Loach slams Brits over Iraq

Radical British filmmaker Ken Loach brought politics to the Cannes Film Festival today when he used the showcasing of his new film, set around the Irish Civil War, to attack the Government over the Iraq conflict.

The Wind That Shakes The Barley is one of 20 films in competition for the prestigious Palme d'Or at the Festival.

The movie, starring Irish actors Cillian Murphy and Liam Cunningham, is said to be one of the most violent and controversial films made by the director of Kes, Poor Cow and Cathy Come Home.

The 69-year-old filmmaker told a press conference at the summer Festival that the film's story applied to modern-day politics.

Loach, who is known as a political filmmaker, said: "I think the story of a struggle for independence is a story that reoccurs and reoccurs and reoccurs so it's always a good time to tell that story.

"There are always armies of occupation somewhere in the world being resisted by the people they're occupying, and I don't need to tell anyone here where the British now illegally have an army of occupation, and the damage in casualties and brutality that is emerging from that."

He said the history of the Irish civil war was not discussed in Britain adding: "It's as though the Irish can't stop fighting themselves, that's how it's presented."

He described the war as an "appalling scar" on the British and US Governments' record.

The £4.5m film screenwriter Paul Laverty also used today's press conference to attack Chancellor Gordon Brown for "being prepared to rewrite history and totally ignore the history of torture, brutality, slavery and murder and what the British Empire was responsible for".

Laverty said: "There is something fascinating about how empires re-write their history. This Saturday will be the 500th anniversary of the death of Columbus... what we forget is that he kidnapped the Indians, as he called
them, set dogs on them, he mutilated people.

"We see history rewriting itself and we see it again about the British Empire. When I was at school I learned nothing about the British Empire.