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Hatfield Court

Hatfield

Nr Leominster

Herefordshire

HR6 0SD

Phone: 01568 760333

Why I Do Not Think it Appropriate

to Share the Writers Credit or Fee

for ‘Cathy Come Home’ with

Anyone Other Than Myself

by Jeremy Sandford

Probably the most successful one shot drama ever transmitted on British Television, ‘Cathy Come Home’ won many awards, has been shown all over the world, produced actual social change, and played its part in the founding of the charity ‘Shelter’.

It was written by Jeremy Sandford, produced by Tony Garnett and directed by Ken Loach. I have sole billing as author in the film itself, in the various announcements in the Radio Times, and in the BBC script from which the film was made. Authors copyright has been asserted a number of times under the old Copyright Act and the Patents and Copyright Act of 1988, for example in the novelisation and the published version of the script, and never been questioned.

So what is the problem?

In one area, and one area only, it is sometimes suggested that I should share my fee (though not my credit) with the director, Ken Loach.

Who suggests this, and why?

BBC Enterprises. When asked why, they sometimes come up with a copy of a document originating in the BBC Accounts Department in which it is stated that ‘Cathy’ was written ‘in collaboration with’ the director, Ken Loach, with a 2/1 split in the fee in Jeremy’s favour.

So was it?

No. Ken’s three or four suggestions submitted during our script conferences were as valuable as one would expect from a director of his calibre. But not more than that. The story line and a great deal of the dialogue were in fact in existence long before Ken came on the scene, and the rest were entirely written by me. There is not a word in any draft of the script in any handwriting or typewriter face other than my own.

So, why does the contract say it was written ‘in collaboration’?

Nobody seems to know. The document was never seen by me until relatively recently. It was not signed by me. It was not signed by my agent. A signature on it, ‘Andrew Mann’, is not that of anyone known to me or anyone I have ever met. I understand that this person is now deceased. It is possible that there was a contract with similar conditions for Ken, but that he never saw it or signed it either.

What do Producer and Director say about this?

Tony Garnett says he has never dreamed or instructed that I would be accorded anything other than a unique credit as author of ‘Cathy’ as indeed I am in the film, and has said that he is astonished by the suggestion that I should share the writers credit or fee. Neither producer or director, in any of the many collaborative meetings, ever suggested that they considered me anything other than the unique author of ‘Cathy Come Home’.

We all held high ideals at that time, and still do I am sure, about the importance of workers solidarity viz a viz management. I am confident that it is inconceivable that Tony or Ken would knowingly connive in a clandestine deal with management in which a slice of one worker’s fee would be surreptitiously siphoned off into the account of another worker. That, I believe, is inconceivable.

How could the Accounts Department at the BBC have made this mistake?

One theory is that Jeremy’s wife Nell Sandford had previously signed a contract stating that she collaborated with Ken Loach on the TV version of the book ‘Up the Junction’. He does remember her mentioning something about this, although she said she was not happy with the situation. Since they had the same surname, the BBC may have mixed up the names and thought that ‘Cathy’ too was a collaboration.

Whatever the reason, the BBC Accounts Department made a mistake. Jeremy would certainly have spotted the mistake if he had ever been asked to sign this controversial contract.

It is for the reasons above that I do not think it appropriate to share the writers credit or fee for ‘Cathy Come Home’ with anyone other than myself.

The whole thing seems to be based on a bungle made by the BBC Accounts Department.

Right to sole paternity has been many times asserted and I here assert it again. The script (and novelisation) of ‘Cathy Come Home’ was written uniquely by me and was not a collaboration with anyone else.

Additional information; letter sent by Jeremy Sandford to Tony Garnett and Ken Loach on 17 June 1998.

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Hatfield Court

Hatfield

Nr Leominster

Herefordshire

HR6 0SD

Phone: 01568 760333

Dear Tony and Ken

Moral Right to Writer’s Sole Paternity

in Script of ‘Cathy’

This letter is about my moral right to be recognised as the writer of the screenplay of ‘Cathy’. In many ways it is surprising that I’m even having to write this letter since is has been pointed out to me that my exclusive right to authorship of ‘Cathy’ has been asserted many times under the old copyright law, and under the newer Copyrights and Patents Act of 1988, and never been questioned. And I have exclusive listing as writer in the credits to the film itself and in the various Radio Times billings - including a rave article about me as writer in the Radio Times by Tony.

Yet the suggestion does occasionally crop up that it was co-written with Ken. I have had a chance to talk it over with Tony who expressed surprise at the suggestion.

