Sat 05 May 2004A class actFilm: Asked to provide a mini-biography for the Planet Britain project, Ken Loach wrote that a recurring theme of his work "has been to explore the two curses of the labour movement: Stalinism and social democracy, the latter exemplified by the Blairite project of trying to give a radical gloss to hard-line capitalist politics". His entry was omitted.Anthony Hayward's biography has been published to mark the 40th anniversary of Loach's screen career, one that started with the BBC's innovative Wednesday Play, came to wider attention with the making of Kes in 1969 and, after a lean time in the Thatcher years, found new audiences and financing in the 1990s. What binds together these films - Poor Cow (1967), Riff-Raff (1991), Ladybird Ladybird (1994), My Name is Joe (1998) - is a strongly held belief that poverty ruins lives.