Can Labour help pull the British Film Industry out of its rut?

Paul-Matthieu Faure, Intern
26/09/2024

From bringing to life iconic characters like James Bond and Mary Poppins, to being the set for modern blockbusters like the Dark Knight and Dunkirk, it’s no secret the British film industry is an incredibly important, and often underappreciated, part of the global media landscape. 

Our film industry serves not only as a powerful source of soft power to showcase British culture on the world stage, but also as a revenue machine for the UK economy. In 2022 the combined creative industries added £126 billion of value to the UK economy and the film industry alone employed over 106,000 people. 

However, since the shock of the COVID-19 pandemic and last year’s Screen Actors Guild – America Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG-AFTRA) strikes in Hollywood, the British film industry has been struggling to recover. A July 2024 survey from one of the largest media trade unions, Broadcasting Entertainment Communications and Theatre Union (BECTU), showed 52 percent of Film and TV workers were currently out of work as a direct result of the industry’s slowdown.  

A combination of multiple factors including the SAG-AFTRA strikes in the US, lack of funding, redundancies, and recruitment freezes at national media companies such as the BBC and ITV ultimately created an environment labelled by BECTU as an “existential threat to the UK’s screen industries”. This sense of dread is highlighted by the fact 37 percent of the workers surveyed by BECTU were now planning to leave the industry entirely in the next five years.

It is clear the sector has now exited its toughest period and is focused on recovery. However, this recovery requires investment and attention from those in government. Indeed, the industry heads of the UK film industry know substantial action is necessary for businesses to flourish.

The CEO of the Film Distributor’s Association, Andy Leyshon, stated that they wanted the new Labour Government to “fully embrace the film industry with a holistic approach” and “understands there doesn’t have to be a disconnect between the cultural and the commercial”. Additionally, Ellie Peers, the General Secretary of the Writer’s Guild of Great Britain, wanted the new Government to “introduce protections on fair pay and fair treatment” to make work in the UK film industry sustainable. This highlights that, broadly, the heads of the British film industry are looking for the new Government to enhance their focus on the industry and protect the workers which have been struggling to remain in employment  

Before the election, Labour held their creatives conference that saw 250 creative industry leaders attend. The party now in government made a variety of pledges in their “plan for the creative industries” including support for small to medium sized enterprises, greater government collaboration with the creative sector, public funders, and investors, and pledged to create a private finance model to attract funding and ensure the creative industry is on a sustainable footing. These policy pledges are pertinent to Andy Leyshon’s comments on reconnecting the cultural and commercial to help more funding come into the industry. Indeed, this willingness from industry heads to open their artistic space to investment can appeal to the new Labour government which has made it clear they intend to work closely with British businesses. 

In traditional Labour fashion, much of their pledges also related to worker’s rights. Labour pledged to ban zero-hour contracts, strengthen collective bargaining, and give self-employed workers the right to request a written contract amongst other measures. These pledges were key to answering the plights of many of the film industry’s workers, thus shining a light of hope that with these protections in place the industry may be able to retain its fleeing workers. Additionally, Labour’s manifesto pledge to protect creatives’ intellectual property in the face of greater artificial intelligence proliferation will come as a welcome move to industry heads and the workers who protested against AI during last year’s strikes. 

However, one question remains on how much of these pledges Labour will truly follow through with. Faced by such a broad scope of policy areas to tackle in the context of the £22 billion black hole, how much time and money will the government really be able to dedicate to the industry? These fears would be well founded, as worker’s rights reforms that were labelled by industry heads as key to retaining its fleeing workforce such as the ban on zero-hour contracts and the right for employees to “switch off” outside of work hours have been softened, with Angela Rayner telling business heads that reforms will be implemented in a staggered approach earlier this month. Though time will tell, it is important that Labour listens to the industry’s demands and follows through on plans to increase investment for creative industries or to allow self-employed workers to request a contract, as these policies are key to helping the British film industry out of its rut. 

The world is everchanging, and so is the British film industry. This election has provided the first change of party governance in the last fourteen years at a time where the British film industry desperately needs help recovering. This is an incredible opportunity for the new Government and the creative industry to tackle challenges together, tackle the monopolisation of creative industries by multi-national corporations and create a new “Cool Britannia” Britain can be proud of.