Ken Loach

Speaker 30:00

Hello, I'm Kirstie Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs Archive. For rights reasons we've had to shorten the music. The programme was originally broadcast in nineteen ninety nine, and the presenter was Sue Lawley.

Presenter0:30

My Castaway this week is a film maker. The son of an electrician, he read law at Oxford, but it wasn't the drama of the courts which claimed him. In the sixties he made films which changed the way we looked at ourselves Up the Junction, Cathy Come Home, and Kez. His work after that slipped from fashion, but never deviated from its determination to reflect life as it is, and to sympathise with those who find it hard and unremitting.

Presenter0:56

Now in the nineties he's back at the forefront again. Films such as Land and Freedom, Carla's Song, and My Name is Joe have won awards and high praise. But for their author it's only their nearness to the truth that matters. I want to make films which are real, he says, to be authentic about the world. He is Ken

Presenter1:15

Your films are usually, in fact, I think always Ken about life's bleaker side, you know, from homelessness to alcoholism.

Presenter1:23

Is there pleasure in making them, or or are you just dedicated to to the mission of making them?

Ken Loach1:28

I I hope they're not bleak. I mean, I would hope they'd be full of life and vitality and laughs and and warmth.

Ken Loach1:37

The enjoyment in making them is to to find that warmth, to communicate it.

Presenter1:41

But you're not just making entertainment, are you? You are you are trying to say something every time. I know you don't like the word message, but but you know, th there's always something to be read from your films, isn't there?

Ken Loach1:46

Message, but but

Ken Loach1:51

Well, there's a there's a a point of view. Um but that's refracted through human experience and it's refracted through the stories you choose to tell and why you tell them and the characters you choose.

Ken Loach2:03

If one could reduce it to a message, it wouldn't be worth making the film. You know, you try to make it about the whole human experience in a context.

Presenter2:09

And of course,

Presenter2:11

Yes, and the strongest example of that has to be the one that most people will remember is Cathy Come Home, which you made in the mid sixties. And it was about homelessness, but it it centered on this young girl and her family and showed that law-abiding, decent people could end up homeless. It's said that that shelter, the charity shelter, was set up as a result of that film. That's how strong the impact was. Is that true?

Ken Loach2:37

Um well, shelter was happening at the same time and um I think that would have been established anyway, but obviously that the film helped shelter and shelter certainly helped the film.

Presenter2:46

But it was the first of the so called drama documentaries, wasn't it?

Ken Loach2:50

Yeah, I again, I mean the drama document is another it's a term for critics, but it if you're making a film you you try to make it so that people see it and they think, well, that's that's how it is, you know, that I believe that. And and if they believe the film, well, they'll perhaps go with the consequences of what they see in the film.

Presenter3:10

But you used real cases, real examples, as it were.

Ken Loach3:13

Pause as it were.

Presenter3:14

And and

Presenter3:15

Were you actually quoting? There were a lot of voiceovers in it. Were you actually quoting from real cases of homelessness?

Ken Loach3:21

Yes. I mean, what it was it it was a story of a fictional couple, but the the facts of what happened to them were demonstrated in the film by relating their particular circumstances to to the wider picture. So so that you would know that they were just one, they were they were a human face of one statistic among many.

Presenter3:38

But you never quite knew that until the end, did you? Which was probably the most powerful moment of all when you put up a caption at the end saying everything that happened in this film has happened in Britain in the past eighteen months.

Ken Loach3:43

Up and captioning

Ken Loach3:46

Eighteen months.

Presenter3:48

What was the um effect like then? Do you remember? Did the phones begin to ring at the BBC or were the bosses upset or were they pleased? What happened?

Ken Loach3:56

Um I I think there was a fair a fair fuss went on.

Ken Loach4:00

Because people had the a sense of outrage that that that we were doing that to people. I mean, taking their children away because they hadn't got anywhere to live.

Ken Loach4:08

and shortly afterwards the law was changed.

Ken Loach4:11

But yes, switchboards were jammed, as they say, and um the people who opposed us would criticise the form. They wouldn't criticise the the politics'cause they they couldn't, but they would say, Oh, we don't know whether it's true or not, so and uh you know, it's this blurring of the line between fact and fiction.

