strategy for taking the class forward. I fear that left unity may be another one of these from the early signs.

The brilliant work and thoughts of Ken Loach

Ken Loach is a well known left wing film director and has produced many great well made films on some very tough subjects. Ken dares to go where no one else does. Ken highlights working class struggles in his films and really gets his audience thinking. There is a recent article in the Guardian with a interview from him. I thought i'd share parts of it here. Ken talks on the recent riots in the UK and the political situation in this country too. He speaks so much sense and raises some excellent points that we can all take on board i feel.

The leftwing film director talks about the riots, his early work on television and the documentary he made for Save the Children 40 years that is about to be screened for the first time


About halfway through our interview, I call Ken Loach a sadist. The mild-mannered, faintly mole-like film director blinks hard, chuckles, and carries on. We are discussing a key aspect of his film-making: the element of surprise. Loach has spent his career depicting ordinary people, telling working-class stories as truthfully as possible, and he works distinctively – filming each scene in order, often using non-professional actors, encouraging improvisation.

Save The Children Fund Film
Production year: 1969Country: UKRuntime: 50 minsDirectors: Ken Loach.

Actors don't tend to see a full script in advance, and move through his films as confused as the audience about what lurks around the next corner. I ask Loach which surprise was most memorable, and he laughs incongruously through a few examples. He talks about an incident when an actor walked through a door, on-set, to discover his co-star in a bath, her wrists apparently slashed. "Surprise is the hardest thing to act," says Loach, "and his response was just very true." On another occasion an actor only found out during the filming of a battle scene that her character was to be shot and killed. She was not especially pleased.

Most surprisingly of all, Crissy Rock, the lead in Ladybird, Ladybird (1994) – a brilliant, devastating gut-wrencher of a film – was convinced she was starring in a happy, upbeat, redemptive story. "She thought it would turn out to be about a couple successfully raising children together," says Loach, smiling. It is actually about a woman's kids being taken, one by one, by the social services. In the scene where they come for the final child, Rock "couldn't believe it," says Loach. "She was just wrecked."

It's at this point I laugh and call Loach a sadist. But it's probably more accurate to call him uncompromising, with both his actors and his leftwing politics. Loach turned 75 in June, and next month the BFI is showing a retrospective that will take viewers from his early television work – including the harsh, effective, 1966 exposé of homelessness Cathy Come Home – to his most recent film, Route Irish, about the experiences of private security contractors in Iraq. I ask which of his films he's most proud of, and he can't choose. "There's quite a few I cocked up, but that's another matter."

His documentary The Save the Children Film, part-funded by the charity, is being shown for the first time; made in 1969 for TV, it was never broadcast. The film was commissioned for the charity's 50th anniversary, and it's easy to imagine what they might have been expecting: a gauzy portrait, light on analysis, strong on praise.

Loach took a different tack. The documentary looks at the potential problems of aid, the ways those in a position to be charitable are often patronising and paternalistic. He took his cameras to a school run by Save the Children in Kenya, for homeless boys from Nairobi, for instance, that was set up along the lines of a British public school; the children are shown blowing bugles, marching, reading books including The Inimitable Jeeves and Tom Brown's Schooldays. A group of young Kenyan activists appear in the film, one of whom notes he can't think of another school in the world where the mother tongue isn't allowed.

The documentary moves beyond the charity's work to show British expatriates in Kenya; one stompingly posh woman remarks they have "a wildly gay time" there, and she feels that "even in their poverty, [the Kenyan people] are basically happy". Raising their living standards might just upset things, she adds. The film is full of issues that remain pressing: the limits of philanthropy, the patronage relationships fostered by aid, the subtle and not-so-subtle problems of colonialism. It ends with the comment that we "must change the property relationships of society, and then we change man. That's the only real solution, and all the rest is propaganda."

The documentary was made for LWT and only one-third funded by the charity, so Loach thought he and his crew could "take an independent view, and the TV company would support us. But they didn't." There are moments when he seems to have the naivety that derives from an inflexible moral backbone. "When the people that ran the Save the Children Fund said they would sue us, the television company wrote off their investment, and didn't back us at all."

