Ken Loach Quotes

Every time a colony wants independence, the questions on the agenda are: a) how do you get the imperialists out, and b) what kind of society do you build? There are usually the bourgeois nationalists who say, ‘Let’s just change the flag and keep everything as it was.’ Then there are the revolutionaries who say, ‘Let’s change the property laws.’ It’s always a critical moment.

A movie isn’t a political movement, a party or even an article. It’s just a film. At best it can add its voice to public outrage.

One lesson to learn is that the press and the broadcasters are not neutral. And it seems we have to learn it each time there is a dispute: they are actually committed to one side.

The Iraq war is a huge subject and there have been many films about it. But it was when the private contractors started taking over and taking responsibilities from the regular army, which hides the war. You have these private armies of mercenaries acting with immunity for their actions, the worst of which was the Blackwater case where they killed 17 Iraqi civilians and the guys who did it just went home. We [screenwriter Paul Laverty and Loach] felt this deserved a story.

A film is one small voice among other large ones. The film is a tiny part of the discourse. You do what you can but under no illusions of what a film can do.

About Thatcher’s death: Let’s privatise her funeral. Put it out on competetive tender and accept the cheapest bid. That’s what she would have wanted.

The most depressing thing is the political slogan: there is no alternative. But there is.

The duty of a film director is to focus more on the soul of the spectator.

I turned down the OBE because its not a club you want to join when you look at the villains whove got it. Its all the things I think are despicable: patronage, deferring to the monarchy and the name of the British Empire, which is a monument of exploitation and conquest.

In the end the privatisation of war is not acceptable. We shouldn’t be issuing these sub-contracts to these contracting companies because the people who run them are making millions. There should be no relationship between ex-politicians and them, like John Reid and Malcolm Rifkind, who are now associated with contracting companies having been ministers of defence. That’s unacceptable.

Shaping it is something I would expect to do together with a writer, because that’s a director’s job.

History is contemporary. Your understanding of history confirms what you think of the present. It’s not neutral. I would be very surprised if people with a different view of the present, don’t take issue with my view of the past. I just hope that people deal with the content of the film.