A Question of Leadership

Shortly after Margaret Thatchers election as prime minister Ken Loach returned to documentary convinced that the long gestation of feature films made them useless as instruments of topical social comment But his trade union documentary A Question of Leadership intended for national ITV broadcast was criticised by the Independent Broadcasting Authority for its explicitly antigovernment stance It was eventually screened a year later exclusively in the Midlands tx 1381981 Believing that the thennew Channel 4 would be more amenable to politicised documentaries Loach proposed the fourpart Questions of Leadership 1983 a widerranging study of the trade union movement but on viewing the completed programmes strong criticism of leading trade unionists an anxious Channel 4 shortened the series to two parts and proposed screening a balancing documentary by a different filmmaker before scrapping the broadcast altogether