Left Unity congratulates Ken Loach and his team for winning the Palme d’Or at this year’s Cannes film festival with I, Daniel Blake. The film is a powerful and damning indictment of the government-provoked crisis in the welfare and housing sectors which leaves hundreds of thousands struggling to survive. Ken Loach has an outstanding track record of both political film-making and political activism and he has made an extraordinary mark with his work over the last decades. His early film Cathy Come Home awoke Britain to the housing crisis and the plight of the homeless in the 1960s. Throughout his work he has always been absolutely clear about where the responsibility for these crises lies – with the policies of the ruling elites and the class system which blights and distorts our society and economy.

Ken Loach’s 2013 film Spirit of ’45, celebrating and defending Britain’s welfare state, has been a powerful factor in the growth of the anti-austerity movement in this country and in advancing the values and politics which have brought Jeremy Corbyn to power in the Labour Party.

On accepting the award, Ken said that the world ‘is at a dangerous point right now. We are in the grip of a dangerous project of austerity.’ We pay tribute to Ken’s outstanding role in the struggle against austerity, the inspiration that his films provide for millions across the globe, and his commitment to international soldarity, working with movements and peoples across Europe and beyond in the struggle for social and economic transformation.

Left Unity