Presenter4:27

Tell me about your first record.

Ken Loach4:29

This is Beethoven, who is I guess the composer who gives you energy and strength and determination and um the will to fight back, and it's the opening of the fourth movement of his fifth symphony.

Presenter5:44

The opening of the fourth movement of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony, played by the Vienna Philharmonic conducted by Carlos Kleiber.

Presenter5:51

Um you had a huge success, Ken Loach, with Cares nearly thirty years ago now, I think nineteen yeah, nineteen sixty nine, wasn't it?

Presenter5:58

About the young working-class boy who kept a kestrel in the garden shed. The distributors said then, I think, that it was too depressing and would never be a success.

Ken Loach6:07

Yes, th they when they heard it they they said they understood Hungarian better'cause it was it was filmed in South Yorkshire.

Presenter6:13

But they didn't think it would be popular and but more than that they thought it was too depressing, I think, too gloomy.

Ken Loach6:15

The mall

Ken Loach6:18

I don't know. I mean, to us it was a comedy really. And and Barry Heinz who wrote the book, yes.

Presenter6:21

Yeah.

Ken Loach6:24

You think of the football match and Brian Glover playing Bobby Charlton. We spent our time holding our sides really when we were doing it and

Presenter6:32

But at the centre of it you've got this young boy who's

Presenter6:36

unloved at home and bullied at school and falls in love with this bird, which in the end, of course,

Presenter6:42

He's killed.

Ken Loach6:43

Yes, it's it's kind of shades, you know, it's nuances really, rather than it isn't quite as black and white as that, I guess.

Presenter6:50

No, quite. But why do you think it was so successful? Because of course it ended up in being well I think it it it is in according to all the records one of the most successful British feature films ever made, isn't it?

Ken Loach7:00

Well, I suppose everybody has memories of their childhood that they can they can relate to.

Ken Loach7:05

to that. I think Barry's book was immensely truthful and and funny and subtle and uh sad and wise. Um and so you know we were working with with great material and the kids were great. I mean kids are uh if you can just find the moments in in what they do, they're very funny and they touch you.

Presenter7:28

You mentioned football. There's a lot of football in your films.

Presenter7:32

There must be a reason for that.

Ken Loach7:34

Oh well, I I have been known to go to the odd gamer too, yes.

Presenter7:38

Come on, you've got a a a strong dedication to one in particular, haven't you?

Ken Loach7:41

Uh will yeah, Will w well, I live in Bath now, so um uh Bath City is the team I supported.

Presenter7:47

And there's football in um your latest film. I think my name is Joe, isn't it? Yeah. A lot of builders' bums in your films as well, if we're looking for themes.

Ken Loach7:50

Yeah, it wasn't.

Ken Loach7:54

I don't notice them, Sue. You always have an eye for these things.

Presenter7:59

But there is more humour, it seems to me, in in your latest films, in the films you've made in this decade. You know. There's there's well we're back to bums again, but there's, you know, the the unemployed labourer who moonies at the police helicopter, isn't there?

Ken Loach8:05

Let me

Speaker 48:08

The zero

Speaker 48:11

Again

Presenter8:12

Again, there's the football team who bring the wrong shirts and end up playing bare chested, or the the bus driver who steals the bus and gets stuck in the mud.

Speaker 48:14

End up play.

Speaker 48:15

Own them.

Speaker 48:18

And

Presenter8:19

It does seem to me that your films are less intense than they used to be.

Ken Loach8:24

Maybe, maybe. I think that's probably true, Rennie.

Presenter8:27

Because humor is is a powerful way of using your message.

Ken Loach8:29

Yes, and and comedy is next to tragedy, you know. Um what happens one day is comic, the next day a subtle shift and it's tragic.

Ken Loach8:38

But also, um comedy makes tragedy bearable, doesn't it?

Presenter8:42

But always as well, if we're looking for themes, there's a struggle. I mean, whether it's the struggle in the Spanish Civil War or the struggle in Nicaragua or struggle against alcoholism.

Presenter8:52

And what you seem to be looking for all of the time is is is the hope in that struggle. It that's where the hope comes into your films, isn't it?

