Movie: Kes (and a caning controversy)

Posted by Traditional School Discipline March 26, 2022

Movie: Kes (and a caning controversy)

I suspect many readers of this website will be familiar with the caning scene in the 1969 British movie Kes, set in a secondary modern school, but few might know about the way it was filmed.

The headmaster Mr Gryce, returns to his office to find a line up of boys waiting. “Same old faces! Same old faces!” he almost rants as he delivers a speech about the good old days. What he hasn’t taken the trouble to find out – and he doesn’t want to listen to protests – is that one of the boys has been innocently sent to him to deliver a message. He gets caned as well.

It was later revealed by director Ken Loach that the boys were genuinely caned and they did not expect this to happen. He made the revelation in a BBC TV feature that celebrated the 40^th anniversary of the film. He seemed quite proud of the fact that he had duped the boys and no one concerned with the interview bothered to tell him he had committed an illegal assault on the boys. Bradley says they were in “extreme pain” so they went on strike and refused to continue.

The first clip is an 8-minute scene that includes the caning. The second clip from the BBC feature includes David Bradley, who starred in the film, and Loach himself discussing the filming of the caning scene.

Below the clips is a cutting from the Daily Mirror, a UK tabloid, of 12 August 1968 that had its own take on the caning which doesn’t square with the Loach version.

Kes was based on the book A Kestrel for a Knave, By Barry Hines (Penguin, 1968), which we met here.