Ken Loach Quotes

Kes is really about the colossal wastages of kids, whose lives and abilities are written off before they're even in their teens. We chose to make it in Barnsley, we chose a Secondary modern school on a new estate that's becoming shabby. But it could have been one of hundreds of schools or estates. We didn't happen to unearth one child star, there were several kids in that one school who could have done the main part, [Billy Casper].

Jo Coburn: There was a fringe meeting yesterday that we talked about at the beginning of the show where there was a discussion about the Holocaust, did it happen or didn't it ... would you say that was unacceptable?
Loach: I think history is for us all to discuss, wouldn't you?
Coburn: Say that again, sorry, I missed that.
Loach: History is for all of us to discuss. All history is our common heritage to discuss and analyze. The founding of the state of Israel, for example, based on ethnic cleansing is there for us all to discuss. The role of Israel now is there for us to discuss. So don't try to subvert that by false stories of anti-Semitism.

I turned down the OBE because it's not a club you want to join when you look at the villains who've got it.

How should we honour her? Let's privatise her funeral. Put it out to competitive tender and accept the cheapest bid. It's what she would have wanted.

Labour's rhetoric may be softer than the Tories', but its fundamental stance is limited by the same imperative: profit comes before all else. Can the Labour party be reclaimed? Or, rather, made anew into one that will represent the interests of the people?
History suggests it cannot. The high-water mark of 1945 is long gone. The many great achievements of that government have largely been dismantled, either with the collusion of Labour or directly by the party when it has been in power.

I'm a great friend of Ken's, and Perdition does not change that, [...] [b]ut when I think of the man who made Kes which tells us more movingly about the disinherited than any other film I've seen, I wonder what has happened. Poor Cow, Up the Junction and Cathy Come Home were all films of great humanity and were probably political films in their own way, but the compassion conquered all. He seems to be moving away from that and becoming more politically motivated and less interesting. It's a great pity.

Labour HQ finally decided I'm not fit to be a member of their party, as I will not disown those already expelled.
Well, I am proud to stand with the good friends and comrades victimised by the purge.
There is indeed a witch-hunt.
Starmer and his clique will never lead a party of the people.
We are many, they are few. Solidarity.

We had won the war together [...] Together we could win the peace. If we could collectively plan to wage military campaigns, could we not plan to build houses, create a health service and make goods needed for reconstruction? The spirit of the age was to be our brother's and our sister's keeper.

If you have a society where a large section believe they are not part of the political discourse, that is a situation for trouble. The Labour election of 1945 was a tremendous victory for democratic ownership of the economy. We need to remember and learn from the lessons.

MAX STAFFORD-CLARK claims that the decision to ban Perdition from the Royal Court was his alone (Letters, March 3).
Nonsense. It was clearly a response to the massive campaign mounted by Zionist groups in the weeks before the production.
The unprincipled, mendacious and consciously distorting articles, the meetings between Zionist campaigners and members of the Royal Court board, the threats about the future of the Court this was the pressure that caused Stafford-Clark to cave in. Or is he now saying that [the] orchestrated furore was just a coincidence? Remember, his objection was not to the acting or direction, but to the text.

[On antisemitism in the Labour Party] It's funny these stories suddenly appeared when Jeremy Corbyn became leader, isn't it?

[On politics in the 1960s] There was a feeling that there was a great possibility of political change. Obviously, no one knew in what form it would come, but there was a sense that the working class was getting politically conscious, particularly those involved in occupations and industrial disputes.
The quality of political discussion was higher. People understood die analysis even if they disagreed with it.

The Labour party is part of the problem, not the solution. The Greens have many admirable policies, but we look in vain for a thoroughgoing analysis for fundamental change. We need a new voice, a new movement – a new party.

[N]othing has been a greater instigator of antisemitism than the self-proclaimed Jewish state itself... Until we deal with that, until that is acknowledged, then racism, I'm afraid, will be with us.

But Loach was not always a lefty – far from it. At school, he represented the Tories in a mock election. "I don’t think too much should be made of that," he says. I had assumed he was playing devil's advocate, or it was just a passing teenage whim, but no, he says: these were the values with which he was brought up. Loach's father was an electrician who became a foreman in his factory in Nuneaton – a classic working-class Tory, he says.