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British film industry? What British film industry? There isn’t one. Although, given the coverage of so-called ‘British films’ at the Oscars this year, you could be forgiven for thinking we had one. The sad truth is that, for the most part, people who work in film in Britain are the employees of overseas film studios. What we have is not a British Film Industry, but a British Film Service Industry. Despite what you may have been told, The Queen is not a British film; it was made by Pathé, a French film studio. Notes on a Scandel, starring Judy Dench, is not a British film; it was made by one of the US majors: Twentieth Century Fox. The Last King of Scotland was made by Warner Bros, and Casino Royale is a Paramount film.

Back in the 1960s, there was such a thing as British Cinema. There was British Lion, the Rank Organisation and Thorn-EMI, which were all major studios, as well as a number of ‘mini-majors’. But these were destroyed in the early 70s when the British government removed the Eady Levy and imposed unhelpful tax regulations.

The death of British cinema has had a profound effect on British culture and society. Over the past 100 years, cinema has become the chief way for us to communicate our identity and culture to ourselves and to the world. When the British studios were destroyed, a large part of our cultural development was arrested, and this has contributed greatly to a disintegration of our sense of identity and purpose as a nation.

With no support or protection, British cinema became easy prey for the US studios, which wasted no time in taking control of virtually all UK film distribution. Today, the Hollywood cartel (Paramount, Warner Bros, Universal, Sony, Fox and Disney) controls approximately 95 per cent of what is seen in Britain and, as a result, the past 30 years have witnessed an Americanisation of British culture. We even wear baseball caps, even though we don’t play the game. We have adopted an American mode of speech and American modes of thought.

Maybe this is karma. The British Empire despoiled the culture of other nations, so now we are being despoiled in our turn. But why does the British government, despite its rhetoric about the importance of Britishness, still refuse to protect British cinema?

At various times over the past three decades, filmmakers have lobbied the government to protect British films. There was even a brief, exciting time in the early 80s when a group, led by Sir Richard Attenborough, convinced Arts Minister Norman St John Stevas to support the principle that British Cinema (like British Theatre) should be safeguarded for cultural reasons. But the Thatcher government, like the Callaghan and Wilson governments before it, rejected this on the grounds that films should be a ‘free market’. Today’s government maintains this ‘free market’ position. But the odd thing is that government has never applied the free market principles to television. Government regulations dictate that 70 per cent of what is shown on UK terrestrial television must be owned and controlled by British companies. So why is British television protected, but not British cinema?

The public interest

When asked why, senior civil servants say it’s “not in the public interest” for British television to be a free market. Sorry? If it’s in the public interest for 70 per cent of what is shown on TV to be British, why not the same for cinema or DVD? What is the huge difference between TV and cinema? Well, the first difference is that you don’t have to pay – at least not in a pay-per-view way – for terrestrial television, but you do have to pay to watch a movie at the cinema or on DVD. A second difference is that your TV is accessible at all times in your home, whereas watching a movie can involve some effort. The third is that many more people watch television, and for longer periods of time, than watch films. Average per capita consumption of cinema/DVD is three hours a week, while average per capita consumption of TV is two and a half hours a day. So, because Britons watch so much more television, and because much of what they watch is not consciously selected by them, television has far more political influence than cinema. Governments are afraid to allow a free market in television because a free market would allow foreign powers to take over our TV screens. But governments are not concerned about foreign powers taking over what we watch on cinema/DVD because the numbers are not politically significant.

But wait a minute, that can’t be right. Movies are very influential. The evidence is all around us – in magazine spreads, display advertising, fashions, British TV shows, and in human attitudes and behaviours. It’s well known that if a movie star smokes a cigarette, cigarette sales go up. Movies are extremely significant culturally, so they must be significant politically too. What’s going on here? Do our governments want Britain to be Americanised?

