Ahead of the scheduled march in Canary Wharf with the cleaners campaigning for a living wage, Ken Loach agreed to speak at a screening of his brilliant film “Bread & Roses”.

When hosting an opening event of the European Social Forum, it’s good to have strong and attractive line up. So showing the film Bread and Roses (the directors cut) with Ken Loach, director there for Q&A is quite a good bet. With all sorts of legal writs over the next day’s demonstration in Canary Wharf, the prospect of union workers appearing with leaflets proclaiming the demo was cancelled, there was plenty of potential for the whole evening to go belly up.

In the event a full house saw the only directors cut (to my knowledge) which turned out shorter than the original. There was a huge number of faces new to GR and judging by the number of people walking in with backpacks and big bags, a huge number of people coming in from out of town.

The film introduced and shown, with a buzz in the cinema, the debate got off to a great start with the question “What’s happening tomorrow?” Not about the camera techniques or scripting difficulties, but the politics of today and the activity we are involved in. I think Ken and Paul rather appreciated that.

The political nature and the support from the crowd perhaps had something to do with the lack of enthusiasm the union leafleters had for pushing their “the demo is cancelled” leaflets.

For a full report on the Canary Wharf demo, check the report elsewhere in this London ESF section.