Ken’s actual (and most valuable) suggestions for the script consisted of say the ten to fifteen hours taken up by our various script conferences (plus obviously a lot of thought and cogitation). As for myself, including all my research and all my drafts, and all the newspaper articles and the radio play on which ‘Cathy’ was based, my work on the script of ‘Cathy’ took me far more than a year (plus a lot of thought and cogitation), a ratio of 365:2 approximately to the time spent by Ken on it. That this relationship should be rewarded by being described as a collaboration seems to me quite wrong, a sort of hierarchical droit de seigneur, to which Ken at no point, I am absolutely certain, would wish to be a party.

Put in another way, the original storyline, which was the basis for my contract to write ‘Cathy’, still exists. I think it would be correct to say that the final script does not differ in any significant way from the initial story outlined in the original storyline. (This in part because the script itself and part of the novelisation already existed in a rough draft stage.) The storyline was, of course, like the script, entirely written by me, although various people had made helpful suggestions about it.

I am given exclusive credit as writer (and Ken Loach is nowhere mentioned as a collaborator) in the credits for the film, in the various billings in the Radio Times, in the article in the Radio Times written about the film and myself at the time of the original transmission by Tony Garnett. I am given exclusive writer’s credit, and Ken’s name does not appear as co-writer in the book (novelisation) of ‘Cathy’ as published by Pan, nor on the screenplay published by Marion Boyars.

I have exclusive credit as writer, and Ken is not mentioned as co-writer in the various awards won by the script. My name appears exclusively as author on the BBC script from which the film was made and all the many other drafts (which I still have). Ken is not mentioned as co-writer in the newspaper series and articles which accompanied first and second transmission, nor in any of the scores of reviews of which I have copies, not in any work of reference that I know of.

He is not mentioned as co-writer in the follow-up documentary ‘Cathy Where Are You Now?’, transmitted last year, or in the two or three further Cathy-inspired documentaries there have been.

There is not a single entry in any draft of the screenplay or books in any hand other than my own. Nor does any draft of the script include his name as co-author.

Nor does the idea make its appearance in the book ‘British Television Drama’ (Cambridge University Press) or ‘The Documentary Conscience’ (University of California Press), both of which discuss, the latter at some length, the circumstances of the writing of ‘Cathy’.

The Award from the Italia prize was divided by the BBC equally between producer, director and writer, for their contributions in these three areas.

Obviously a good director and writer would consult, just as Ken and I did, over a script and their specific contributions would, it seems to me, be in the area of the specific skills of director on the one hand and writer on the other, and to this end the director and I had some 4 or 5 script conferences which were as fruitful as one would expect from a director of Ken Loach’s calibre.

Ken undoubtedly contributed valuable ideas and suggestions to the script, and he also showed that flair in directing that one would expect from a director of his calibre.

In my experience many directors will make positive and helpful suggestions. But this, in my experience, is the normal process of consultation between writer and director (and sometimes producer too) that accompanies any successful production.

I do, as it happens, have experience of co-writing in which writing, credits and cash are shared. For example, I have worked on a co-written script commissioned by BBC radio, and more recently on a BFI funded co-written screenplay. The experience is completely different to that of writing ‘Cathy’ in that both of us were involved in writing and re-writing, and there are extensive passages in both our handwriting and typefaces, there were many meetings and extensive correspondence passed between us.

Casting my mind back to the making of the film of ‘Cathy’, I remember how I was paid a fee to record a great deal of the wildtrack, and some minutes of this was in fact used in the final film, transferred directly from recordings made by me on an L2.

Equally, I remember contributing something like half the major locations which were used in the film, a service I gladly undertook and for which I was not paid.

The point of mentioning this is not that I am asking for further payment, or a somewhat belated credit for these. It is to point out that in the making of a film where the team are working happily together, this is the sort of thing that happens, and I am not asking for money or for a credit for my work on the sound or on location finding.

Friends who have been to Hollywood have told me of writers discovering that they perforce have to share the screenplay credit with the director’s girlfriend or even the au pair, but that, in my experience, is not the British tradition.

I accept that it is possible that at the extreme outset, producer and director who had only seen a storyline did not appreciate how far the work had already progressed. It is possible they envisaged Ken Loach playing a larger part in the process of writing than he actually did. However, in the circumstances, it did not happen that his contribution was greater than what one would expect from a director of his calibre, as I am sure both will agree. Had anyone disagreed, I am sure the matter would have been raised long ago during the thirty years since the film was made. And, as I have said, Tony has expressed surprise that it has been suggested that I was anything other than exclusive author of ‘Cathy’.

Even if it were alleged that many scenes were improvised, this would not effect the writer’s exclusive position as writer of the script. And this point would not hold water anyway because a comparison of film and the script from which it was made show that dialogue and action follow the script pretty closely.