Ken Loach9:01

Yes. But I think I think people's lives are a struggle. And they are caught in a struggle, whether it's uh a kind of wider objective class struggle or whether it's um

Ken Loach9:11

the struggle just to survive, you know. Um and it's out of the struggle that that drama comes.

Presenter9:17

Record number two.

Ken Loach9:19

Um well this is a song by a street singer and she's singing the ballad of Poor John. It's uh Edith Piaf and La Gualante du Pauvréjant.

Speaker 49:30

Es gourdère ni canaston, la gouadante du pouvourgent, que es farme nes mais pas, men bli et pas, d'ons la ville mova, consoil chous sans en sous, sans tour.

Presenter9:51

Edith Piaff singing La Goualante du Pau Verjean. Why do you think, Ken Loach, that that you have spent your life making these kinds of films, arguing these kinds of of political points? What's in your background that prepared you for it?

Ken Loach10:07

Um I d I don't think it was so so much a matter uh of of having that background. It was

Ken Loach10:14

coming to conclusions with with friends and people I worked with.

Ken Loach10:19

in that period when politics was very alive.

Presenter10:22

But were you know, did you hear it at home? Were your parents political?

Ken Loach10:25

No, not particularly.

Presenter10:26

Were you lonely or unloved as a child?

Ken Loach10:28

Well you put

Presenter10:29

Uh

Presenter10:31

Were you bullied at school, were you isolated?

Ken Loach10:33

No, and pe people do resist the idea that you can come to a conclusion for intellectual reasons.

Presenter10:38

Hmm.

Ken Loach10:38

rather than, you know, uh psychological ones or whatever.

Presenter10:42

So there's nothing in your battery. You you were the son, as I said at the beginning, of an electrician from the Midlands, Nuneaton.

Ken Loach10:46

Infinite.

Presenter10:48

You went to school, you were clever, you went to Oxford. D d did you want did you set your sights on Oxford?

Ken Loach10:54

Yes, I I guess I did in the last year or two I was at school. Uh I never thought I'd get in. I mean I was just I was lucky on the day.

Presenter11:02

Why did you want to go there?

Ken Loach11:04

It was I know it was um the gateway to all everything you might ever want to do.

Presenter11:09

So why did you read law?'Cause you didn't want to be a lawyer, did you?

Ken Loach11:12

I'd read all the biographies of Marshall Hall and uh Norman Burkett and Fancy the Gowns and I liked the sound of the speeches and uh

Ken Loach11:20

It was a totally false romantic notion.

Presenter11:24

And you ended up never doing it?

Ken Loach11:26

No, I I ate dinners for a short time and then I um I I'd I'd been stage drug since I was a kid, so

Presenter11:33

So we don't see then the politicisation of Loach at Oxford. We see him falling under the spell of the theatre, of the stage.

Ken Loach11:41

Yes, yeah. Well, I'd I've been doing that for f for ages. Um

Presenter11:45

You acted. You wanted to be on on the stage.

Ken Loach11:46

Yeah, he wanted to be a little bit more.

Ken Loach11:48

Yes, I was terrible, but uh I didn't know that at the time. But wh when I left Oxford and acted professionally for a short time, um it quickly became apparent that I was you know probably the worst actor in England and um spent quite a lot of time being a supply teacher and uh managed to get a job directing.

Presenter12:07

Film Directing.

Ken Loach12:08

No, theatre directing in uh in a repertory company in Northampton.

Presenter12:12

And did you know, then, that that was w where you belonged, as it were?

Ken Loach12:15

No, not really. But it was it was um

Ken Loach12:19

It was second best to acting.

Ken Loach12:21

it meant you were in the theatre and you were part of it and uh

Ken Loach12:24

Save to second best.

Presenter12:26

Next piece of music.

Ken Loach12:27

Um another singer from Europe, uh Lotte Lenia. Uh when I was in the theatre we were very struck by Brecht and by his theories of theatre and by his uh attack on romantic acting and all that. And this was the kind of music in the kind of plays we wanted to do.

Speaker 412:50

Maromevestu Zoro.

Speaker 412:53

So rabbi or Johnny, my father of the Liby.

