Daniel Blake, 59, is a skilled craftsman. He has assets, but not the kind that the market rates highly since they have little monetary value: qualities such as integrity, honesty and compassion. In Ken Loach’s new film, I, Daniel Blake, winner of the Palme d’Or at Cannes earlier this year, Blake’s attributes carry little weight in a system designed to pitch one human being (the bureaucrat) against another (the citizen temporarily in need of state support) at a time of “necessary” austerity.
In a meticulously researched script written by Paul Laverty, Loach’s collaborator for 20 years, Blake, a widower, has had a serious heart attack. What follows are his struggles with the benefits system and his growing friendship with a single parent, Katie, and her two children. After two years in a London hostel, Katie has been moved 300 miles to Newcastle because, allegedly, there is no housing in the capital – a city with 10,000 empty homes.
Katie has her benefits frozen, leaving her penniless, while Daniel, a man whose doctor says he is too ill to work, has to spend 35 hours a week applying for jobs he can’t take, on the orders of the jobcentre “work coach”. It is a surreal, dehumanised world in which empathy has little place and no allowance is made for the chaos of everyday life.
I watched the film with Alison Garnham, chief executive of Child Poverty Action Group and Marissa, a single mother with an autistic daughter of three, who has been on benefits since leaving an abusive partner. Marissa was in tears for much of the film; humiliation revisited. Each one of us has heard identical testimonies to those on the screen many times: not fiction, but painfully true stories.
Fifty years ago, Ken Loach was the young director of Cathy Come Home, a BBC1 Play for Today, filmed in documentary style and watched by 12 million. Cathy, her lorry driver husband, and two children, live happily in a flat. He has an accident and loses his job, so they move to lodgings, a caravan, a hostel. Cathy becomes a single parent and her children become homeless. Social workers finally take the children into care. The public were moved and enraged.
It was a time of job security, reciprocity and solidarity; the working class received accolades, rather than insults, as the source of much of the talent that propelled the swinging 60s. In 1965, sociologists Brian Abel-Smith and Peter Townsend published an unexpected bestseller, The Poor and the Poorest. One historian commented: “The poor family and the poor working family were about to be reborn as a political issue.” The year of Cathy Come Home also saw the launches of the campaigning housing charity Shelter and the Child Poverty Action Group.
The difference between now and then? A greater understanding that poverty is systemic, not down to character failure, as many politicians imply. A factory closing, a spell of illness and life unravels when income is modest, a theme often explored by Loach, who is now 80. His work, including 19 feature films, plays and documentaries, has at times been banned, censored and derided – as well as feted by international prize juries. However, more recently, his ability to capture the demolition of the soul of decent people, as the social contract between citizen and government is ripped apart by the rapacity of neoliberalism, has hit a wider target.
In 2012, the poorest 10% of Britons, many in work, spent 47% of their income on debt repayments. A single person like Daniel, on jobseeker’s allowance, is eligible for £73.10 a week in a system that gives childcare tax breaks to couples on £300,000. The Institute for Fiscal Studies says government policy is both increasing and reshaping poverty, dragging in even those on moderate incomes. This is a political choice, not the outcome of a feckless sub-stratum of society. The facts ought to speak for themselves. But such is the toxicity of the shirkers-versus-strivers message, delivered by all the leading political parties, that facts are no longer believed. That’s why we need the visceral emotion of Loach.
His work is frequently dismissed as “didactic”, shorthand for leftwing, biased propaganda. Yet, the stream of films and media that casually endorse the avaricious and the talentless rich, the exploitative and the violent are viewed as entertainment. But they, too, in their own way, are didactic. They send a message that greed is good; the individual comes first.
Loach’s films are often about the ordinary man and woman, eventually pushed to take direct action because they have nothing left to lose but their self-respect. Designer Agnès B rightly says: “There’s Balzac, Dickens, Zola and Loach.” Each is a master at turning the abstract concepts of inequality and social justice into lives that matter. But how much do we care now?
I, Daniel Blake is released in cinemas on 21 October
Jack Monroe: ‘It needs to be shown in the House of Commons’
Food writer, journalist and poverty campaigner
It was hard to sit and watch that film as a piece of entertainment when it felt more like a documentary on my life. I was contacted ages ago by the film’s researchers and I told them to feel free to use whatever they wanted from my blog. Although my experiences are certainly not unique, there were a lot of scenes in the film where the similarities with my life were uncanny.
Like the single mum character, Katie Morgan, I had to drop out of my Open University course when I was living on benefits because life was too chaotic and I couldn’t concentrate on it. But there was also this feeling of what’s the point of studying when you don’t feel you’ve got a future? The scene where they’re using tea lights and a flower pot to take the chill off the room and sticking bubble wrap on the windows to keep the cold out also hit home. But the moment I found most devastating was when Katie’s little boy says, “Aren’t you having any dinner?” And she says, “I’m not hungry”, as that was a conversation I had with my son on many nights.
