British docmentarian Nick Broomfield may have a reputation as somewhat of a ratbag, off the back of more recent films like Kurt and Courtney and Fetishes. Films which seemed to mine sensationalist veins over substance. But with his latest film, Ghosts – about the deaths of 23 Chinese cockle pickers in the UK's Morecombe Bay - he returns with a polemic wake up call about 21st century slavery.

Nick Broomfield, How do you do?

I'm great. Thankyou.

What brought you back to exploring social justice issues on film again, like your earlier work, things like Tattooed Tears?

Well, I think I worked in a particular style, you know, for a while. Kind of from Driving Me Crazy, which I did back in 1988. I went into being infront of the camera, being a marginal provocateur – which at that time was a new form, a new style – and I worked with it for a number of years. And then I just kinda got a little bored with it, or bored with myself, and wanted to tell stories in different ways. And so, I felt that I should bring what I'd learned in making documentaries into making feature films, and that was using real people and making things as real as possible. Which is what I did in this particular film.

How did the Ghosts story evolve?

Originally I was going to do a story on modern slavery. Because ironically, this year is the 200th anniversary of the abolition of slavery. And of course there's more modern slaves than ever before. So I wanted to so something about modern slavery in this year. And I looked at a number of stories from cocoa plantations to brick factories in India and so on, and the sex trade. And then I found this article by a Chinese writer named Hsiao-Hung Pai, who had lived undercover with a group of Chinese in England. Many of whom went on to Morecombe Bayand died in Morecombe Bay afterwards. And it was such an affecting article and I met with the writer and she took me to many houses here the Chinese were working and living. And I just found it an amazing story. And I was interested because most of them were working for major British corporations, were working for mainstream industries - Tescos, Sainsbury's. They were working for big construction sites. This wasn't some sort of mum and pop operation in a back lane somewhere, this was mainstream British industry all pretending they didn't know this was going on, and the British Government turning a blind eye to it. And Morecombe Bay was this national embarrassment that happened in the minute of it all.

Tell us about how you researched the stories of the migrants in the film.

We did a lot of research ourselves. I had three Chinese students working undercover for me, and they would work with particular gang masters going and picking spring onions or strawberries, or working on construction sites. And every day they would write a report, and they'd put down how much money they were earning a week, how many hours they were working, what the premises and house were like. And from this we were able to get a very strong idea of the subject. And also there's a certain amount of information you can get from groups, like the anti-slavery commission and amnesty international, that sort of thing. There are some government figures, which are a little unreliable.

There are no figures on, for example, the exact number of migrant workers in the UK. And actually the conditions for migrant workers generally are terrible. It doesn't really matter if they're legal or illegal. Thy basically have no civil rights. They have no security of employment. They have been attempts to put legislation through the European Parliament to regulate hours worked, conditions of work, rates of pay, sickness pay and all those things – and the government in this country has completely opposed it because they know that the cost of living for people will go up if those conditions are implemented. So they're actively opposed to ever making things better. They kind of pretend they don't know what's going on, and pretend they don't know what to do about it. That's the situation in the UK.

How was the film received in the UK?

It's gone down very, very well in England. Infact we set up a Morecombe Bay trust fund for the victims families who are still paying off their debts. And we raised about 20 000 pounds in the first few weeks to help pay them back. So there has been a lot of support. The film has been shown in the House of Commons in support of a private members' bill to try and bring in regulations for casual labour in the UK. I think in terms of a film that generates discussion, on quite a grassroots level in terns of activists who are trying to change things, it's probably been the most successful film I've done. Which is very, very pleasing. And there are many experts in the field who feel that it's completely accurate. Which it is, because we went to such pains to do so. So I think it's a document that will last, and does have a contribution to make to very widespread problems.


Who: Nick Broomfield
What: Ghosts
When: Screening at the Sydney Film Festival