Speaker 413:01

Surabay Johnny Warum binig nicht fro Dohaskain Herald Johnny undigli.

Presenter13:14

Be bad.

Speaker 413:15

Uh

Presenter13:15

Not Alenia singing Surabaya, Johnny, from Kurtwail and Bertolt Brecht's musical play Happy End. So you got a job, Ken Loach, at the BBC in the early sixties as a as a director and they let you loose on Zedcars, which was a live programme, so that was very brave of them, wasn't it?

Ken Loach13:32

Yes, I mean it's it's this bizarre thing that the most popular programs have the

Ken Loach13:38

Um, the youngest, the most inexperienced directors. I mean, um, it happens now, I'm sure. Um but it was live and it was terrifying and um.

Presenter13:46

Did you make any mistakes?

Ken Loach13:47

All the time. But um Fortune had very experienced crew who who

Ken Loach13:52

I mean, I might have well not been there, you know, the thing would have driven itself. And the most terrifying was there was a vision mixer you used to knit.

Ken Loach13:59

join the show. So you you'd be there panicking, losing and placing the script and she'd be knitting and dropping one, pearl, two and the rest and

Ken Loach14:05

Also, cutting from camera to camera.

Presenter14:08

And then you moved into this kind of Wednesday play, play for today um slot, as it were. Again, it was very important then, wasn't it? That that drama slot.

Ken Loach14:14

I can

Ken Loach14:17

Yes, well there were only two two and a half tele channels rounded then. And so if you did well, I mean half the nation would watch.

Ken Loach14:24

And there was a sense of occasion because it wasn't on video, it wasn't uh you wouldn't see it again. And if it worked, there was a great sense of occasion.

Presenter14:33

And you have been very much credited uh with inventing new techniques of filming drama. And I know you duck this'cause you're modest and say, Well, everybody else thought of it as well, but I mean, there were voiceovers, there were title cards put up, there were monologues addressed directly to camera. And I think you were responsible, weren't you, for suggesting that the camera be shock horror hand held.

Ken Loach14:56

Yes, I mean we were influenced by all kinds of things. I mean the French New Wave, the Brechtian ideas that we talked about before of breaking the narrative with a caption or and so and also again I worked with two writers who pushed that quite a long way, Troy Kadenmartin and Jean-McGras. So there were all kinds of subversive influences.

Ken Loach15:20

subversive to the straight narrative line at work. And we were lucky to be able to pick from different innovations.

Presenter15:27

Different styles. I mean, that that sort of bobbing down the street hand held camera alongside two girls swinging their white handbags. It was very it's very it's redolent of the sixties, isn't it?

Ken Loach15:31

Alongside

Ken Loach15:37

Yes, well it was fun. I think there was a sense of fun about that work because we came into a time when television drama was studio bound. I mean it was like theatre in the studio. And uh what we tried to do was to make um films on the streets.

Presenter15:51

Hmm.

Ken Loach15:52

and just capture a sense of street life.

Presenter15:53

But also because it came directly off the back of the news, there was a kind of blurring of the line between fact and fiction, wasn't there? Which was important.

Ken Loach16:01

Yes. Well, I mean, you know, we we our contention was that the we were more factual than the news really, because uh you know that the news will always be bent one way or another. And you didn't bend anything.

Presenter16:10

And you didn't

Ken Loach16:12

Well, I think we were we were upfront about it. We wanted people to look at us in the same way as they looked at the news, with the same not to say, Okay, we've had the facts, now let's let's um enter a fantasy world. We wanted people to say, Okay, we will judge this and criticize the events that we see unfold as though it's part of our world.

Presenter16:32

Next week will

Ken Loach16:34

Uh this is um Czech music and um I went to Prague just before 68 and just after.

Ken Loach16:43

uh the invasion by by Russia.

Ken Loach16:46

and uh became aware of this music around that time and it really did seem to embody the particular uh humour and um wit of the Czechs and also the the tragedy of their situation. It's um the Vojac cello concerto uh with Jacqueline Dupre playing it.

Presenter18:06

Jacqueline Dupre playing part of Vorjak's cello concerto in B minor with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra conducted by Daniel Barenboim.

