Top 70 Ken Loach Quotes

Jeremy Corbyn’s election was the most hopeful thing since the Labour Party began. He’s the first Labour leader who’s ever stood on the picket line along with workers.

It’s more interesting to see new people on the screen when you go to the cinema. I don’t want to see the same old faces.

We have to defend the migrant workers and give them our support and demand that they have the rights that workers here have from day one, but absolutely hate the system that forces people to leave their country, leave their homes, leave their families, to go somewhere else to be exploited.

I try to avoid mirrors.

Cannes is the largest festival of world cinema.

If all political parties are committed to the role of the free market, the politicians act as, I don’t know, as traffic policemen; they stand outside the ring and let the real decisions be slugged out by entrepreneurs. That doesn’t seem to me a proper democracy.

I was stage-struck from an early age. I just loved the language. We lived quite near Stratford so I would cycle and watch the plays.

You’ll get unsociable people whatever the nationality, colour, race or creed. I guess the British abroad have probably got the worst record of anyone.

The Labour election of 1945 was a tremendous victory for democratic ownership of the economy.

If we believe in the free market, then that leads to the big corporations taking power, that leads to this competition to lower wages, and that leads to precarious work.

How families interact is not some abstract concept of mother, son, father, daughter; it has to do with economic circumstances, the work they do, the time they can spend with each other.

We have what we call ‘fake left’ politicians, like Ed Miliband and those who went before him.

If change is to come, it must come from the working class. That’s why telling their story is important. That’s why knowing our history is important.

Paul Laverty is a wonderful writer and we’ve worked together for a quarter of a century.

I hate programmes where some TV personality looks you in the eye and tells you what to think – the Andrew Marr version of history. I hate the authorial voice telling you what to think.

The Holocaust is as real a historical event as World War II itself and not to be challenged.

People who are deaf or hard of hearing need all the support we can give them.

What strikes me – we’re apparently at the mercy of an economic system that will never work and the big question is, how do we change it, not how do we put up with it.

My father worked in a factory and as a child it felt very secure. It felt very secure because everybody had work, the schools were free, so there was a security of knowing that the war had finished and families would come together again.

I challenge the idea that films about rich people are escapism and films about working class people are dour and sad. I find the opposite’s the case.

It’s a great privilege to make a film, to have it shown, and for people to see it.

If you think back to the great French directors it’s difficult to think of British film-makers who are comparable.

I wasn’t from a political family. Nobody talked politics.

Gordon Brown is and always will be committed to the interests of big business, so there’s no way I want to be involved in the Labour Party again.

Oh, I don’t like labels.

Eric Cantona is a giggler.

We made ‘The Wind That Shakes the Barley’ about the war of independence and the civil war, which were the pivotal moments of Irish history, really. ‘Jimmy’s Hall’ would seem to be a smaller story 10 years later.

Don’t take advice. You have to make up your own mind what to do from the beginning.

There’s so much control, so many executive producers, so many people looking over their shoulder, so many people trying to second-guess the boss. The space for writers and directors and actors to be creative is zilch.

I think the Norweigan model of municipalities owning cinemas and being programmed by people who know about films is a good one.

In the 1980s, I had a lot of films, documentaries for television, which were about why the trade unions had failed to organize resistance to Margaret Thatcher’s plans. And they were banned. I had to fight for those films.

I’ve been going to Labour party meeting for over 50 years.

The thing is, it’s much easier to be a rightwing populist than a leftwing one, because the left always have to explain why things are the way they are. The right can just blame the foreigners.

Most cities are eclectic. There’s a bit of medieval, Georgian, some Victorian and some 20th century. That’s fine. Bath is different because it was built within 100 years or less. It has a homogeneity.

The E.U. is an economically right-wing organization that prioritizes the interests of big corporations.

If you’re a politician, you can see there might be times when, to secure the greater good, you have to take a backwards step. That is a matter of tactics.

It would be exciting to take part in what we now call the Enlightenment at the end of the 18th century, but with modern dentistry.

The worst thing about being a freelance film director is that you’re scrambling around Soho with a briefcase, looking for somewhere to make phone calls. That was my position for 10 years.

I think you find amongst ordinary people there are a lot of people that are really talented.

When you’re at the wrong end of your 70s, everything is a challenge.

For the writers I have worked with and for me, the relationship between the personal comedy of daily life and the economic context in which that life happens has always been very significant.

Those in power always try to distort reality, to suit their needs and keep things safe.

You’ve only got to look at a film to see that it has to be collaborative – the images, the performances and all the art direction and the costume, everything shrieks collaboration.

I was an understudy in a show called ‘One Over The Eight’ with Kenneth Williams and Sheila Hancock.

Film is one small voice in a great cacophony of noise from newspapers, from the television, from social media, so it can have a little dent, you know? It can help to create a climate of opinion.

People talk about Thatcherism all the time. I felt it was important to record the memories of those almost written out of history who upheld the spirit of ’45.

Every four or five films we’ve made a film that has gone on TV first. It’s quite nice to tap into the TV audience, but it is nice to see it on the big screen too.

The European Union is an institution that is in the interest of big business, not the European people. So it’s understandable that some people thought we should leave.

We did a film called ‘Kes,’ which is about a lad with a talent that nobody can recognise, or that nobody chose to recognise.

There’s no great desire to own lots of stuff – and I don’t. You can only live in one house and drive one car.

Well, I think by and large, certainly in terms of cinema, American culture dominates our cinema, mainly in the films that are shown in the multiplexes but also in the way that it has a magnetic effect on British films.

Anti-Semitism is a form of racism, and all forms of racism are horrible.

The old Craven Cottage stadium at Fulham, before they built the river stand; that was a great place to watch football. When the football wasn’t very good, people used to turn around and watch the boats on the river.

Because I’ve been around a long time I get a bit of leeway that other people don’t.

Bath was dusty and a little shabby when we moved here. It did look its age and you felt its history in its streets and buildings and little alleyways. The sense of the past was palpable. There were some bad modern buildings but there was a patina of age.

All politicians will say they celebrate the NHS, but to a greater or lesser extent, they’ve all undermined it.

I’m not a great fan of very short films.

The problem is, if you make a film that has certain implications in the story, and then you don’t follow through, it’s a cop out really, isn’t it?

There are different cinema traditions in France, Spain and other European countries. There’s a much stronger intellectual tradition: cinema is seen in a more serious way.

You always feel a degree of insecurity about getting through a film.

I think that cinema is medium of communication. It’s as valid as novels or fine art.

If you have a society where a large section believe they are not part of the political discourse, that is a situation for trouble.

My mum was a peacemaker, and in personal things I tend to do that, because I can’t deal with personal conflict. I find that horrible.

The far right was on the march in the 1930s, and we defeated the fascists through a great united working-class effort. That sense of unity and strength is what gave people confidence to change things.

There’s a heresy which is perpetuated by film school that to be a great director you have to write your own stuff.

Preparation is really important for actors; they need to know who they are, where they’re from, and the experiences up to the point that we make the film.

It’s what people have always done. They have always told stories, put on plays. It’s characters and narrative and thought and context and resolution so you reflect the way the world is in some way. It comes out of experience. I think it’s OK to do that.