The 85-year-old director said he had been expelled for failing to “disown” other targets of Sir Keir Starmer’s “witch hunt” against left-wingers and that the Labour chief would never lead a “party of the people”.
British left-wing film director Ken Loach has been expelled from the Labour Party for backing other targets of leader Sir Keir Starmer’s “witch hunt”.
Loach, a prominent supporter of suspended former party leader Jeremy Corbyn, tweeted the news on Saturday.
The “Kes” director hinted that he had joined Geronimo the Alpaca on Starmer’s hit list for his refusal to “disown” members of four left-wing factions banned last month by the party leadership — and said former director of public prosecutions Sir Keir was no man of “the people”.
Labour’s top administrative body, the National Executive Committee (NEC), agreed in July to collectively proscribe the groups Socialist Appeal, Labour Against the Witch Hunt, the Labour in Exile Network, and Resist — potentially leading to the expulsion of some 1,000 party members. At the same time, it emerged the party was laying off long-serving staff at its HQ due to a cash shortage caused by a mass exodus of members, while also hiring scores of short-term employees to help identify new targets for disciplinary action.
Corbyn’s former shadow home secretary, John McDonnell — who is closely associated with Socialist Appeal — denounced the expulsion of “such a fine socialist” as a “disgrace”.
Yet, McDonnell also recently welcomed the defection to Labour of former Conservative MP and Parliamentary speaker John Bercow, who was chairman of the Conservative Students when that organisation produced “Hang Nelson Mandela” t-shirts.
Corbyn himself tweeted in solidarity with the director late on Saturday night.
Loach also drew support on Twitter from left-wing Labour MPs, trade union leaders, and former Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis of the Syriza party.
Loach gained fame in the sixties for his “kitchen sink” social dramas such as “Cathy Come Home”, “Poor Cow”, and “Kes”.
But his 1995 film “Land and Freedom”, set during the Spanish Civil War, was controversial for its sectarian claims of atrocities by Soviet-backed Republican forces resisting the fascist takeover led by General Francisco Franco, while glorifying the six-day May 1937 Trotskyist POUM insurrection in Barcelona against the Socialist-led government of the republic.
Loach’s last two films “I, Daniel Blake” and “Sorry We Missed You” deal with the lives of a benefit claimant and package delivery drivers.
The latest polls show Starmer’s Labour still trailing Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s Tories by around ten percentage points, despite a string of recent government rows and scandals.
Sourse: sputniknews.com
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