Presenter18:14

Why do you think, Ken, that you fell from favour in in the seventies? I mean, this was before the Thatcher years, which perhaps more predictably you might have fallen from favour in the I mean you had some successes with with Days of Hope and The Price of Coal for the BBC, but

Presenter18:29

You really fell away.

Ken Loach18:31

Um, well, part of the problem was that you couldn't make f cinema films in Britain. I made three in the late sixties, early seventies. And the last one, which was called Family Life, which which did amazingly well in France and Scandinavia and Italy and

Ken Loach18:46

other countries didn't take enough to pay the assherettes here, as they said. And so on the back of that we we couldn't really make cinema films here. And I did um

Ken Loach18:58

Films of the B B C

Presenter19:00

But it was nothing like the 60s. There wasn't that vigour to it. You also.

Ken Loach19:00

But it was not

Ken Loach19:02

Configure

Presenter19:05

had a terrible car accident in that period in which your young son and your mother in law were killed and you were entirely blameless, but you were driving, but quite understandably you don't want to talk about it in public, but that must have had

Presenter19:18

An effect on your

Presenter19:20

professional determination. It must have affected every part of your life. But was that part of the reason, do you think, that you

Ken Loach19:26

No, I as you say, it's it's something not to talk about really.

Presenter19:29

But but one way or another it does seem that it events conspired uh somehow to remove you from the forefront of of film making. I wonder if you feel uh that you lost out in the seventies all round, really?

Ken Loach19:41

Not really. No, I mean, we we were at it all the time and, um

Ken Loach19:46

No, I didn't feel it at all.

Presenter19:47

Perhaps more people were at it. Perhaps there was greater competition once you sort of set the style.

Ken Loach19:49

Greater competition.

Ken Loach19:52

Yeah, well maybe, maybe.

Presenter19:54

It must have been very frustrating.

Ken Loach19:56

It was frustrating not to be in the cinema, I think. That was what was frustrating. But it was the time before

Ken Loach20:01

Channel four invested in films, which I think was the turning point for British cinema. The BBC would not let you show the films you made for television in the cinema. Um and the problem is you make a film on television, it's gone

Ken Loach20:15

And that's the end of it.

Presenter20:16

And then you hit the eighties, the Thatcher years, and you're almost bound to be out of step by then. What would you say was your lowest point of that period?

Ken Loach20:18

Yeah.

Ken Loach20:24

Um, the lowest point. It was, I guess, having documentaries banned on television. That was a pretty low point.

Presenter20:30

That was there was one that you were trying to get onto Channel Four and you're about trade unionism, was that?

Ken Loach20:34

Yes, it was a series of four documentaries called Questions of Leadership.

Ken Loach20:39

They were about the trade union's leaders' response.

Ken Loach20:43

to the the Thatcher onslaught of unemployment.

Presenter20:45

And why do you believe they weren't shown?

Ken Loach20:47

Because they had ordinary rank and file people saying we could have resisted this. If we were organized, we could have prevented this. We could have prevented the mass factory closures. We could have prevented um so many people being out of work.

Presenter21:01

But why couldn't that be shown?

Ken Loach21:03

Good question. The leaders who were criticised had friends in high places and

Ken Loach21:11

People talk there was more right-wing laborites, really.

Presenter21:13

We're into conspiracy theory here.

Ken Loach21:14

We're going to come.

Ken Loach21:15

Um well, the people agreed that they need to conspire. But uh that actually what happened was that uh there was a campaign mounted against them um and they were withdrawn from the schedules. They were scheduled, so I mean they they were approved. They were withdrawn from the schedules, told they had to be cut from four films to three films.

Ken Loach21:34

Then they had to be cut from three films to two films, and then they were finally dropped, for no reason except that they didn't want those voices heard.

Presenter21:43

Record number five.

Ken Loach21:45

Well, this is a treat. It's the first opera I saw. Uh it's Labo M, and I sat there with a teenage girlfriend and listened to this uh stunning music, um, the duet at the the end of Act One, and I'd keep it for Saturday nights, and this'd be a night out.

Speaker 422:05

Also I we want to.

Speaker 422:11

All the children

Speaker 422:14

Clatching the colourful sword by the wall.

