Quotes from Ken Loach

We have what we call 'fake left' politicians, like Ed Miliband and those who went before him.

I think the Norweigan model of municipalities owning cinemas and being programmed by people who know about films is a good one.

I hate programmes where some TV personality looks you in the eye and tells you what to think - the Andrew Marr version of history. I hate the authorial voice telling you what to think.

I think it's time British filmmakers stopped allowing themselves to be colonized so ruthlessly by U.S. ideas and stopped looking so slavishly to the U.S. market. It demeans filmmaking when they do that.

I'm not a great fan of very short films.

A film has got to demand to be made. Otherwise - if it's just, 'Shall we? Why not?' - you shouldn't make it.

My mum was a peacemaker, and in personal things I tend to do that, because I can't deal with personal conflict. I find that horrible.

There has been no more principled opposition to racism than Jeremy Corbyn: he was getting arrested for protesting against Apartheid when the rest of them were doing deals and calling Nelson Mandela a terrorist.

I was an understudy in a show called 'One Over The Eight' with Kenneth Williams and Sheila Hancock.

We made 'The Wind That Shakes the Barley' about the war of independence and the civil war, which were the pivotal moments of Irish history, really. 'Jimmy's Hall' would seem to be a smaller story 10 years later.

Paul Laverty is a wonderful writer and we've worked together for a quarter of a century.

One lesson to learn is that the press and the broadcasters are not neutral. And it seems we have to learn it each time there is a dispute: they are actually committed to one side.

We did a film called 'Kes,' which is about a lad with a talent that nobody can recognise, or that nobody chose to recognise.

There's a heresy which is perpetuated by film school that to be a great director you have to write your own stuff.

History is for all of us to discuss. All history is our common heritage to discuss and analyze. The founding of the state of Israel, for example, based on ethnic cleansing is there for us all to discuss.

Jeremy Corbyn's election was the most hopeful thing since the Labour Party began. He's the first Labour leader who's ever stood on the picket line along with workers.

We have to defend the migrant workers and give them our support and demand that they have the rights that workers here have from day one, but absolutely hate the system that forces people to leave their country, leave their homes, leave their families, to go somewhere else to be exploited.

It's time to put back on the agenda the importance of public ownership and public good, the value of working together collaboratively, not in competition.

The far right was on the march in the 1930s, and we defeated the fascists through a great united working-class effort. That sense of unity and strength is what gave people confidence to change things.

It's what people have always done. They have always told stories, put on plays. It's characters and narrative and thought and context and resolution so you reflect the way the world is in some way. It comes out of experience. I think it's OK to do that.

Anti-Semitism is a form of racism, and all forms of racism are horrible.

I made one contribution to a film about the 11th of September: there were 11 directors and everyone had a different take on that. Some I thought were valid and some less so, but there was a substantial point that knitted all the films together - a comment on the bombing of the World Trade Center - so there was something to get your teeth into.

The Holocaust is as real a historical event as World War II itself and not to be challenged.

The worst thing about being a freelance film director is that you're scrambling around Soho with a briefcase, looking for somewhere to make phone calls. That was my position for 10 years.