Jim Allen

James Allen was a socialist playwright from Miles Platting, Manchester, Lancashire, best known for his collaborations with Ken Loach. Allen began to write during his time as a miner. In 1958, he was involved in the launch and publication of The Miner. In 1964, he submitted a script to Granada TV, and was taken on as a scriptwriter for the soap opera Coronation Street (1965–67), a series for which he had little sympathy. His later play, The Talking Head (1969), recounts the experience of a talented writer driven to a nervous breakdown by the pressure of "episode delivery dates". Allen's first play, The Hard Word (1966), directed by Ridley Scott, was broadcast as part of the Thirty-Minute Theatre series on BBC 2. It was followed by The Lump (1967), the first fictional work directed by Jack Gold, who had begun his career on documentaries, and broadcast as part of The Wednesday Play drama anthology series. Both plays were based on his experiences in the building trade, and The Lump features an activist worker who frequently quotes Lenin and Jack London, establishing the political nature of Allen's work which was to continue throughout his career. Allen was introduced to Ken Loach in 1967 by Loach's regular collaborator at the time, producer Tony Garnett] who had produced The Lump. The first of Allen's plays to be directed by Loach was The Big Flame (1969), again for The Wednesday Play series. The play depicts a strike among the dockers of Liverpool, led by a Trotskyite docker ag…