Speaker 422:51

Exactly what

Presenter22:59

Nicolai Gedda as Rodolfo and Mirella Freini as Mimi, singing the duet from the end of Act One of Puccini's Laboem with the orchestra and chorus of the Opera Theatre of Rome conducted by Thomas Schippers. So, Ken Loach, the nineties dawned and um well, you're back in fashion, really, I think. Can't stop winning awards. You've got a you've got a nickname for all these awards you win, I gather.

Ken Loach23:17

Put a

Ken Loach23:21

Well, then there's the the the Jimmy Riddle Challenge Cups really but um

Presenter23:26

It's not that you don't set store by them.

Ken Loach23:27

No, no. They're they're okay. I mean, I think that the truth about awards is that they are.

Ken Loach23:32

part of the uh promotion of films.

Ken Loach23:36

And uh they have to be seen in that light. It's not that people want to keep giving you things all the time, and you don't have to take it personally.

Presenter23:43

But it also promotes your film, as it were.

Ken Loach23:46

Yeah.

Presenter23:47

So in in that sense they do some good.

Ken Loach23:50

Yes, yes, th th they they they do, but you shouldn't believe

Ken Loach23:54

what they say about you, you know, otherwise that way disaster lies.

Presenter23:56

So you take'em home and use'em for doorstops?

Ken Loach23:59

Or something, yes.

Presenter24:00

Three prizes you've had from Cann in a row for hidden agenda about the police cover up, including the Stalker business. Riffraff about construction workers, Raining Stones about unemployment, and more since. Why do you think your fortunes have changed in the nineties? So so

Ken Loach24:19

Substantial

Presenter24:19

Substantially. What do you put it down to?

Ken Loach24:21

Well, I I I think there was the period in the early eighties when the a it was sexy to be right wing.

Ken Loach24:28

And I think that period is mercifully past. But I think also it was done to the ideas I had, which weren't

Ken Loach24:37

weren't very good. You take the blame. Yeah, absolutely. And I think with with RiffRaff particularly we

Ken Loach24:42

We tried to get back to the kind of energy that we'd had in Up the Junction and those early films and rediscover that uh kind of vigour that, you know, we tried to get then.

Presenter24:53

Your methods are very much uh your own no no caravans and no posh directors' chairs and umbrellas to keep the weather off as you would expect, very democratic unit. And you don't always use actors, do you?

Ken Loach25:06

Well, they're they're actors insofar as they create fiction in front of the camera, but they might not ab be experienced.

Ken Loach25:14

They

Presenter25:14

They might just be ordinary people being asked to act themselves.

Ken Loach25:18

Yes, it's never quite as simple as that because you've got to find people that the the audience will believe in.

Ken Loach25:24

So it's never a question of just picking up people off the street. I mean you talk to people, find people who might work, community groups or whatever, wherever you are, and then just see lots and lots of people. And the audition process is quite long. So by the time you say, look, would you like to be in it, you know that they can make a scene work, they can make it live, that the audience will respond to them.

Presenter25:45

But you're still asking them to be themselves, aren't you?

Ken Loach25:48

Well, in acting is revealing part of yourself.

Presenter25:52

But you're asking them to be

Presenter25:54

The p the kind of person they are I think you've said, you know, you can't act class.

Ken Loach25:59

Yes, I think that's a Yukonik class and it's difficult also to assume a dialect that isn't your own.

Ken Loach26:05

Because I think as a person in a film you see the whole person, you see the texture of their skin, you see the the way their nails are, you see the

Ken Loach26:16

Every the way they walk, the way they carry themselves, you see everything about them. And in a sense a film is a documentary about all the people in it.

Presenter26:24

But you're also after exactly how they would react, that person, in any given situation, aren't you? So, do you.

Ken Loach26:29

Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 426:30

Uh

Presenter26:31

Put them into a situation and, you know, let them improvise. Is that what happens?

Ken Loach26:36

Well, you you take them through the story. I mean the obviously the the film is scripted so that there's a script which they get, you know, section by section, so that the story unfolds as they as we make the film.

Presenter26:44

It has

Presenter26:48

You shoot chronologically.

Ken Loach26:49

Yes, and if there's a surprise then they're taken by surprise.