People used to tell me that maybe I was just unlucky, but to see the narrative played out on screen like that shows you that there is a logic to the way these events unfold and that people can get trapped in a downward spiral.
Watching the film is like being asked to revisit some of the darkest moments of my life, condensed into 100 minutes. I’ve been incredibly lucky and successful – I’m working as a journalist now and writing my third book – but three years down the line I still can’t open my own front door if I’m not expecting visitors and I can barely face opening my post. What some people don’t seem to understand is that it really breaks your spirit, it grinds you down and once you’ve hit rock bottom, it lives in you like a darkness and doesn’t go away.
I don’t feel the film was over the top at all. If anything, I think they were a bit kind to the DWP. Obviously there are decent people who work there; it’s just that they’re so constrained by red tape and automatic responses. As the film shows, as soon as anybody tries to step outside of the regime to be helpful, they’re penalised for it.
It makes me want to go and find a big wall and project this film on to it so as many people as possible see it. It needs to be shown in the House of Commons and I’m going to start a petition to get it shown on the BBC.
Mark Littlewood: ‘It’s a libertarian rant against the welfare state’
Director general of the Institute of Economic Affairs
As a film it was much what I expected. True to form, Loach starts with a fairly depressing premise and it gets more depressing from there – you know how it’s going to end right from the start. But that’s not to detract from it as a powerful narrative. And I think its political analysis is rather more subtle than I was expecting. In fact, there’s only one scene where someone starts shouting about “goddamn Tory cuts”. The rest of it is actually about bureaucratic failure. It’s basically Joseph Heller’s Catch-22 meets Terry Gilliam’s Brazil in contemporary Newcastle.
To my surprise, I’m pretty sympathetic to the narrative, which seems to be saying that the mass-bureaucratic welfare state is a colossal misuse of resources. That it does not get the money to where it is needed and is policed by people who are obsessed about their own status and what the rules are but not actually concerned about poverty. Although he’s telling it at a micro level, my macroeconomic analysis of it is: Oh my God, that’s the way we spend £240bn a year on poverty relief? What a total shambles!
In Daniel’s written statement at the end, he’s almost channelling Pat McGoohan from The Prisoner: I will not be stamped, filed, indexed, briefed, debriefed or numbered, my life is my own. So I think it is not a traditional predictable socialist rant, but quite an interesting analysis of the colossal failures of state bureaucracy and how that dehumanises both the providers of that service and the people on the receiving end.
This is in stark contrast to the voluntary social networks, which in the film are rather strong. The people involved in the food bank are very supportive. His old workmates and the couple of scallywags next door keep offering to help. If only they had more power and money, and the paper-pushing bureaucrats had less, one suspects that both Daniel and Katie would have had better prospects in their darkest hours. So there you go, I’ve just interpreted a Ken Loach movie as a right-wing, free-market-capitalist, libertarian rant against the welfare state.
Obviously the film is a specific critique about the recent changes in the welfare system, I get that, but I think Loach could have made an almost identical movie 20 years ago, prior to Iain Duncan Smith’s reforms. And he specifically doesn’t suggest that it was about a lack of funds. It is unambiguously about how those funds are dispersed and utilised, and this is done in a horrifically inefficient, bureaucratic, lunatic, dehumanising, hopeless, helpless fashion. I daresay Loach wouldn’t be delighted with me recommending I, Daniel Blake as one of the best free-market libertarian critiques of our bloated welfare system, but I think that’s a perfectly legitimate interpretation.
Gavin Turk: ‘It makes you think about how civilised we are’
Artist and co-founder of children’s art charity The House of Fairy Tales
I thought the film was very moving. It was good at showing how difficult life can be when you don’t have any income, and how not having money is really debilitating, to the point where it makes you sick. It’s interesting to see the film against the backdrop of this neoliberal society, where money is seen as the thing to strive for and build your ambitions around. The film seems to suggest that those hopes and ambitions which you can’t buy, which don’t relate to money, are not lauded or appreciated enough in our society.
For anyone who’s ever signed on – as many artists have done – it conveyed the weird awkwardness of job centres and the culture around them. I spent a few months on benefits just after college, doing the whole jobseeker thing and making myself go to interviews for jobs I knew I wouldn’t be able to take. Watching this film really brought me back to that time.
Daniel was quite good at pointing out the ridiculousness of it all. When I was in that situation I just nodded and went along with things. The scene where he’s forced to attend a CV-writing tutorial was very funny. He makes a joke and ends up being cast as the naughty schoolboy, when all he’s trying to do is humanise the situation. The film is full of people trying to humanise their environments and being punished for it.