It isn't the only one of his documentaries to have been pulled; Questions of Leadership, a TV series critiquing the response of the trade union top brass to Thatcherism, made in the early 1980s, was never shown – apparently for political reasons. I ask whether it upsets him when his films are censored or withdrawn, and he says: "It makes you angry, not on your own behalf, but on behalf of the people whose voices weren't allowed to be heard. When you had trade unions, ordinary people, rank and file, never been on television, never been interviewed, and they're not allowed to be heard, that's scandalous. And you see it over and over again. I mean, we heard very little from the kids in the riots. You hear some people being inarticulate in a hood, but very few people were actually allowed to speak."

Loach's films are often either a call to arms (a reminder of the rotten, vicious circumstances many people face) or portraits of specific political movements. The Wind That Shakes the Barley was about the Irish war of independence, Bread and Roses was about a group of office cleaners in Los Angeles campaigning for just wages, Land and Freedom was about a young, unemployed Liverpudlian man, a member of the Communist party, who heads to Spain to fight in a militia against Franco.

Land and Freedom has all the obvious elements of a great film: a passionate protagonist, beautiful heroine, a romantic relationship, battle scenes. And yet its most gripping moments involve an extensive conversation between a communist militia and the people of a Spanish town about the merits of collectivism. Should the town's land be carved up and shared among the people? Should some remain private? All of it? When I ask whether Loach would describe his politics as socialist, he says it's a difficult word, because it's much devalued, and you can't "make sense of it without Marx – but if you say you're a Marxist, then the rightwing press just uses it as a brick to hang around your neck." He is the rare film-maker who brings questions of political structure flamingly alive.

Loach is a quiet, gentle man – that streak of sadism aside – who seems entirely without vanity; he comes across like the most caring teacher in school. We talk more about the riots, and the subsequent heavy-handedness of the courts. "They'll shoot people for stealing sheep next, won't they?" he says. "But, in a way, whenever something dramatic happens, you know that everybody retreats to their comfort zone – so the Tories retreat to cutting benefits, pulling people out of their houses, savage prison sentences. They want that anyway. So whatever happens is an excuse for them to do what they want to do."

I mention the two young men put away for four years each, after trying to provoke rioting through their Facebook pages. Loach notes, with a shrug, that their cases will probably go to appeal, then adds: "It's the ruling class cracking the whip, isn't it? It's disgusting. We've got to organise. In the words of the old American trade unionist Joe Hill: don't mourn, organise."

He continues, apologising occasionally for "lecturing" me. "I think the underlying factors regarding the riots are plain for anyone with eyes to see … It seems to me any economic structure that could give young people a future has been destroyed. Traditionally young people would be drawn into the world of work, and into groups of adults who would send the boys for a lefthanded screwdriver, or a pot of elbow grease, and so they'd be sent up in that way, but they would also learn about responsibilities, and learn a trade, and be defined by their skills. Well, they destroyed that. Thatcher destroyed that. She consciously destroyed the workforces in places like the railways, for example, and the mines, and the steelworks … so that transition from adolescence to adulthood was destroyed, consciously, and knowingly.

"I don't recall the nihilism among kids now, 40 or 50 years ago," he says. "Now there is no place for kids, period. So I think despite the material advances, we're worse off." We also don't seem to have a political class that understands, on any level, what it's like to face unemployment. "No, the Bullingdon boys have never had to confront that," says Loach. "The Bullingdon boys will wreck restaurants and …" he pauses. "Just throw some money at it?" I say. "Yes, or their parents will throw money at it."

I ask whether he aims to provoke political change with his films, and he says he hopes they make people "see things in a different way. That they see there were possibilities for change in Spain, for instance, and one of the things that destroyed it was sectarianism on the left. That you can organise trade unions, we do have strength, things can be different, and here are stories from the past that show it."

It's difficult to imagine young people risking their lives for leftwing ideals now as they once did in Spain though, isn't it? Loach disagrees. "You get the international volunteers who go and put themselves in Gaza … Those are the sort of people who would have gone to Spain. People will resist, and they will fight back, and they do feel solidarity."

Does he think there's a chance of a revolutionary moment in the UK, after the financial crisis, the MPs' expenses scandal, the phone hacking revelations, and the exposure of the cosiness between the police and the Murdoch empire? "It just needs leadership," he says. "It's like a head of steam. The steam won't drive anything unless there's an engine, and somebody to stoke it, and to drive the wheels around." The moment in recent history, he thinks, when a proper movement could have been launched, was at the march against the Iraq war in 2003.

