The Old Oak
Directed by Ken Loach
Starring Dave Turner, Ebla Mari, Claire Rodgerson
In English with English sub-titles
In cinemas

The Old Oak is the latest movie directed by the great British film maker, Ken Loach, and is widely expected to be his last.

Loach rose to fame during the glory days of what could be called the post-WWII social contract. In those few decades, Western governments essentially agreed to certain important social reforms, such as the British National Health Service in return for social peace.

That arrangement was predicated on the profit boom created by rebuilding Germany and Japan and the super-exploitation of the developing world. But irrepressible explosions erupted nonetheless. Colonised countries won their independence, and unions and young people pushed the boundaries of what was considered possible in the imperialist homelands, creating a vibrant left-wing culture.

In all his films Loach draws upon the radical politics that he acquired from his involvement with British far left organisations such as the Workers Revolutionary Party, the International Marxist Group and the Socialist Workers Party.

In 2021, Loach was expelled from the Labour Party because of his membership of Labour Against the Witchhunt, which was proscribed by the party leadership as part of the campaign to destroy Jeremy Corbyn. Loach’s crime was failing to “disown” Labour members who had been expelled from the party.

In a 2011 newspaper interview, Loach expressed his basic philosophy. He said of working-class people:

“They live life very vividly, and the stakes are very high if you don’t have a lot of money to cushion your life. Also, because they’re the front line of what we came to call the class war. Either through being workers without work, or through being exploited where they were working. And I guess for a political reason, because we felt, and I still think, that if there is to be change, it will come from below. It won’t come from people who have a lot to lose, it will come from people who will have everything to gain.”

Ken Loach’s cinematic output uses microcosms of everyday working-class life to reveal larger truths about capitalism. For example, in Kes (1969) the metaphor of falconry illuminates how a kid from a dysfunctional working-class family breaks free from alienation when he adopts a fledgling kestrel and learns to train it.

In 1960s TV dramas like Up the Junction and Cathy Come Home Loach protested poverty and homelessness in Britain. Days of Hope was a four-part TV series covering the development of the British labour movement from the end of WWI up to the 1926 General Strike.

Loach has made films about the Irish War of Independence (The Wind That Shakes the Barley) and the Spanish Civil War (Land and Freedom). He branched into documentary film with McLibel, about the anarchists who beat McDonalds in a famous court battle.

The Old Oak appears to be part of a trilogy of films that started with 2016’s I, Daniel Blake, which was a searing attack on the “help and hassle” social security system established under neo-liberalism. It was followed in 2019 by Sorry We Missed You, about gig-employment workers, conned into franchise arrangements that strip them of rights.

The Old Oak is set in a decaying ex-coal mining village near Durham, in northern England. For Australian audiences the distributors have added sub-titles to help with the thick accents and unique English usages.

The village has no future and its present is characterised by drugs, drunkenness, mental illness and hopelessness. Without warning, busloads of Syrian refugees are bused in by distant bureaucrats, shoved into vacant houses and left to fend for themselves.

This allows Loach to demonstrate the social bases for Brexit racism in these once-proud working-class bastions, once known as the Red Wall of socialism.

The plot is simple: publican, TJ Ballantyne (Dave Turner) is struggling to hold onto his pub and must listen endlessly to the daily complaints of his regulars. Those regulars become some of the worst racists as the Syrians arrive.

But Ballantyne reluctantly strikes up a friendship with one of the refugees, Yara (Ebla Mari) and comes to know her community. And through Ballentine’s eyes Yara comes to understand the traditions of union power and solidarity that once were the town’s lifeblood.

The dramatic tension revolves around which culture will prevail: the misery of neo-liberalism or the banner of strength, solidarity and resistance?

At age 87, this may indeed be Loach’s last film. If so, it is his love letter to the working class that he has served all his career.

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