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Labour Party Broadcast: Ken Loach makes video supporting Jeremy Corbyn's leadership

'There's anger because people can't get on, there's anger because people can't get anywhere to live, there's anger because young people are not getting the jobs they want,' says Labour leader

Maya Oppenheim
Tuesday 16 May 2017 16:45 BST
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Ken Loach makes film about Jeremy Corbyn for the general election

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Veteran filmmaker Ken Loach has made a profile of Jeremy Corbyn for the Labour Party’s general election campaign.

The acclaimed director, who is famed for making films which explore social issues such as poverty and labour rights, interviewed the leader of Labour Party and his supporters in an attempt to capture the politician’s human side.

Mr Corbyn can be heard hailing the “history”, “beauty”, and “diversity” of the UK in the clip but also arguing we currently live in a country which works in the interests of the few rather than the many.

"I love this country,” Mr Corbyn tells the camera. “I love the history, the beauty, the diversity of this country. But people are not at ease. There's inequality, there's injustice, there's anger.”

"There's anger because people can't get on, there's anger because people can't get anywhere to live, there's anger because young people are not getting the jobs they want.

"Let's do it differently; where we work from the principle that the role of government is to give everybody a decent chance, to have public services that are there for us, to have an economy that works for all.

“It’s not easy any of this, but surely that’s much better than food banks, people sleeping on the streets, schools collecting money from the parents in order to pay the teachers. Surely the effort of a government that works for all and encourages a society to works together has got to be better than a government that works for the few.”

An ex-veteran can be heard explaining why he respects Mr Corbyn as a leader in the clip, saying: "As a former British soldier who served in Afghanistan and lost friends there and in Iraq I support Jeremy Corbyn 's opposition to the wars. I trust Jeremy to keep us safe”.

“I wasn’t really interested in the Labour Party before but for the first time this is a leader I can really get behind,” says another supporter. “He is a decent principled man who seems like he really cares for ordinary people.”

Loach, who directed acclaimed films such as Kes, Cathy Come Home and I, Daniel Blake, spent time with Mr Corbyn during the early days of the election campaign. Appearing on stage at a recent Communication Workers Union event, Loach argued Mr Corbyn had been on the “right side of history” throughout his life.

The left-wing director has critiqued social issues on a number of occasions and used his acceptance speech at this year’s BAFTAs in February 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 is the basis of his film - and the Government's failure to welcome refugee children who are escaping 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,” he told the audience.

"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."

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