The rank and file ken loach

Barbara Barrie. Duggie Brown. Jimmy Coleman. Shane Connaughton. Jack Connell. Ken Loach. Storyline Edit. Add content advisory. Did you know Edit. Crazy credits On-screen caption in opening titles: "A film based principally on events that took place in Lancashire in the Spring of ".

User reviews 1 Review. Top review. Rousing Call for Real Democracy. This early Tv film by the great politically conscious British director Ken Loach arguably no other movie maker has done more with their work to illuminate timely issues of social justice uses an event that had happened just one year before the telecast to call for industrial democracy.

Workers in a company town at a glass factory go out on a wildcat strike for fairer pay when the bureaucratic union structure that is legally supposed to represent them fails to support their issues. The dramatization, following up on a similar exploration of labor problems in Loach's The Big Flame two years before, raises a larger question of democracy beyond just the workplace.

Governments around the world not just in the UK claim to be democracies but in fact leave most of their citizens without any direct say in politics and with a system of representation where the officials claiming to act in their interests have become way too settled and comfortable with the corporate powers and have actually sold out and become corrupt.

Loach's recreation of a specific local action in its historical context is devastating and we are reminded that the British Labor Party hadn't really done much to help the workers since , when there had been a General Strike. Details Edit. Allen acknowledged that the play "was written in three weeks Regardless of these doubts, one of the real strengths of the Play for Today strand BBC, was its ability, as here, to fictionalise an actual event for a large audience while the issues around it were still current.

Helens in , although for legal reasons the BBC insisted that the firm be renamed Wilkinsons and the action relocated to the Potteries. The play depicts a wildcat strike among rank and file union members antagonised by a too-cosy relationship between the board and union executive that had resulted in the gradual erosion of pay and conditions. Unlike 'The Big Flame' , which was more obviously Trotskyite in approach, this play is more concerned with the specific events of the strike and the subsequent betrayal of the workers by both the TUC and Wilkinsons.

Loach, as in his earlier work, uses a documentary approach to cover the action, and the rank and file meetings in particular look as if they were lifted directly from contemporary news reports. Ultimately, Allen uses the events of the play to launch an attack on the then recently introduced Industrial Relations Act, which would effectively outlaw any similar forms of industrial action in the future.

Letterboxd is an independent service created by a small team, and we rely mostly on the support of our members to maintain our site and apps. Where to watch. Director Ken Loach. Graeme MacDonald. Jim Allen. Roy Watts.