6 - Politics beyond the screen

Summary

For if we are serious about even political life we have to enter that world in which people live as they can as themselves, and then necessarily live within a whole complex of work and love and illness and natural beauty. If we are serious socialists, we shall then often find within and cutting across this real substance – always, in its details, so surprising and often vivid – the profound social and historical conditions and movements which enable us to speak, with some fullness of voice, of a human history.

Raymond Williams

Walking through Glasgow’s Kelvingrove Park one spring morning in 2017, I receive a phone call from Tommy Breslin, a trade unionist and activist in Glasgow’s radical film scene. During the call, Tommy explains that he is helping to organise the speakers for a forthcoming Glasgow May Day rally and, as such, is looking for Ken Loach’s contact details. Eager to capitalise on the interest surrounding I, Daniel Blake, which had provoked considerable political commentary since its release the previous year, he hopes Loach will consider being the rally’s keynote speaker. Details are exchanged and, as it transpires, Paul Laverty addresses the Glasgow event, with images associated with the film featuring prominently on publicity posters.

This exchange is useful in indicating something of Loach’s, and Laverty’s, broader political activity. It also exemplifies how activists have utilised Loach’s work, indicative of how it resonates beyond the screen with working-class organisations. My Certain Tendencies in Loach’s Cinema started with politics, and it ends with politics, and in this chapter I deal with off-screen political engagement, exploring how Loach has utilised the platform provided by his films’ success and his position on the international film community to intervene in political discourse. As such, and in the spirit of Raymond William’s words above, I illustrate something of how Loach enters the world in which people live, not simply through the cinema screen, but through film-related political engagement . I begin by analysing Loach’s relationship with the Cannes Film Festival and my observations from attending The Angels’ Share’s world premiere and associated events at the 65th festival in 2012.