Filmmaker Ken Loach tells Darlington audience to vote Corbyn

That unflinching spirit was evident to all who gathered at The Forum to hear the award-winning director share his thoughts on issues ranging from the NHS to Jeremy Corbyn, media manipulation and the political climate in the North-East.

The director of Kes, The Wind that Shakes the Barley and I, Daniel Blake travelled to Darlington to introduce his documentary, Spirit of ’45, and to support an evening organised by activist Louise Graham and Darlington Film Club in opposition to growing privatisation of the NHS.

To a rapt and sold-out audience, the 81-year-old espoused long-held socialist values as he insisted a vote for Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party was the only way to protect the NHS and keep it under public ownership.

“I think the way private health contractors are taking over the NHS is seriously bad for everyone and it is particularly ironic that former Darlington MP Alan Milburn was involved in privatisation,” the softly-spoken filmmaker told The Northern Echo.

“Public services including the NHS need to be protected and restored but they have been diminished so much that there’s not much left to protect, society is being ripped apart.

“When you get this old, you don’t want to speak in mysteries, you want to be clear - we have got to get Jeremy Corbyn into power.”

Labour’s socialist leader brought Mr Loach back to the party’s fold after he defected during the Blair years and throughout the evening, it is to him that the filmmaker’s thoughts repeatedly return.

It is the eventual election of a Corbyn-led Labour party that Mr Loach believes can also help to ensure the North-East thrives.

“The North-East was home to traditional industries like mining and if you shut them down as Thatcher did and you drive down other investment and leave it to the market, communities will rot," he says.

“I did a documentary during the miners’ strike in Easington Colliery and I went back there recently and what was a thriving community is now rows of empty terraces.

“It’s absolutely desperate - there needs to be proper investment to bring real jobs, that’s what I would like to see for the North-East.

“It’s the only way of giving people meaningful work where they can make a proper contribution to society and get secure wages, bring up families and have healthcare when they’re sick, the basic things in life.”

If he could say one thing to those living in the region, he said it is this: “When the chips are down and we are at such a critical moment and the struggle is so sharp, we cannot beat around the bush.

“If we want big changes, to protect health services, take the railways public, get big investment and new industry to regional areas like this, then only a Labour Party led by Jeremy Corbyn backed by John McDonnell will do that.

“You’ve got to be clear to sitting MPs and ask them if they believe in their programme, if they have a history of fighting for these ideas and if they do not, ask them to stand aside and let people who do believe carry it on.”

Films such as Cathy Come Home and I, Daniel Blake have cemented Mr Loach’s reputation as a filmmaker devoted to social criticism, an approach that has not altered, he says, because “the essence of the system has stayed the same, and so the symptoms stay the same”.

He is reluctant to speak of upcoming work, saying: “There comes a point when you don’t know if your legs are strong enough to get you around the course again.”

However, he knows if he ever must step back from the campaigning front line, there will be those who will follow in his stead, be it through filmmaking or other means.

Praising the efforts of the event’s organisers Mr Loach also highlighted the efforts of the Darlo Mums, a group who organised a mass march from Jarrow to Parliament in support of the NHS.

Mr Loach said: “It’s encouraging to see other people fighting on the front line - that is what cheers you up, the other people who are fighting back.”