"At the end there should have been a hundred tables, here's a pen, give us your name, we're anti-privatisation, anti-war you know – it's Lenin's bread, land and peace. If you sign up to that, you'll be organised and it'll be democratic and there will be no vain personalities trying to take it over, and we can articulate a programme and a movement that might become a party on that basis. There was a huge feeling across the country. None of the politicians spoke for us. That was the moment, but it was missed."


As a child growing up in the industrial town of Nuneaton, his paternal grandfather a miner, his father a foreman in a machine tool factory, Loach had little interest in politics. His father read the Daily Express, and was a working-class Tory, and Loach, an only child ("not because they didn't want more children, but because it wasn't possible for some reason"), fell in love with the theatre. They lived 30 miles from Stratford-upon-Avon, "so once I got the bug, aged about 12 or 13, I used to go there and see plays". He fainted once, standing at the back watching Titus Andronicus, starring Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh. "She has her tongue cut out, and she came on with streams of red, and I'd had this long cycle ride, so I fell over."

Loach went to the local grammar school, which took in "60 boys each year, out of a town population of about 70,000. It was very lucky to go, because it was good, but it was at the expense of hundreds of boys the same age who, from the age of 11, would have no way into higher education." If you didn't get into the grammar school, your academic career would almost certainly fade fast. Loach wanted to be a lawyer; I ask if this was out of a striving for justice, and he laughs. "By no means. I just fancied the frocks really. I was really stage-struck, but I thought that going into the theatre would be unrealistic."

After a couple of years of national service with the RAF, he studied law at Oxford, and spent all his time performing. "I didn't go to a lecture for over a year. It was an absolute disgrace. I got an actor's degree – I swotted for six weeks at the end." He and a friend came close to starting a theatre afterwards, but when their funding fell through, he ended up understudying a comedian who was playing opposite Kenneth Williams. "I was totally incompetent, so thank God I never had to go on." Williams "was quite friendly", says Loach, "but if he was not in a good frame of mind, he could destroy you, and I was a young innocent abroad."

He emphasises that he was a poor actor ("I wouldn't have employed me") and so became an assistant director at Northampton Rep for a year, then in 1963 landed a job as a trainee director at the BBC. "It was a huge stroke of luck to be there, because the BBC was in quite a liberal mood, with Hugh Carleton Greene as the director general." Loach was soon influenced by the political passion of those around him, and began reading widely about leftwing ideas.

He started off directing Z Cars, and was then asked to join the Wednesday Play; in his first year he directed about six films, "original scripts, going out at peak viewing, straight after the news, when there were only two and a half channels. So everybody watched it. It was an incredible opportunity." He worked with strong writers, including Nell Dunn, Jeremy Sandford and David Mercer; Jimmy O'Connor wrote a film about capital punishment, Three Clear Sundays. "He himself had been arrested and convicted of murder and sentenced to hang, and was reprieved with days to go. He was a very good writer."

Over four or five years, he made such classics as Up the Junction, Cathy Come Home, and his first feature film, Poor Cow, all stories of working-class life. He and his peers gravitated to these stories for a number of reasons. "One is that the drama is most intense among people who have got little to lose," he says. "They live life very vividly, and the stakes are very high if you don't have a lot of money to cushion your life. Also, because they're the front line of what we came to call the class war. Either through being workers without work, or through being exploited where they were working. And I guess for a political reason, because we felt, and I still think, that if there is to be change, it will come from below. It won't come from people who have a lot to lose, it will come from people who will have everything to gain." He pauses, and smiles. "They also have the best jokes."

Loach says that period at the BBC was "hugely intoxicating" not just because of the enormous audiences, but because the directors had to defend their work, and politics. "Not only did you get reviews, but if you had a play on, you'd go on a programme called Late Night Line-Up, and there would be a critic, and a discussion, and you'd be torn to shreds, so you had to know your stuff. We always felt we were in politics, even though we were doing drama. A lot of directors now, I notice, when people take issue with them, they say: 'Oh no, it's not political, we didn't mean that, and they back off.' Well, we never backed off, you know, and why would you?"

The BFI's Ken Loach retrospective launches at BFI Southbank on 1 September with the premiere of The Save the Children film and continues until 12 October. Ken Loach at the BBC is available on DVD from 5 September.