One Week with John Gulliver: Film director Ken Loach comes clean on his latest production- Bread and Roses

Published: 4 March 2010

Ken Loach comes clean on his latest film

 

WHEN I met award-winning film director Ken Loach the other evening he was clearly annoyed with London University and other Bloomsbury halls of learning for paying their cleaners poor wages and blocking them from joining unions. 

But wouldn’t life without our invisible army of people who keep our streets and offices clean grind to a halt?

I met Loach at the university after a packed showing of his film Bread and Roses, a tale of office cleaners in Los Angeles. 

Loach, who lives in Kentish Town, admitted to me that he had overlooked the life of cleaners until he stumbled across them in California a decade ago. This led to his stirring film.

“Of all the films I’ve made Bread and Roses is one of my favourites,” he told me.

Turning to the universities in Bloomsbury, Loach was not only unhappy with the poor working ­conditions of cleaners but also blamed unions for being too maleable. He urged cleaners and ­students to take the kind of direct action portrayed in the film. 

“If the people at the top of these universities don’t see it then it’s up to you to force them to,” he warned.

I wondered whether after making films about Los Angeles cleaners, the Nicaraguan war, Glasgow, Britain and Ireland, and Eric ­Cantona, he feels he has any more  to make? 

“Palestine is the last frontier,” he admitted, “but at 75 years old it’s a bit daunting!”

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I must have it!’ Archer has sketches in sights

LORD Archer was the star guest at his friend, the great illustrator Ronald ­Searle’s 90th birthday party on Tuesday.

 

Unfortunately, Searle couldn’t attend an exhibition of his priceless works in his ­honour. I gather he rarely leaves his home in France and can only be contacted by fax.

As for Jeffrey Archer, his reputation as an author and politician was eclipsed by lurid headlines in the public print.

But in meeting him I immediately cast them out of my mind, as you would expect.

A friend and collaborator with Searle, Archer provided 30 works of the artist he has amassed over the past quarter of a century to the Chris Beetles Gallery in Ryder Street, West End, where you can enjoy them. 

The pair recently collaborated on Archer’s collection of short stories, Cat O’Nine Tales.

Rumours of a rare public appearance did not materialise, with Mr Searle remaining at home in France, but that didn’t seem to bother the hundreds of people who crammed into the gallery. 

Archer seemed keen to add to his ­collection, although I couldn’t help but think he should appreciate what he’s got. On two occasions, he insisted: “I must have it”, only to be told “you already own that one Jeffrey”.

The exhibition is a glorious eclectic  mix of typical Searle cartoons, portraits of the newspaper magnate Lord Beaverbrook and other figures of the post-war years as well as images for advertising campaigns that are just as funny as they were 50 years ago. 

But I didn’t want to leave a small drawing on yellowing parchment of a face sketched while ­Searle was a prisoner of the Japanese ­during the war – this with scores of ­others, secretly drawn in prisoner of war camps, were smuggled out as a terrible record of the brutalities our men suffered.

This record alone gives Searle an unforgettable footnote in our history.

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Protest, just like old days?

I WAS standing outside the Commons this week talking to a policeman and I got a strange déjà vu feeling.

 

The officer was ­surprised by the large numbers who’d turned up to a public meeting about protesters facing heavy jail sentences after last year’s demonstrations against Israel’s bombardment of Gaza.

More than a year ago, riot police charged thousands of demonstrators at a protest rally outside Israel’s embassy in Kensington and arrested 119. Since then, 22 who pleaded guilty to violent disorder have been handed sentences of up to two-and-a-half years. 

Last week a 19-year-old medical student was given a year for throwing a plastic water bottle at the embassy. The judge said he wanted “to send a message of deterrence”. Those refusing to plead guilty have been warned they face up to seven-and-a-half years.

A lad throwing a bottle on a typical Saturday night would probably face a night in the cells. The police reaction, the Crown’s use of such serious public order laws and the harsh sentences remind me of the atmosphere of the 1984 miners’ strike.

Genially explaining why he couldn’t let me into the meeting, the policeman said it had already filled four ­meeting rooms.

I wondered whether he too had noticed temperatures were running high on demonstrations nowadays, a bit like the 80s? Well, he pondered, after more than 30 years on the job “things are a bit like when I started out,” he confided.

It took a warm smile, a flash of my Press ­credentials and a solemn promise of very good behaviour to get into the meeting.

Inside, Islington MP Jeremy Corbyn and east London MP George ­Galloway addressed more than 100. ­Galloway blamed the police for excessive ­violence shielding Israel’s embassy. 

Stop the War chairman Andrew Murray, who lives in Hampstead, accused the courts of meting out “political ­justice”. Holborn-based Imran Khan, who represented the family of murdered teenager Stephen Lawrence, is expected to appear for some of the protesters. 

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To Hull and back for Freedom Pass

I HAVE had evening phone calls from councillors over the years but never once has a council clerk rung me after 5.30pm.

 

But, astonishingly enough, that’s what ­happened to campaigner Mick Farrant when he received a call from a desk at the Town Hall at 6.15pm last night (Wednesday).

Mick, who applied for a renewal of his ­Freedom Pass in mid-November, is still waiting for the council to process his application.

Aware of the Freedom Pass deadline of March 31, Mick was assured by a worried official that his pass will soon be with him, and that a fault with the processing system at Hull, where passes are being churned out for London, is responsible for the delay.  Mick’s bearded face had caused too much confusion for Hull’s sensitive machine!

Mick told me if he does get his pass it’ll be due to my little recent piece that alerted readers to a possible backlog building up in despatching passes to nearly 30,000 pensioners in Camden entitled to them. “If it wasn’t for the paper I would still be whistling in the dark!” he said.

Let’s hope Mick will soon receive his pass but that still leaves at least several hundred oldies – perhaps more than 1,000 – in the borough still patiently waiting for them.

If applicants do not receive their passes by March 31 they will have to dig into their limited income to cover high bus and tube fares.

After a conversation with Martin Davies, a Tory councillor ­responsible for the ­Freedom Pass operation in Camden, I got the impression he can hear the clock ticking.