Presenter26:53

But it must go wrong. If you shove them into an unknown situation, take them by surprise, you know, something suddenly happens.

Ken Loach26:53

But it must go wrong.

Ken Loach26:59

Yes. Oh, yes. Well, we had that in London Freedom actually, where, um

Ken Loach27:03

the militia, they in the Spanish Civil War, uh there was a group of republican soldiers and um they were disarmed to be disarmed by the regular army under

Ken Loach27:15

Communist leadership.

Ken Loach27:17

And in the script they were to point their guns at our militia, which they did.

Ken Loach27:21

We had three cameras on this to watch what they would do. They didn't know it was going to happen.

Ken Loach27:25

They just turned tail and hid behind all the bushes, so we had three cameras pointing at an empty field.

Ken Loach27:31

So that was that was useful because if we'd simply done it as the script.

Ken Loach27:36

It would have been false,'cause that was their true reaction. So we had to change the script so that the army didn't point their guns at them straight away, so they could enter into a dialogue and then it got uh the guns started to be raised.

Ken Loach27:48

Uh

Presenter27:48

More music.

Ken Loach27:49

Yeah.

Ken Loach27:50

This is um

Ken Loach27:52

a Mozart piano concerto and one of our kids plays the piano.

Ken Loach27:56

So this with this one I shall remember the family. And it's um Daniel Barrenboim playing

Ken Loach28:02

The adagio from Mozart Piano Concerta number twenty three.

Presenter29:02

Daniel Barenboim with the Berlin Philharmonic, playing part of the Adagio from Mozart's Piano Concerto, number 23. Um I'm going to ask you a question now, Kinloach, that that you don't like.

Presenter29:13

What are your politics? What label can you put on yourself?

Ken Loach29:18

Well, I I wouldn't use a label because it it's used to um

Ken Loach29:22

In a way to diminish your work, and people see what you do through that l through that label. But I I guess um if we wanted to try and sum it up, I mean

Ken Loach29:31

I would say that if there was to be change for the better, and there said there needs to be, it'll come from the people who have most to gain from change, which is the people at the bottom. It won't come from people at the top.

Ken Loach29:43

who have an interest in keeping things as they are.

Presenter29:46

So you still believe in collectivism? You still believe collective action is the only way forward, do you?

Ken Loach29:51

Yes, because if we don't stick together we're we're screwed. I I think that the people who are who are exploited, who have nothing but their labor to sell, have to stick together. It's called solidarity. I think it's the basis of progress.

Presenter30:05

But what would you say to somebody who says surely that's that's out of date? The fact is at the end of the twentieth century we're better off in every way more people are better off in every way, both at home and at work, than ever they were at any other time in the twentieth century.

Ken Loach30:19

Um well, part of that is just the development of technology, which you would expect. But of course a lot of we we have huge areas both in this country and throughout Europe, not to mention the world.

Ken Loach30:30

of people who live in

Ken Loach30:32

alienation, deprivation, poverty, hunger, and yet we have the resources in the world to end it all. And we can only do that if we produce for need and not for profit. So we have to work together in the end.

Presenter30:46

And when people say to you, Ken, it's great stuff, but it's out of date, what do you say?

Ken Loach30:51

Well, I that's not a comment I recognize. I mean that that's um

Ken Loach30:56

People are kind of beset by fashion, you know, but the ideas or the concerns that people have now, they've always had.

Presenter31:03

Your politics meant you recently got left out of a a a government C D ROM celebrating the British film industry, didn't it? What happened?

Ken Loach31:12

Well, um I was asked um by the Foreign Office to

Ken Loach31:16

provide a pen portrait. So I submitted a small item and they uh they said they couldn't print it, which didn't cause me to lose too much sleep.

Presenter31:23

It was fairly knocking stuff though, I think, wasn't it?

Ken Loach31:26

I can't remember exactly.

Presenter31:28

Well, I just so happen to have a little note of it here. Um you're talking about the two curses of the labor movement, Stalinism and Social Democracy, the latter exemplified by the Blairite project of trying to give a radical gloss to hard line capitalist politics.

Ken Loach31:29

So happened.

Presenter31:42

You didn't really expect them to publish that, did you?