Ken Loach has taken a simple and straightforward story and pushed it to quite a sophisticated level. The film makes you sit up and think about how we survive, how civilised we are, and how we civilise ourselves. It had me in tears at moments. There was a lot of sniffing around me in the screening room. It’s a tough film and it might spin people out a bit, but I think it’s definitely an important one to see.
Daniel Mays: ‘I’ve not cried this much during a film in a long time’
Actor, best known for roles in Vera Drake and Made in Dagenham
I think this film is up there with Ken Loach’s best. It’s powerful and raw, and of all his work I don’t know if I’ve watched something with such an emotional punch. It’s a searingly honest and brutal portrayal of ordinary people living on the breadline. I really admire how un-showy it is: it’s very simplistic in its storytelling and I think that’s the film’s power. I think no other film-maker would want to make a film about these characters. You’d pass Daniel Blake in the street and not notice him, and yet Ken Loach has turned the camera round and moved me to tears with it, and made me angry.
It’s about a man who is widowed and pretty much goes to war against the state, and the unwavering level of red tape he has to go through for his jobseeker’s allowance. The characters’ descent into desperation just to make ends meet is heartbreaking. I thought the relationship between the two central characters was beautifully realised: it was completely truthful and the performances were pitch perfect. I don’t think I’ve cried this much for a film in a long time.
You can sense the overwhelming research that has gone into it: all the form-filling in the jobcentre and that hypocrisy is brilliantly realised. It’s a shocking and important film, because this is the state that a lot of people in the country are in. With everything that’s gone on with Brexit, a lot of that was a protest vote. The world of this film is connected to that – it’s a film about austerity. It wears you down as a viewer: you feel like you’re on that journey with Daniel, and you feel an overwhelming frustration about his plight. There’s a beautiful line in it that says, “When you lose your self-respect, what have you got?”, and I think that’s really what the film is about – identity. And about how no matter who you are or where you come from or how much you earn, that you need to have recognition and a place within this world.
There seems to be a lack of films that want to address difficult subjects like this. Shane Meadows has taken on the baton from the likes of Ken Loach and Mike Leigh, but there’s definitely room for more. I don’t think I’ve ever felt as politicised as I am at the moment; I feel desperately frustrated and unhappy that we voted out. We should never flinch from asking difficult questions in culture, and it would give us an increased identity as a UK film industry as well. The power of film can really highlight these predicaments and drive the message home.
Marissa, 36: ‘I’m like Daniel. I’m ill. I have no family support. And I’m isolated’
Mother of an autistic three-year-old, living in a one-bedroom London council flat. After a struggle, she received a diagnosis of her daughter’s autism and now receives £400 a week including disability living allowance.
So many of the scenes in the film have been part of my life. I was married, employed in a good job. Then the relationship became difficult, I had no money. I was offered escort work, which I would never do. Just as in the film, I was late for my first appointment at the Jobcentre Plus. I was in a terrible tizzy. They saw how distressed I was and showed some sympathy and said I should wait. So I waited four hours. I was lucky my daughter was a baby.
I was in a hostel in one room for four months at first. They tried to put me in private accommodation but it was filthy, damp and had rats. Then, they offered a six-month tenancy, but I need security for my daughter, who hates change. Now, I’ve a got a five-year tenancy. I like the area. But there is a stigma for being on benefits. I get scrutinised and asked, “Why don’t you work?”
I’ve lost four friends who asked why was I living on taxpayers’ money. I have a bad heart and back. I worked as a property manager for 10 years in Kensington, but that means long hours and I can’t afford the childcare and my daughter needs intensive support.
As a property manager I used to think people on benefits weren’t trying hard enough. Then I began to see people who were sick and had disabilities. I’d try to persuade landlords to take people on benefits as tenants. I’d say: “Your rent is concrete, this is government money. A private tenant could lose their job.” But landlords weren’t interested.
After seeing the film, I woke up thinking, I’m just like Daniel. I’m ill, I have no family support, and I’m isolated. When Lily starts her new specialist school in September, we will have to travel three hours a day by bus. It’s only for a year so I don’t want to move. Until she is five, I will have to go to the jobcentre every six months to see if I am work ready. It’s humiliating and pointless.
Alison Garnham: ‘It’s so refreshing to hear the views of claimants’
Chief executive, Child Poverty Action Group
Some critics are bound to say the film is very didactic, too black and white, but the most important aspect for me is that it’s talking about something that is true. That’s why it moves the audiences who have seen it so far.
