Big Flame: Building Movements, New Politics – review

Some of us read histories of the left for nostalgic reasons. Some of us do so to learn, or to measure the distance travelled, or find fresh inspiration. A few look for nails to drive into coffins, attributing blame, and vowing never again. This painstaking insider history of Big Flame, a small, loosely organised but paradigm-shifting group of libertarians, socialists and feminists set up in 1970 and defunct after little more than a decade, is likely to hit the spot for us all. 

Big Flame was formed in Merseyside in 1970, in the first years of governments (Labour as well as Tory) implementing the cuts and austerity of neoliberal economics. It saw its role as supporting an intense wave of community organising, trade union action, rent strikes and widespread squatting, often by communal households. It came into being at a time when antiracism and second-wave feminism were still frequently and often fiercely contested. 

A revolutionary rollover from the student rebellions of the late 1960s, Big Flame found its political feet during the national State of Emergency of Tory Prime Minister Edward Heath and its aftermath. Recession, mass unemployment, the rise and fall of a Labour government, and Thatcherite deregulation and restrictions on workplace organisation were soon to follow. Big Flame’s footholds were few and fragile, mostly in Liverpool – an estate here, notably Tower Hill in Kirkby, a factory there, notably Ford Halewood – but linked to similar networks, households and campaigns in Manchester, Sheffield and East London. 

A positive reputation

Known mostly by reputation – refreshingly libertarian, uncommonly non-Leninist, and offering alternatives to the nuclear family – though rarely encountered outside its heartland,  nationally the membership of Big Flame never exceeded two hundred. Their short-run pamphlets and irregular journal – print was then the only form of communication – were hard to find and usually snapped up on sight. Their delegations were widely acknowledged as the most sane and congenial company at demonstrations and events.

Minnows among the swirling shoals of Trotskyists, Stalinists, state socialists and left parliamentarians of the late 1970s, Big Flame rejected the discredited, distrusted routines of Leninists and Labour statists and attempted, on a small scale, to prototype participatory and egalitarian approaches to organising, thinking and debate on the British left.

Champion of popular power

Inspired by recent breakthroughs of popular power, specifically the direct action of cordones (economic democracy in the workplace) securing social change in Chile before the US overthrow of Allende in 1973, and the democratic workers’ and residents’ committees driving the revolution in Portugal in 1974, Big Flame resolved to put ‘the movement first, the party second’. They championed and assisted grassroots movements rather than taking them over, paying little attention to recruitment, but committing strongly to a locality to connect home, gender, race and workplace needs. 

Much of Big Flame’s distinction derived from its unique dialogue with Italy’s Lotta Continua, a revolutionary organisation which argued that capital was transforming European societies into social factories, and that working class autonomy in communities as well as workplaces was therefore the overriding priority for left politics. There were also traces of Maoism in their approach, an enthusiasm for what little was then known of the Cultural Revolution. The conflicting comments on Maoism by former members which appear in the book suggest this influence remains a sensitive issue half a century later.

Arguments still relevant today

Big Flame often punched above its weight, with lasting consequences, though an actual punch was more likely to come your way from a frustrated neo-Bolshevik than a libertarian. Passed from hand to hand, what was widely referred to as ‘the orange pamphlet’ – The Revolution Unfinished, by Paul Thompson and Guy Lewis (Guy Ohlenschlager) – innoculated many young activists against Trotsykyism. A year later, Sexuality and Fascism opened – and still opens – minds to the ever-changing relationship required between genders, sexualities, feminism and the labour movement, helping to clarify how populism draws on a crisis of masculinity. 

These and other pamphlets were high-impact, although far from joined-up or coherent. As the authors admit, Big Flame’s theories were ‘eclectic’ and the organisation ‘never finally fixed its position’ on many pressing issues. So a question arises: was it indiscipline that made the organisation and its ideas interesting? 

If or when another New Left emerges, it will have political ethics and values, neighbourhood and networking features in common with Big Flame

Memorable as the moment was, it was over by the early 1980s. Thatcherism had manacled the trade union movement, local councils had cracked down on squatting, and rent strikes and new institutions of popular power became a distant memory. There were fewer communes, fewer picket lines, fewer wins, fewer transformative moments.

The roundup of what members did next may be the most inspiring section of the book. Many remain community activists to this day. They have been energetic shapers of campaigns, local government services, and networks providing support for refugees and the unemployed. Some went into the Labour Party, developing a left alternative with the Labour Coordinating Committee (LCC) and delivering a local challenge to Militant in Liverpool. Former members continued to help develop prefigurative and empowering forms of politics for changed times, including Beyond the Fragments, Red Pepper and The World Transformed.

Standing the test of time

Farrar and McDonnell draw on the recollections of fifty former members and supporters of Big Flame. The book has taken fifteen years to write, probably longer than the organisation was authentically active. It’s thorough, it’s valuable, it’s insightful, but there are times when it reads more like a middle manager’s evaluation report instead of the measured but affirmative fistbump from the past it might have been. 

The authors and interviewees raise many issues familiar to, and being addressed by, a new generation of activists today, including how to create and operate flexible organisational forms and partnership campaigns, along with new approaches to democratic dialogue and empowerment, and what kind of relations should be established with mainstream and legacy left organisations.

If or when another New Left emerges, it will have political ethics and values, neighbourhood and networking features in common with Big Flame. As David Parry, a longstanding member, recalls: ‘the libertarian feminist environmentalist fusion that ran through Big Flame’s approach has stood the test of time’. As Jonathan Stanley, formerly a member in Hertfordshire, admits, ‘If it was here now I’d join it straight away’. As might many, if only to improve upon it.

An online archive of Big Flame publications can be found at bigflameuk.wordpress.com