Ken Loach31:42

We didn't

Ken Loach31:45

Well, it would have given them a chance to show how uh liberal a society we are.

Presenter31:49

You also snubbed the establishment some years ago, I think, by turning down an OBE, didn't you?

Ken Loach31:56

Yes, that's true. And uh I didn't talk about it at the time and I I rather regret not talking about it because I think the honors list is is a way of the establishing the establishment rewarding themselves with a few people

Ken Loach32:09

thrown in to give it credibility.

Ken Loach32:11

And um it's quite difficult to refuse it, I think. And I think if people know that others have, then

Ken Loach32:18

Maybe more will refuse it.

Presenter32:20

Record number seven.

Ken Loach32:22

Um well, this is a song for the mornings really when um

Ken Loach32:26

I'm assuming there's a nice clear

Ken Loach32:28

Air and Blue Sky, and it's one of the songs of the Auvern, sung by Fredrika Vanstad.

Presenter33:16

Frederica von Stada singing I Have No One to Love Me from Contelube's Songs of the Auvergne with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Antonio de Almeida.

Presenter33:25

Um, you're sixty two and you've recently had intimations of mortality. I came upon you in a in a cafe, I think.

Presenter33:34

Does that has that made you think about life again?

Ken Loach33:37

Um, no, it's it was it was nothing. No, you just had to keep running harder, really.

Presenter33:42

Just a little flutter. It's not changed your attitude to life and work at all.

Ken Loach33:45

No, no, no, it just has to be more serious to do this.

Presenter33:48

You're obviously determined to ignore it, that's what it is.

Ken Loach33:50

That's what it is now.

Presenter33:51

How would you cope on a desert island? Would you cope or would you give up?

Ken Loach33:55

No, I I I wouldn't cope that well because, um

Ken Loach33:59

A a bit of loneliness is is quite good, but then there comes a point when you need conversation and you otherwise you'd start going

Ken Loach34:08

Do Lally. So I I think um I'd cope for a day, I think, two days.

Presenter34:13

And as you sit on the sand and dream,

Presenter34:16

What would you in an ideal world dream of?

Ken Loach34:19

M

Ken Loach34:20

Uh And identify

Ken Loach34:22

I don't really have real dreams. Well, they're very concrete. I mean, it would be getting the team getting promotion or it would be finding a really good project that we had a sense of how we could do it.

Ken Loach34:37

I feel very inadequate now.

Presenter34:38

Tell me about your last record.

Ken Loach34:41

This is Bach. Uh I find when um

Ken Loach34:46

Well, I did find when times were were very

Ken Loach34:50

bleak that um

Ken Loach34:52

The only music you could listen to was earlier music and uh I got to like Bach then and and this is um

Ken Loach35:01

The allegre from the concerto in D minor for Ober and Violin.

Presenter36:01

Heinz Holliger and Artu Grumio playing part of the Allegro from Bach's concerto in D minor for oboe and violin, with the Soloiste Romonde conducted by Arpad Gerich, and the new Philharmonia Orchestra conducted by Edo De Wart. Which of the eight records, Ken, if you could only take one, would you take?

Ken Loach36:19

Um, we'd have to with Beethoven, I think, because uh you'd have the strength to keep going.

Presenter36:25

What about your book as well as the Bible and Shakespeare?

Ken Loach36:27

Well, I thought about that. The books I I've enjoyed most have been history books and a book I I found was very important was the Isaac Deutsches Biography of Trotsky in three volumes.

Ken Loach36:37

But, you know, once you've read it, you've read it. And I also have Christopher Hill's book, The World Turned Upside Down, which is magnificent.

Ken Loach36:43

But I think it would have to be poetry. The first book of poetry I I ever had, which was the Palgrave Golden Treasury.

Presenter36:51

And what about your luxury?

Ken Loach36:53

It would be hard not to have a radio to get the football results.

Presenter36:57

You can have one. Ken Loach, thank you very much indeed for letting us hear your desert island discs.

Ken Loach36:58

Thank you.

Ken Loach37:01

Thank you.

Speaker 337:09

You've been listening to a podcast from the Desert Island Discs Archive. For more podcasts, please visit bbc.co.uk slash radio four.