'Defiance, resistance, spirit' The Old Oak writer on Glasgow

Paul Laverty, the screenwriter who has worked for many years with legendary director, Ken Loach, in the city for a screening of their latest film The Old Oak, said the last three films the pair made together could easily have been set in Glasgow.

The Old Oak tells the story of a northeast of England former mining community coming to terms with refugees from Syria being moved into empty homes in their streets.

It follows on from Sorry We Missed You, about Ricky, working as a delivery driver in the so-called gig economy and previously, I Daniel Blake, which highlighted the cruelty of the benefits system, both set in northern England.

Paul said he hopes the three films will, in time, be seen as one piece.

Speaking in an interview with the Glasgow Times, he said: “Actually we could have done many of those northeast films in Glasgow too because the communities are very, very similar.

“I love Glasgow and I love Newcastle, the people are great.

“It's people you see in a film. It sounds obvious, but you know, there's great wit, there's great energy, great characters.

“There really is a sense of solidarity. There's a real sense that they've had industrial pasts, both port cities, and you've seen the decimation in the post-industrial era and how that's affected people and their economy.”

The Scottish writer, who spent time many years in Glasgow, working as a lawyer, before turning to screenwriting, mentions My Name is Joe, set in Glasgow, starring Peter Mullan and Sweet Sixteen, in Greenock, which gave Martin Compston his first acting break and Carlas’s Song, starring Robert Carlyle as a Glasgow bus driver.

Paul said: “If Peter Mullan in My Name is Joe had a nice little job, you know, as a janitor, he'd be fine.

“We wouldn’t have had a story, but it was truthful because there's so many people that couldn't find work.

“The same with, Martin Compston and Sweet Sixteen. Greenock was decimated.

“So those are the choices open to them.

“And so, I think those are the stories we’re attracted to because there's great vitality in these characters. Great contradiction.”

While there is a strong political and social comment in their work, Paul said telling the story is what it is about.

He said: “We choose the material and the subject matter, and that is the biggest question.

“Why tell a story? But we want to tell stories and a good issue doesn't make a good story. It really doesn't.

“And I've never, ever started it saying let's get the message out. It's. Not that. Let's tell great stories.”  

The new film, he said, is about hope, which is a theme in the prolific pair’s award-winning work spanning four decades, since the 1990s and more than a dozen feature films.

There are parallels with communities in Glasgow, with refugees coming into communities where people are struggling with poverty and deprivation.

Paul added: “There's a lot of defiance, a lot of resistance, and there's a lot of creativity that's through humour and people are defiant and people’s spirit gives you hope and I think we need to. really, really nourish hope. 

“We have to say history is full of cruelty and barbarity, but it's also full of moments of great compassion and empathy and creativity. And I and I hope this film is in that tradition.”

The writer travels around at home and abroad researching the stories they tell and is scathing about the state of politics in the UK.

The characters, while fictional are rooted in reality, a harsh reality that brings out the anger in him.

Of the people in the latest film and the previous two he mentioned earlier he said: “It's people who have just been absolutely worn down, their self-respect is gone.

“They started off as vibrant people. But over the decades their self-confidence, their self-worth, their sense of agency has gone. And I've met so many people like that.”

"And you look at the politics of the world today, an absolutely sh****, incompetent government, a s*****, incompetent and anodyne opposition.

“People like Starmer, who is an inch to the left of Sunak.

“He won't even pull back on the two-child policy, which is just absolutely disgraceful, you know. I mean it's a disgrace.

"It's shameful, beyond shameful."

He said Labour should have "committed themselves to that (scrapping the policy) and do what Scotland does here with the £25 child voucher". (Scottish Child Payment). 

He cites a professor at Oxford University, Danny Dorling, who writes on inequality in Britain.

He said: “What he said was very interesting, he said. You know what Scotland has done with that £25 payment is actually one of the biggest pieces of social engineering in the last quarter years and that's the difference between children not going to bed hungry or hungry.”

He added: “You know, so I don't think enough credit is given for that.”

He said he is not “waving the flag for the SNP” and he is “really p***** off” about licences for oil in the North Sea and inaction on climate change.

 He added: “But they deserve credit for that, and Labour deserve to be slagged off.”

Inequality and climate change are the two issues occupying his mind at the moment.

He said: “You know, we're now facing an existential disaster, clearly, with weather change.

The consensus of the world Scientists and IPCC reports is that we're heading for 2.6 degrees but yet this year -and this just blows my mind - we've actually used up more fossil fuels in our history this year and we've given more subsidies to corporations.

“Now, do you not find that, if you take a step back from it, absolutely mind-boggling?”  

“We've seen it around us all. Even the zeitgeist has changed with all these disasters, but here we are now, still saying yes to new licences.

“We might build a new power station in Peterhead. Yeah, that is bonkers.”

Paul has done three films, in Bolivia, Cuba and Spain with his partner, Spanish director, Iciar Bollain, and has plans for more and hopefully, he said, in Scotland.

Ken Loach, who is 87, has said The Old Oak will be his last film.

Paul said: “It would be unfair to ask him to do another.

“Having to do a film this size again, it really would. He's my friend first and we've had the most amazing run.”