Red Ken still on left side -New Film about Depressed Postie

[TrueBlueTerrier]

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FILM-MAKER Ken Loach believes the lessons of the miners' strike remain relevant today and should be heeded as Britain faces a new period of discontent.

He was talking at the Showroom Cinema on Monday ahead of a screening of his documentary, Which Side Are You On?, as part of Marching into History, a programme marking the 25th anniversary of the strike.

The film about the songs and the poetry being written during the strike had been commissioned by LWT for The South Bank Show who then refused to screen it.

"Melvyn Bragg and his boss, Nick Elliott, saw it and said there were too many pictures of police beating up miners and if we cut them they would show it. There was no way of doing that.

"We then managed to get it in a documentary festival in Florence and because they knew it had been banned they found a prize to give us. That resulted in stories in the press which spurred Melvyn Bragg to approach Channel 4 and for some reason they agreed to show it.

"The condition was that they had to find a 'balance' so they put up Jimmy Reid, a former trade union leader who had moved to the right, who was allowed 30 minutes to attack Arthur Scargill and the strike."

The miners were betrayed by the Labour Party and several TUC leaders, he claims.

"There was no coherent organisation on the left and we needed that," he says. "We have the defeat of the miners to blame for many of the ills that followed."

These he identifies as Neil Kinnock expelling many left-wingers, the shift of Labour to the right and the rise of Blair, resulting in the invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq and economic inequality.

The current protests against the G20 do not fill him with optimism. "This is what the Establishment wants, people doing crazy things," he says, "when we need a serious Left organisation."

He cannot see the left reclaiming the Labour Party and concedes that the party he supports, Respect, is unlikely to win enough votes. "The best hope is for an organisation across Europe," he says, citing Olivier Besancenot, leader of the extreme left in France, as a likely candidate.

Loach has another French hero uppermost in his mind, however. His latest film is Looking for Eric, in which a depressed Mancunian postman receives spiritual guidance from Eric Cantona, will be premiered at the Cannes Film Festival.

"It was great fun to do," he says, "but I've no idea how it will turn out. Certainly Eric Cantona proved he is not just a brilliant footballer."

lMARCHING into History, a week of films marking the miners' strike of 1984-5 and depicting the life and struggles of mining communities across the world, has been programmed by John Cunningham, Sheffield Hallam University film lecturer and a former miner.

He worked at Dinnington Colliery from 1980-3 but by the time of pit strike had taken up a TUC scholarship to Ruskin College.

"I grew up in Deepcar and did various jobs – in a steelworks and then Batchelors foods and when that industry started contracted, the only job I could get was down the pit.

It was only three years but my knees are shot as a result."

After two years at Oxford, he did a degree at Bristol University in drama, film and TV and then an MA at the former Sheffield Poly. "I had graduated to the middle classes," he admits.

He subsequently spent nine years teaching in Hungary and a year in the United States before returning to the UK and joining Sheffield Hallam in 2003.

[Lounge Lizard]

http://www.sheffieldtelegraph.co.uk/fil ... 5137987.jp

FILM-MAKER Ken Loach

The current protests against the G20 do not fill him with optimism. "This is what the Establishment wants, people doing crazy things," he says, "when we need a serious Left organisation."
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That is a very valid point, but one I had not thought of.

[BELIAL]

http://www.sheffieldtelegraph.co.uk/fil ... 5137987.jp

FILM-MAKER Ken Loach

The current protests against the G20 do not fill him with optimism. "This is what the Establishment wants, people doing crazy things," he says, "when we need a serious Left organisation."
.

That is a very valid point, but one I had not thought of.

Forget green custard; smashing windows and face painting ,occupy the workplaces and watch it kick off