The Old Oak

Director: Ken Loach (UK, France, Belgium). Year of Release: 2023

2016, the North of England. We never learn which former pit village we’re in, but later learn that it’s not far from Durham. We first see a series of black and white photos of people inside and outside a bus carrying Syrian refugees. As we look at the photos, we hear the refugees getting a hostile reception from some of the locals, who complain that there are not enough resources to go round already and that the village cannot afford any more mouths to feed.

Eventually, we see the person taking the pictures – a woman inside the bus. One of the locals, a tall Scottish lad wearing a Newcastle shirt, takes particular objection to her taking his picture. As she leaves the bus, he takes her camera and starts pissing about with it. When she tries to get it back, it falls to the ground. The camera is broken. The woman looks devastated. The people helping the refugees usher them into their new home to try and damp down the brewing conflict.

Not everyone is aggressive towards the refugees. A few are actively supportive, others try to help while keeping their heads down. One of the latter group is Tommy Joe (TJ) Ballantyne, the local pub landlord. TJ is the son of a miner and went down the pit when he was young. He is ravaged by the debilitating defeat of the 1984-5 strike. He is sympathetic towards Yara, the photographer, but when she visits his pub and asks if he knows the man who broke his camera, he lies.

Among other things, TJ is worried that his last remaining customers will boycott his pub which is barely making enough money to survive. The natives are restless, but they are not downright evil. When they ask why refugees are always dumped in poor areas, and not in Chelsea and Kensington, they have a point. One even counters an anti-refugee argument which goes too far by reminding the person who made it that his dad was a scab.

And yet the desperation which pervades the village means that most locals are far from any sense of solidarity with people fleeing a war zone. The hopelessness of the forgotten village turns into casual racism. One of the Syrian kids is bullied at school. The old men in the pub watch an online video of what happened, and conclude that the kid must have said something to provoke the attack.

One of the men in the pub, Jaffa, actively supports the Syrians. When the others call for a meeting to discuss their problems, he objects, saying “we don’t want to attract racists”. He doesn’t go as far as calling his friends racist, even though they make some “I’m not a racist, but” comments, alongside casual references to towelheads- TJ generally stands back and tries not to get involved, but he doesn’t let them have their meeting in the pub, albeit using an excuse based on health and safety.

The pub is not just full of racists. In the back room, there are photos of the miners’ strike including the communal kitchens used to feed the strikers. Below is the caption “When you eat together, you stick together”. Yara uses this as an inspiration into pushing TJ to offer a similar project for both the refugees and the villagers, who are equally poor and hungry. The only available room is the one that he originally denied to the pub drinkers. Slowly, gradually, TJ is forced to choose a side.

TJ is a flawed hero. At the beginning of the film he has more or less given up, and he still occasionally sinks into apathy and despair – a feeling that the political climate makes any sort of change impossible. He is perked into action by both Yara’s resilience, and a basic sense of common decency and solidarity. When Yara does find the man who broke her camera, TJ first stands back, but then points out the irony of a Scot telling people to go back to their own country.

The Old Oak resonates with empathy, but it does much more than this. It does not just appeal for solidarity, but shows how this solidarity can be built. Like many of Loach’s best films (Land and Freedom springs immediately to mind), The Old Oak contains a scene where a group of people argue, building on each other’s arguments to reach, if not a consensus, then at least a body of ideas. This goes against the traditional cinematic cliché that only the (usually male) hero’s views count.

The Old Oak embodies an old anecdote. If you have a group of 10 people, it’s quite likely that one will be a radical, one thoroughly reactionary and the other 8 somewhere in between. It is the job of the radical to win over the uncommitted people for solidarity, so that the do not fall into reactionary despair. This is often a long road, paved with victories and defeats, but it is a way of breaking political isolation.

Before I go ad see a Ken Loach film, I always worry. Will it lack nuance? Will it be too black and white? Will there be an unbelievable ending where the seventh cavalry (workers’ division) ride over the horizon to right all wrongs? In short, Will it be the sort of film that Loach’s critics accuse him of making rather than the ones he actually produces? It’s kind of healthy to go in with this attitude as you’re never disappointed, and sometimes – as in this case – deeply impressed.

Most of the underlying problems at the beginning of The Old Oak are still there at the end. No-one magically becomes anti-racist, although some learn a bit more basic humanity. One of the final scenes shows TJ, Yara and others participating in the Durham miners’ gala carrying a banner with Strength, Solidarity Resistance written in English and Arabic – a present from the Syrian refugees. This is not a victory of itself, but a pointer towards how future victories could be won.