I, Daniel Blake

Official Release Poster

"I'm Spartacus!" 

"J'accuse!"

I, Daniel Blake fits in a tradition of appeals made in the first person, which call on a humanist respect for the dignity of all. It's fifty years since Ken Loach directed the acclaimed Cathy Come Home, and we still have homelessness. I would like to think we won't have the faceless social security system which has grown up under the smooth paved surface of corporate Britain, but I won't bet on it. 

I don't often get the time to go out to the cinema, but I was determined to see this film. There were gasps of shock during the film in the screening I went to. People at other screenings have also said it got a standing ovation at its finish. There were sounds of weeping around me and my friends said they had not realised things were so bad. I was quite surprised that I didn't cry, but then I knew it was that bad. In his much admired Still Living on the Edge, Dave Adamson writes about pockets of poverty, which those with income and social mobility literally drive past - unaware of the conditions in which other people live. The politically soft left audiences of I, Daniel Blake care deeply but are unaware how bad conditions have become for the unemployed.

I knew conditions were this bad because I graduated in the 1980s into the Thatcher recession - straight onto the dole queue. In spite of my high quality degree, I was part of a generation cast aside by policies designed to create an economy for businesses not for people. In the 1990s, I had a major sporting injury and like Daniel Blake had to figure my way through an absurd system not aimed at helping people back to work, but at keeping us going round in circles until we hopefully died without completing our claim for state aid.

I knew things had become worse in recent times. I made friends at the school gate with parents who had to go through the indignity of proving they were applying for work they desperately wanted to get. People who had to move to cheaper areas with such poor internet access that they couldn't get online to look up jobs as the DSS said they should do. They had to argue about that when all they wanted was real help getting a job.

I, Daniel Blake sketches the harsh humour and awful inhumanity of this system with a light touch. Loach knows that we won't be able to tolerate the full emotional burden of such a charged subject. Lighting is spare, flat rather than chiaroscuro, and camera shots are mainly from the middle distance. In his study of realism in Western literature, Eric Auerbach writes about the way the Bible uses very spare language that allows us no scope to doubt the truth of the Word. There is no doubting the realism of the simply presented scenes and straightforward dialogue of I, Daniel Blake. One Sunday Times critic did try, but was shot down in spectacular flames. 

One of the many insights which the film delicately offers, is into the 'informal' grey economy. It's not just that people stray over the edges into criminal activity in order to survive. The film shows how warm and human are the relationships in that economy. Friendly chatter about football, rather than formulaic question and answer exchanges with someone whose first name on their badge is not really an invitation to treat them as an equal. Smiles, "we want to help you," "we understand," instead of "have you not understood?" Watching these exchanges, you can sense people being drawn across the legal line out of hunger for that human warmth as much as for food on the table.

I teach for the Open University, with whom one central character of the film hopes to study. I have had a student like her, struggling to complete an online degree while being moved into a homelessness hostel with children. Trying to log onto a computer in the library to study when she was only allowed 20 minutes at a time online. (No, my student didn't complete. I could only tell her that she had done the most important thing, she had started studying, and that with our flexible learning policy she would be able to come back whenever she wanted.)

On one module I teach, DD102, videos and case study material in the books show the students a food bank; it happens to be the one local to me. Students write with sympathy about how Ryan Watkins, who agreed to be interviewed at the food bank, can no longer afford to take his daughter for small treats he used to take for granted. Some of them are a little cagy about how they write about the food bank; I don't push it. I know it's hard to write about these things when you might have to use them yourself. I work on casualised contracts, and there were times I feared I too would end up going for help to the places I was teaching about. It's no consolation to understand the forces that move you implacably in and out of poverty. 

Tears, idle tears, Tennyson called them. I didn't shed tears because the film cut deeper for me, into fear and anger because of the many times I have been through that system myself or feared having to go back through it. Middle class pity is not what the unemployed, single mothers, people living not even on the breadline, need. Rather than go along to watch I, Daniel Blake and weep, we need to think what we can do to change this system. 

Vote, of course. I also do a little volunteering and deliver campaign leaflets for the party I believe has the best set of policies to change this vile inhuman way of governing for profit. 

Admittedly, a lot of my time is spent bringing up my own daughter in ways that I devoutly hope mean she will never have to go to a food bank. I do my best too so she realises that we are lucky we have enough to eat every day, and then some, without guilt-tripping her.

I do some other stuff: school governor, write reports on education and inequalities, teach social sciences modules - which raise awareness of poverty and understanding of how politics works. 

I put a tin in the food bank box in the library when I can. When I have time, I'm going to try and volunteer to work at the food bank. I would have liked to stand for local government, especially now that support is being provided for women candidates in memory of Jo Cox. I am still a bit short of time for that, but maybe one day. When I have more time for going along to the cinema, I'll know that I have time to give to the food bank, so I'll go and do that.