Baftas 2017: Ken Loach attacks Government as Stephen Fry takes dig at Donald Trump

Film-wise there were no massive surprises in terms of winners and losers

The BAFTAs is famed for being devoid of controversy and this year was no different. One would have been forgiven for thinking Donald Trump was not President and Brexit was not on our doorstep.

Apart from Stephen Fry’s restrained jibe at Mr Trump’s decision to label Meryl Streep an “overrated actress”, Mr Trump was notably absent from the room and all were on their best behaviour. To put it simply, there was certainly no equivalent of Fry’s “bag lady” moment at the 70^th awards.

Nevertheless, Ken Loach did use his acceptance speech to rebuke the “callous brutality” of the government’s benefits system and its “disgraceful” treatment of refugees. Winning the BAFTA for Best British Film for I, Daniel Blake, he spoke out about both the benefits systems - which forms the basis for his film - and the Government's failure to welcome refugee children fleeing the atrocities of Syria and other conflicts.

"Thank you to the academy for endorsing the truths of what the film says, which hundreds and thousands of people in this country know, the most vulnerable and poorest are treated by the Government with a callous brutality that is disgraceful, a brutality that extends to keeping out refugee children we promised to help and that's a disgrace too,” Loach said.

"Films can do many things, they can entertain, terrify, they can make us laugh and tell us something about the real world we live in - sorry it's early for a political speech - and in that real world it's getting darker and in the struggle that is coming between rich and poor and the wealthy and the privileged and the big corporations and politicians who speak for them."

"The rest of us on the other side - filmmakers know which side they are on and despite the glitz and glamour of occasions like this, we are with the people."

When it came to the winners and losers, there were also no massive surprises. While it was a good night for feel-good musical La La Land, it did not break the Bafta record set by Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, which won nine prizes in the 1970s, as some had predicted. Instead it walked away with just five awards.

In the end, the prizes were shared pretty widely, with more than 15 winners including Fences, Manchester By the Sea, Lion, Hacksaw Ridge, Jackie, and Florence Foster Jenkins. Some were unhappy Moonlight went home empty-handed.

Viola Davis won best-supporting actress for her role in Fences as had been widely tipped. She used her acceptance speech to pay tribute to her late father, a horse trainer who “died of cancer at MacDonald’s” where he worked as a janitor.

“One of the most devastating things that went through my mind when he took his last breath was: did his life matter?” she told the audience.

“He said that our lives matter as African-Americans,” she also said of her father, garnering a heavy round of applause. “The horse groomer, the sanitation worker, the people who grew up under the heavy brute of Jim Crow, the people who did not make it into history books but they have a story and those stories deserve to be told because they lived”.

Emma Stone won best actress for La La Land, using her speech to launch into a veiled critique of the ramifications of a Trump presidency. "The US and the world seems to being going through a bit of a time that is divisive and I'm so glad we can get together in the film industry to... celebrate the positive,” she told the audience.