It’s true that people’s employment and support allowance (ESA) is refused because their work capability assessment takes no account of what’s really wrong with them. It’s true that if a person appeals, he or she has to wait for the person who made the decision to reconsider before an appeal can be lodged. It’s true that claimants are sanctioned for piffling reasons. People under stress really are dealing with an unhelpful bureaucrat in a remote call centre who can’t take decisions. Successive governments have tried to reduce footfall to jobcentres, which in plain English means there are fewer and fewer people there to help.
Daniel worked on a building site and has never used a computer, yet he’s expected to go online. People are entitled to hardship payments but we’ve met some in food banks who don’t know they are eligible.
The government has changed the way it calculates benefits and has frozen others, which means that as living standards rise, the income of the poor will be on a downward escalator. We know from the work of the London School of Economics that as a result of political choices a lot of money has been taken from the poorest half of the population and given to the richest half. We also know if you take action on child poverty it goes down.
In the 70s and 80s there was a strong artistic response to issues such as racism, inequality and poverty. It’s pretty stilted now, so it’s refreshing to have a piece of art from the perspective of claimants when they are usually treated with such negativity. I do believe films like this can make a difference. Today, almost everybody knows somebody affected by the benefits system in one way or another. It’s becoming less “People like them” and more “People like us”.
Melanie McDonagh: ‘It’s a true take on the bureaucratic mindset’
Columnist and leader writer for the London Evening Standard
It was the fish that gave me hope. When poor Daniel Blake’s possessions were being carted off for sale (whoops, spoiler) to save him from starvation after he fell foul of the benefits system, the secondhand trader spotted Daniel’s handmade fish mobile in the window. “I’ll give you a few quid for them,” he said. “No!” said Daniel. “They’re not for sale.” (Sentimental value you see; not everything has a cash value.) This was the point at which I thought things might change for poor DB. He’s discovered that something he likes doing – woodwork; he’s a carpenter, after all – has monetary value; he has a saleable skill. He could flog his fish to the secondhand shop, or maybe sell them on the street, the way his neighbour does stolen trainers, maybe diversifying into Noah’s Arks. And perhaps he could use a bit of child labour, courtesy of the displaced London children he befriends. But nope; the moment passes, just like it does when one of the men he gave his CV to offers him a job. Might it have been possible for him to say that, sorry, he can’t do heavy lifting, but he can do a bit of woodwork, or stuff that doesn’t involve hard labour? He doesn’t, even though he’s just finished a nice bookshelf for his London friend. For Daniel, it’s a building site or bust.
And that’s one of the dispiriting things about this movie: the sense that things can’t change up north, that benefit claimants can’t be helped to find work they can do, not just given recompense for the work they can’t. There’s a very funny exchange at the outset between Daniel and a bovine, authoritarian woman from the DWP, who has a fixed set of questions he must answer. He wants to tell her that he’s got a dodgy heart which means he’s had to give up work on buildings; she wants to get him to tell her whether he can lift his arm. It’s a true take on the bureaucratic mindset, which fails to distinguish ends from means and fetishises the internet, but the object of this charade is actually a reasonable one, which is to identify what disability claimants can do, not just what they can’t.
By the way, it’s not just jobless single mothers like Katie who are priced out of central London these days; it’s happening to the middle classes too.
Agnès B: ‘After seeing the film, I felt I was losing a new family’
Fashion designer and film patron
Ken Loach is someone whose work I’ve loved since Family Life [1971], a beautiful movie I saw when I was very young. He’s a great artist and a great man. He loves people, and you can see that in this movie, because it’s about forming relationships, making a new family through life’s hardships. When I came out of the film I felt like I was losing a new family, because you enter the story and fall in love with these people. Cinema is magic for that.
It’s an important film – there are so many stories about couples and other boring things in France now, but this film is political, it’s realistic, it’s touching, it has to be seen. And it could be anywhere: it could be in Paris, because in France it’s the same. You wait for hours to have some help, and there are many who are unemployed. Some people only have one meal a day, and there have been reports of people eating dog food because they’re so hungry.
Because of the attacks we had 1 million fewer tourists this summer in Paris, so it’s difficult here now. We are in quite hard times, but I think humanity has always had hard times. And people are strong.
I, Daniel Blake makes you think that, in these times, we have to share: money, energy, water. I try to do my best to share what I earn, I manufacture in France as much as I can, because I think if rich people pay taxes and do things normally we could share the money much better.
I saw the film in Cannes and many people were crying at the end of it. I was so happy when it got the Palme d’Or. It was the best film and really deserved it: the scenes were beautiful and simple, and the writing was great.
I met Loach and his lovely wife after the screening and I told him: “There’s Balzac, Dickens, Zola and Loach.”
Like them, his work is about people, and about how hard life can be. There aren’t many who talk about things like that, social things. Maybe it’s not commercial, I don’t know. But I think that it’s important to use your language to talk about that.