51st state

It’s interesting to speculate what would happen if the American movie cartel were supplanted by the French film industry. Would our government allow this, or would it pass legislation to protect Hollywood? Politically, France is very different from Britain. The French have a democratic electoral system, their unions are strong, shareholders are represented on the boards of companies they own shares in, there’s a 35-hour week, low electricity bills, an egalitarian school system, excellent health care, powerful local governments which foster small businesses, local produce and local shops, and an impeccably maintained and efficient road and rail network.

France, like most other countries in the European Union, is a social democracy. If France, not America, controlled what we saw in the cinema, our consciousness might be subverted by social democratic ideas. We might start wanting liberté, egalité, fraternité and – heaven forbid – demand the abolition of the class system, the House of Lords, the public schools and first-past-the-post voting. We might even insist that central government transfers most of its powers to locally elected councils.

Perhaps the senior civil service (which guides our government) believes that the best custodian of British culture is America. French cinema is clearly “not in the public interest” and the British are too irresponsible to be entrusted with something as important as British cinema. Free-thinking film writers might foment opposition to the powers that be. One Ken Loach is enough.

The mainstream media’s reaction to V for Vendetta and Nick Lowe’s Outlaw was very revealing. Both these films (made by foreign studios) contained political material that challenged the British establishment, and both films were condemned by critics working for establishment publications.

In several daily newspapers Outlaw received zero stars. Zero stars?! Even an unwatchable film gets at least one star. Was the film really that bad? Curious, I went along to my local cinema to see it. I thought it was pretty good. It had a compelling story, interesting characters, good acting, excellent camerawork, good production design and good music – so why zero stars?

Because of the theme.

The theme of Outlaw expresses despair at the failures of the British government and depicts as heroes a small band of individuals who try to address these failures by taking the law into their own hands. Naturally, the outlaws fail because the power of the British institutions – symbolised by a corrupt police force – is too strong for them. But one member of the band survives to fight another day.

In several newspapers the characters in Outlaw were dismissed as ‘chavs’ – a pejorative term for working class people as offensive and disrespectful as calling black people ‘niggers’. So why this wholly negative reaction? Is democratic revolution closer than we think?

Special friends

There’s another possibility: the British government permits America to decide which films are shown in Britain because of the ‘special relationship’. We are ‘special friends’ with the United States, so we give them control of our movie scene. But what is the nature of this special relationship? What, in US parlance, is the deal?

We now have pretty good evidence that Tony Blair committed British military support to America’s invasion of oil-rich Iraq six months before the publication of the fake intelligence dossiers and the heavily whipped Parliamentary vote. We also know that Tony Blair and David Cameron have committed half of Britain’s defence budget for the next 20 years to renewing Trident, our American-controlled ‘independent nuclear deterrent’. How do these two examples of the special relationship benefit Britain? Do we get economic benefits? It appears not. The German car company BMW, for example, gets economic benefits from a greater penetration of the US market than any British car manufacturer ever achieved. Yet Germany has no ‘special relationship’ with the US, did not send troops to Iraq, does not pay the US for expensive nuclear weapons whose launch codes are controlled by the Pentagon, and does protect its cinema from death by Hollywood.

It’s reasonable to assume that our government considers it politically undesirable to open up about the special relationship. Perhaps they’re right? Maybe they need to lie to us in order to protect us from ugly realities we couldn’t stomach, such as that we need Iraqi oil to stave off economic collapse, or that the cost of Trident is the price we pay for America’s protection of the English speaking world. But, even so, when the government lies to the people, the people grow to distrust and, eventually, reject them. No doubt time will reveal all. Our children, or grandchildren, will learn the truth behind the British government’s mysterious enslavement to the White House.

So far as the present is concerned, there seems to be little we can do to revive British cinema because our government is determined to support US films – even to the extent of giving cash incentives and tax breaks that are ostensibly in place to support the British film industry, but in reality only support some workers in the British film industry, with the main beneficiary being the Hollywood studios.

Last year, a colleague of mine in the US was offered $5 million by the UK Film Council to make his movie in Britain. He was also offered the equivalent of $6 million in tax breaks. If he made his film in the UK he’d receive $11 million in free money – money he didn’t have to give back. He said he felt like a Saudi prince being offered a bribe by the Foreign Office.

