Ken Loach is in the pub. He’s sitting at a table with Paul Laverty, writer and collaborator on most of his recent output, and The Big Issue. We are in the Prince of Wales on Drury Lane in Central London, considering the big question posed by their latest film, The Old Oak.
This film might even be Loach’s final work – he is now 87. It completes a trilogy of films set in the north-east, tackling big issues. In 2016, Loach and Laverty portrayed the brutality of benefits sanctions and the desperation fuelling the rapid expansion of food banks in I, Daniel Blake – changing the conversation, if not the government’s cruelty.
Three years later, Sorry We Missed You highlighted the devastating impact of the gig economy and its erosion of workers’ rights. Again, it highlighted and humanised a hot-button political issue. Both films were powerful, both critically acclaimed, and both found an appreciative audience, particularly among those despairing at the Conservative government of the day.
Now, The Old Oak completes a trilogy of films linked by austerity, each dealing in some way with the hostile environment encountered by people living in poverty, facing hardship, insecure employment or arriving in the UK.
“We had done two films in the north-east,” Loach says. “One about
