In 2018 I posted defending Ken Loach from the slander of being a ‘holocaust denier’. The campaign against him bore all the signs of supporters of Zionism and the Israeli state. Now unfortunately we have another instance of this.

Jewish Voice for Labour finds it deeply regrettable that the Board of Deputies of British Jews is seeking to disrupt the work of a leading anti-racism football charity by demanding the removal of an internationally respected cultural figure as a judge for its children’s design competition.

Show Racism the Red Card (Strict) is under attack by the Board for choosing campaigning filmmaker Ken Loach to help judge the charity’s 2020 Schools Competition. Thousands of young people in hundreds of schools across the UK take part in the project, designed to stimulate discussion and understanding about issues around racism. Winners are invited to an awards ceremony with special guests, including current and former professional footballers.

SRtRC Chief Executive Ged Grebby announced on Tuesday Feb 4 that Loach and former children’s laureate Michael Rosen were to be this year’s judges. Grebby commended both men as valued supporters of the charity, saying they were “ideally qualified” to help choose the most inspiring and original creative designs produced by young people on anti-racist themes.

However the Board of Deputies has challenged this appointment saying that Loach “is a poor choice to judge a competition on anti-racism”. The grounds for this extraordinary allegation against an anti-racist with Loach’s record have not been made public. We note however that the flurry of online abuse targeting Loach and Show Racism the Red Card since the Board’s intervention, has consisted mainly of unfounded (and potentially libellous) allegations of antisemitism or Holocaust denial. A scurrilous report in the Jewish Chronicle suggested that Michael Rosen too is an unsuitable competition judge, because he has rejected charges of antisemitism against Jeremy Corbyn. (Article].

In fact a statement by the Board of Deputies does specifically mention ‘holocaust denial’; a hoary old charge that was featured in the pages of The Guardian newspaper. The dubious nature of this attack was revealed when the same newspaper refused to print Loach’s response. Unfortunately that newspaper, along with nearly all the other mainstream press, television and radio, treat fraudulent claims against supporters of the Palestinian Struggle completely uncritically. If you want some critical reporting than I commend The Jewish Voice for Labour Web pages, Al Jazeera, R.T. and Media North.

Ken Loach, apart from his politics, has also frequently treated football in his films. There is the now famous football sequence in Kes (1969). More recently his film Looking for Eric (2009) presented football as sport and as culture rather than a capitalist commodity. Presumable this is what made him such a suitable figure for the Show Racism the Red Card competition.

Attacks on Ken Loach in the media are nothing new. They commenced back in 1966 when he, together with his colleague and mentor Tony Garnett, produced and delivered the now classic Cathy Come Home. It continued over a number of programmes and films scripted by the late Jim Allen and directed by Loach. A particular germane example was the play ‘Perdition’ by Allen and Loach which was forced from the stage of the Royal Court in 1987. And it has continued with the script-writing work of Paul Laverty for Loach’s films. An example of this can be found on the post on The Wind that Shakes the Barley [‘shakes the critics’].

The early television work of Loach, Allen and Garnett dramatised the class struggle in Britain; a Britain that still occupies lands belonging to other peoples. In the 1980s all three found that they could no longer work on British television because of the official and unofficial censorship. The axe fell on Loach’s fine and poetic film supporting the miner’s strike, Which Side Are You On (1985). Something that also befell the black workshop Ceddo’s The People’s Account (1985) and the Derry Film and Video Workshop’s Mother Ireland (1988), both banned from Channel 4 .

The more recent films for cinema by Ken Loach which have not only addressed the struggle in Britain, but the struggles elsewhere in Ireland, in Central America (Carla’s Song, 1996) and in the United States (Bread and Roses, 2000), have been honoured by Europeans but often slated in Britain.

It is a real irony in this case that the campaign around what is falsely called ‘anti-semitism’ relies mainly on rhetoric, misquotations and unsubstantiated allegations. Loach’s films rely on detailed research and an understanding of the actual social relations and conditions in Britain today and over the recent decades. So we have a dominant media where the real world is constantly misrepresented by officials purveyors of news; whilst what are fictional representations of our world are much closer to reality and the underlying social forces.

One of the aphorisms of Mao Zedong was,

To be attacked by the enemy is not a bad thing but a good thing.

His rationale was the enemy was forced to take action by the strength of opposition. As other writers have pointed out, the recent campaigns orchestrated by Israel [see Al Al-Jazeera ‘The Lobby’] follow on from the successes of the Boycott and Divestment Movement, in which Ken Loach has played a vigorous role. However, the weakness of some responses to the Zionist campaign have only fuelled it. So it is important that all people with progressive views defend artists and activists like Ken Loach. From early dramas like The Big Flame (1969), through excellent films like Riff-Raff’ (1991) and Jimmy’s Hall (2014), Loach and his collaborators have celebrated people who resist and struggle.

UPDATE: Ken Loach has been withdrawn from the ‘Show Racism the Red Card’ 2020 School competition. The SRtRC  web pages have posted a statement which includes:

“Show Racism the Red Card and Ken Loach have together agreed that he will not act as judge for the SRtRC School Competition. A significant factor in Ken Loach’s decision is the abuse online and in person that he and his family have received. It is profoundly distressing, and he is very concerned to protect those closest to him.

This entire issue threatens to overshadow this year’s Competition and together we agree that the key focus must be where it truly belongs: on the creativity of our young people and their own positive anti-racism messages.”

Since the decision involves Ken Loach it seems it should be respected. But the accusations remain fraudulent. See a demolition at this blog:

Flimsy and vindictive: the ‘case’ against Ken Loach

Removing Ken Loach as  a judge is a completely unsatisfactory outcome: it seems likely that it can only encourage this sort of reaction: a reaction which is an attack on the National Liberation Struggle in Palestine and the wider world. The response of major institutions and the mainstream media in Britain to these fraudulent allegations has been dismal; one explanation being that Britain remains a colonial and imperialist state.