Of course, this $11 million cash incentive, had it succeeded (which it didn’t), would have brought the UK an American movie with a $70 million budget, much of which would have been spent employing British production facilities and talent – the bribe was conditional on him employing a checklist of British filmmakers. Gordon Brown increased the complexity of the points system, whereby foreign film studios become eligible for British subsidies. To qualify for a subsidy, a film must now have a British subject and be made in Britain (so if anyone wants to make a new film version of Hamlet, forget it – it's set in Denmark and there are too many Danish characters). It’s possible that the $11 million would have been clawed back by the Treasury via direct and indirect taxes on the many transactions involved in producing the film. Moreover, our British Film Service Industry would have benefited from the wages and fees paid by the Americans.

I’ve heard some people say that they don’t want a revival of British cinema because it would put off the Hollywood studios from using our production facilities. The rationale is that if we made British films they’d be in competition with US films and Hollywood would strive ruthlessly to wipe them out. Even now, when so few indigenous films are made, the Hollywood cartel will not permit them to be distributed in the US, notwithstanding the supposed ‘free market’. Some believe Hollywood would use every weapon in its arsenal to destroy a nascent British Film Industry, and would succeed because of the huge financial clout derived from its enormous (and protected) home market. Besides, it’s better to be well paid for working on Hollywood movies, which are seen all over the world, than badly paid for working on British films, most of which (like most French or German films) would not be seen beyond UK borders.

When some of us decry the deception of the government and the UK Film Council, we’re accused of “rocking the boat”. To feign that Casino Royale or Shaun of the Dead or The Queen are British movies makes us feel good, and provides employment for British filmmakers. What’s more, if we classify these films as British, we can dodge the moral problem of using British taxes to subsidise Hollywood. They’re not Hollywood movies, they’re British movies! Many Britons are unhappy and frustrated because they want to make films for, and see films by, the British film industry. The government’s response is to is to put on a big, successful smile and lie. A few years ago, I saw Tony Blair on television, in the House of Commons at Question Time, congratulating himself and his government on the success of the first Harry Potter film – an American movie made by Warner Bros! Hey guys, we already have a British film industry! And guess what? Our films are winning Oscars.

Times they are a-changin’

But anyone who has a nose, and can sniff the air, can sense that time is running out, not only for the current government, but also for the traditions of Perfidious Albion. The government/ruling class custom of deceiving the public goes back countless centuries but, today, new factors are in play (not least the internet), and they are conspiring to put a stop to it.

For the past 30 years, the public, with increased determination, has been demanding transparency and accountability. Government has answered, as it always does, with a dance of the seven veils. A Freedom of Information Act is passed, with the promise that all the veils will be removed, but only one veil is removed and, as time passes, another veil is unobtrusively slipped in its place. But these time-worn tactics are reaching their sell-by date. The public, thanks to our newly diverse media, is getting wise. Surveys confirm that government officials have never been less trusted than they are today. People want, and expect, honesty and fair dealing, and not only from government. Doctors, lawyers, judges, police officers, bank directors and the CEOs of businesses are all being pressured to become transparent and accountable.

The British are an imaginative, romantic and energetic nation. Last year, despite the absence of a British film industry, more than 100 low budget independent films were made. Almost none of them were released. The vast majority were seen by, at most, a few hundred individuals, at minor film festivals or private screening rooms. But they were made. What does this tell us? The appetite for filmmaking in the UK is great, so great that thousands of people will work for nothing, spend all their savings, max out their credit cards and shake down their relatives and friends to make a film, despite the near certainty that their efforts will result in financial loss.

We need a British film industry, not just a service industry providing ideas and services for foreign studios, but our own British cinema. With a stroke of the pen, our government could accomplish this. All that needs to be done is for a statute to be written saying that 20 per cent of the films shown in British cinema are by British film studios. If 20 per cent of the UK film market is reserved for British films, national studios would become viable again, and we’d see a renaissance of British cinema. And an essential part of British cultural life – vital to British identity – would be restored.

Down in Albion

Jonathan Gems