Author’s Moral Right to Full Payment

of Writer’s Fee

The second part of this letter, which is of much less importance to me than the first, is something that however follows from the first.

Naturally, I have also been in correspondence with Ken alone about this, indeed have been for some years, and have written two or three letters (one, for example, in March 1993). Ken is a busy man (like all of us) and so far has not, in fact, found the time to reply to my various letters. This is not said in reproof, but it would be really good to get it sorted out.

Workers solidarity from yourselves in this matter, Tony and Ken, would be much appreciated.

It concerns the BBC’s habit of, on occasion, attempting to pay a third of my royalties for ‘Cathy’ to Ken and only two thirds to me. Sometimes, however, they pay 100%. So, I wonder if you can show me solidarity in this muddle which appears to be of BBC Enterprises, and their forebears, making and, as I say, springs from the erroneous impression that Ken was co-writer of the script.

As you’ll remember we were all fairly skint in 1966 and Tony devised various ways of bumping up what we got. For example, I got a payment to do the voice over sound recordings of which quite a few minutes were used in the completed picture. And Ken got paid something for the three or four script conferences he had with me.

Somewhere along the line the latter transaction, though not the former, has become institutionalised, so that there is sometimes an attempt to pay Ken some of the money that should go to me in royalties for the screenplay.

This had not been so at the time of the Italia Prize, when I clearly got the whole of the writer’s chunk of the award. Nor, I think, in the case of most contracts to do with ‘Cathy’. But, in some contracts, there has been a proposal that I should only get 2/3 of the proposed writer’s fee and that Ken should get 1/3. These have always been vigorously fought by me, when I knew about it, but others may have got through as I was unaware of the situation when it was being handled by agents.

I don’t feel this can be fair. I well remember you, Tony, saying that as Ken was skint you’d like to give him something for his work as director in discussions about, and suggestions as to the shaping of, the script, the typical process that occurs in my experience between any writer and any director. I replied that of course I’d be most happy that this should happen, so long as it didn’t affect my fee as writer, to which you agreed. (And you have since explained to me that, as a ‘hired worker’ at the BBC, this was not really in your remit anyway.)

There is no suggestion that you or Ken knew about what happened next, which was contrary to what had been agreed, and to what we all believed (and believe) about showing respect for and solidarity with our fellow workers, and not conniving in situations which would result in the reduction of fellow workers pay packets.

Of course none of us dreamed that the film would have the long career it has had. We thought it would be shown (or possibly not shown!) and forgotten. Ken’s agent, however, does seem to have been greedy, or merely just a very efficient agent, and realised that there might be an advantage if Ken’s work with me (very helpful, but not more than one normally expects from a director of his calibre) could be represented as a percentage of the writer’s royalties for the screenplay.

As I’ve already said, there is no suggestion that any of us three had an inkling of what was going on. The transaction was signed, without consulting me, by someone who I have never met, or even corresponded with or talked to on the phone, who unfortunately has since died so it is not possible to ask for his views on what was going on. Presumably the same was then done for Ken by his over zealous agent, so that Ken also remained ignorant.

Presumably Ken was on his own percentage as director of this movie so it does seem unfair that I should suffer to the tune of possibly thousands of pounds going into his and his agent’s account because of that slip up at contract stage, and is not something, I am sure, he could be happy about if he were aware of it.

I’ve described the conversation I had with Tony about it, and I know Ken knew nothing about it because never at any moment in all the work we put in, in our respective toles on ‘Cathy’, did he imply that I was to be anything other than the sole author of ‘Cathy’.

It is of course inconceivable that, holding the ideas that we then all held (and still do, I am sure) that workers need to unite and show solidarity with each other and must avoid like the plague clandestine deals with management that disempower fellow workers, that Ken, while working alongside me and consulting me almost daily, and often many times daily, about the filming of the script (particularly essential in this film because it was essential that it painted an accurate picture and since I had also done the research myself, as well as writing the script, I was the source for information) that during recee stages in which I led Ken round homes for the homeless and while we worked together in all the ways that writer and director do on a successful movie, and indeed joined in condemnation of so many aspects of the hierarchical BBC, that his smiling face and friendly manner hid the knowledge that secretly he was conniving in siphoning away part of a fellow worker’s fee into his own account - that is inconceivable.

Yet a deal appears to have been secured by Ken’s agent that he should be given 1/3 of the writer’s fee and I feel that this was unfair. Ken did, after all, already have his director’s fee.

And, as I have said, my own view is that both Tony and Ken were ignorant of this clandestine operation, which was engineered without their knowledge by an over zealous agent.

Workers solidarity from yourselves in this matter, Tony and Ken, would be much appreciated.

With best wishes

Jeremy

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