NAVIGATORS
(2001) Directed by Ken Loach,
Screenplay by Rob Dawber

The Dukes, Moor Lane, Lancaster
Screened on 23 May 2004

reviewed by Michael Nunn

This screening of veteran director Ken Loach's powerful film, Navigators, was a very important occasion.

Privatisation changes …
The film depicts a gang of railway workers in South Yorkshire whose job is to maintain the signal and telecommunications (S&T) bits of the national railway network. It shows British Rail being split up (some would say ripped apart) into separate all-for-profit companies with a chain of command and responsibility that was at best nebulous, and at worst a fast-food recipe for disaster.

Against this background, the story follows the fortunes of the men – experts at their jobs – as their new employers renegue on long-established working practices, promote quick completion and profit-generating results over safety and a thorough, fail-safe mode of working.

… and personal changes
The film also details the personal lives of the men as their working, domestic and family relationships change (and in some cases collapse), and some of the men choose to be lured by the sirens of even more profits. These are the employment agencies which will find them work at higher wages than they had been used to, but provide little or no job security or other protections such as sick or holiday pay.

The horrific results of the new modus operandi are predictable: a horrific, painful and totally unnecessary death by short-cuts, flagrantly unsafe working practices, impossible timescales and rush jobs with the sacrifice of all notion of quality work at the altar of profit.

"So obviously coming …'
The film can be described as a self-fulfilling prophecy. Even as the film was being made, in October 2000, the fatal high-speed rail crash at Hatfield hit the headlines. "An incident like this one, and Paddington, had been so obviously coming that it's not really even a coincidence that the system has collapsed while we are filming the story', said Loach at the time. "To say it is a disaster that has been waiting to happen does not really cover the situation'.

Indeed it doesn't, for the Potters Bar disaster was still to happen.

Other industries too
Now this might sound familiar to people who work in other industries apart from the railways. The present writer, a former university lecturer, felt unable to continue in that profession because of appalling workplace conditions – short-term contracts, unreasonable workloads, pandering to management's latest whims (or you were simply not employed next term), working with people as if they were numbers on a conveyor belt who had to get their degrees - and more. Quality of learning, quality of life and personal and professional integrity were not possibilities. Many readers will have seen similar conditions in their own workplaces.

Local parallels
We have seen the same principles hereabouts it two recent tragedies: the February Cockling Disaster in Morecambe Bay, and the terrible death met by the men run over by a runaway maintenance wagon at Tebay. These two tragedies were arguably caused by a noxious mixture of greed, poor regulation, inadequate safety procedures and – let's be blunt – exploitation.

From the heart
I am not sufficiently knowledgeable to comment on the technical or cinematic qualities of the film, though aficionados will be aware of Loach's idiosyncratic methods of working – much to both the delight and horror of those involved. The ‘finished product' struck me as completely naturalistic, coming straight from the heart of both cast and production team, and utterly convincing. For me, it had a similar gritty yet inescapable appeal to Brassed Off and The Full Monty – both, of course, views of the harsher realities of Northern life post-Thatcher.

Rare screening
The film, then, is an important social and political comment on some of the major issues of our times. What, then, also made this recent Lancaster screening so important? First, the film is not on general release in this country. It is available in the UK on video and DVD, but you cannot see it in the standard cinema repertory. It has only been shown less than half a dozen times at choice (non-London) locations in the form of private screenings or at select (very select) ‘art-house' locations since its first airing on Channel 4 in December 2001.

Why? Inevitably there are ‘conspiracy theories' but, realistically, there is much we do not – cannot? – know about the real truth behind this amazing state of affairs. Ken Loach, ever radical, outspoken and the maverick in his subject-matter since the seminal Cathy Come Home of 1966 (Loach is 68) to the recent and controversial Sweet Sixteen, is one of the UK's film directors who has taken – and still takes - social and society issues seriously.

The past still haunts
Only in February this year he complained bitterly that "[Calls for tighter control over asylum seekers come] at a time when we've had refugees and immigrants, illegal immigrants killed in an accident off the coast of Britain where they were being paid less than the equivalent of two euros a day by gangmasters to work gathering shell fish.'

The exploitation that civilised nations regard as regrettable incidents in their inglorious past is still with us. Here. And now.

Suffice it to say that Lancaster was very lucky to benefit from one such rare screening of a highly emotive, painfully relevant and memorable film from one of the leading film makers of our time.

Copyright © 28 May 2004 Michael Nunn