Channel 4 Interview of This is England

The director tells us about bullying, racism, skinhead culture and the BBFC's controversial decision to grant the film an 18 certificate

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When Shane Meadows' This Is England won Best British Film at the 2008 BAFTAs it was a further vindication for a director whose future in the film business looked shaky after his 'sell-out' movie Once Upon A Time In the Midlands bombed at the box office.



His follow-up, the vigilante thriller Dead Man's Shoes, changed all that; though not a financial success, its critical reception and subsequent cult status restored his faith in filmmaking, making a star of Paddy Considine, and bolstering Meadows' reputation as one of the most vital British directors working today. Set in 1983, This Is England tells the story of a fatherless 12-year-old called Shaun, played by Thomas Turgoose, who falls in with a bunch of skinheads. When the racist Combo (Stephen Graham) arrives on the scene, the group is torn apart, culminating in the vicious beating of black skinhead Milky (A Room For Romeo Brass's Andrew Shim).



In March 2007, the British Board Of Film Classification saddled the film with an 18 certificate, decreeing that its use of "vicious racial language... might give out the wrong message to an impressionable audience". Such a move not only precluded Turgoose from seeing his own film, but also prevented Meadows from screening it to 15-year-old schoolchildren, as planned, to "show the dangers of bullying, peer pressure and racism to young people". As producer Mark Herbert said at the time, "It's insane to deny them that."



You must have been delighted by the film's reception when it premiered at the 2006 London Film Festival.

I felt like I'd won the World Cup! You know when people drive around in open buses? It felt like that - incredible! I've been to the LFF three or four times before, but now it feels like there's a heart to it, a warmth to it.

Next page • "It was the equivalent of punk. All I need is a bass, a guitar and some drums"