Dave Turner as TJ in Ken Loach’s The Old Oak [Joss Barratt_Sixteen Films]

THE OLD OAK
Directed by Ken Loach
Certificate: 12a
☆☆☆☆☆

KEN Loach has completed his trilogy of films set today in the north-east, and The Old Oak is a worthy addition to his extensive political canon.

TJ Ballantyne (Dave Turner) runs the Old Oak pub, just about the last boozer standing in a former mining town. He watches as a coach arrives in the village with families from Syria, who are moving into empty terraces. They have fled war and hope they have found somewhere peaceful to rebuild their lives. But their arrival is not welcomed by all.

Some villagers blame their own multitude of social issues on immigration, regurgitating a racist narrative based on lies.

TJ knows otherwise, and after befriending photographer Yara (Ebla Mari), who is documenting her family journey from the bombs falling on their home to finding comparative safety elsewhere, he acts. The new arrivals are offered space in an unused room at the Oak, prompting some regulars to find fault.

TJ, in his late fifties, was a miner before 1984, and he was politicised – a community leader, the organiser of a youth football team. When his father died of an industrial illness he used compensation to buy the pub.

Loach brings alive the issues facing us today. This is our nation where the attack on the Welfare State has been relentless for 50 years, where social glue has been unpicked, where the decimation of traditional industries has not been replaced, losing with it not just a day’s pay but a sense of togetherness. These stark facts have created and ingrained generational poverty.

But Loach also has shown communities with talent and pride, a history of help and solidarity. He uses his trick of giving actors a topic, and then films the resulting discussion to bring up angles. Loach and Laverty have created another iconic lead in TJ, cut from the same cloth as heroes in I Daniel Blake and Sorry We Missed You.

Loach here celebrates working-class pride and honour, and conjures up in TJ an ideal, someone who no matter the circumstances, no matter what devious behaviour the state and capitalist barons have played on him, cannot be beaten. These working-class men understand intrinsically what justice looks like and will defend it against everything.

In recent years Loach has calmly stood against slanders thrown his way. Writer and collaborator Paul Laverty said, as The Old Oak is released: “We have made films together in many parts of the world. From children to government ministers, he [Loach] has treated everyone with kindness, and a gentle humour. He has deep-seated political convictions and will take political opponents head on, but never once, whatever political, racial or religious background, with anything other than the deepest respect; it is in his DNA.”