Big Flame was a libertarian socialist group formed in 1971 and dissolved in 1984. It was an offshoot of a Merseyside socialist newspaper that operated under the same name. It split into four groups operating across Merseyside, and local groups formed in west London, east London, Birmingham, Manchester, Leeds and Sheffield, with annual national conferences held from 1975. East London Big Flame eventually split from the national organisation.
Big Flame was a prolific publisher of Marxist analysis, influenced by the Italian autonomist tradition. Its members were involved in landmark industrial disputes and setting up the Troops Out Movement (TOM).
Big Flame took its name from a Jim Allen television play broadcast on the BBC in 1969, which depicted a fictional strike in the Liverpool Docks. The initial Big Flame newspaper only ran for seven editions and folded in 1971, but some members revived the name and formed a new collective.
They initially saw themselves as a propaganda group to encourage worker autonomy but quickly realised they would need to become more deeply involved in working-class struggles in order to make an impact.
This led them to become active in supporting local struggles, such as the Pilkington Strike (1971) and the Halewood Ford Strike (1971). They sought to deepen their connections to industrial action by establishing groups to link internal and external militants at Ford, Standard Triumph, and Plesseys.
From 1972-1974, Big Flame split into four local groups across Merseyside, restarted the Big Flame newspaper, and became involved in the Kirkby Rent Strike. Through the rent strike, the group developed a distinctive feminist perspective.
As groups formed nationwide, they became involved in local struggles, notably in east London around Ford in Dagenham. After the first Big Flame national conference in March 1975, the east London collective split from the national organisation on the basis of political differences:
Though a relatively small group, rarely with more than 200 active members, Big Flame had a significant intellectual footprint, publishing a broad range of material, including strike bulletins, analyses of the political situations in Chile, Ireland, and Portugal, and pamphlets on food co-ops, non-hierarchical organising, racism, the media, the welfare state, and revolutionary feminism.
In addition to the newspaper, Big Flame published a journal, Revolutionary Socialism. The approach, heavily influenced by the Italian Lotta Continua group, was unusual in the British left at the time, and its impact continues to be felt as younger activists and scholars return to the Big Flame archives.
The organisation was targeted by HN297 Richard Clark ('Rick Gibson') , who was to hastily withdraw after Big Flame members discovered he was a police officer and confronted him. Big Flame is also mentioned in reports by HN296 ‘Geoff Wallace’ and HN85 Roger Pearce (‘Roger Thorley’).
Gibson's infiltration of the group was limited to attending a handful of meetings. He was not accepted as a member, as he was in the Troops Out Movement.
In 1976, Big Flame confronted Gibson. He had joined the Troops Out Movement (TOM) in 1974 and aroused suspicion as he appeared to have no history of activism and no connection to Ireland. When members of TOM and Big Flame investigated, they found other inconsistencies in his story and eventually unearthed birth and death certificates to match the name and date of birth he was using.
On being presented with this information, Gibson quickly disappeared. Though they did not know it at the time, Big Flame activists had uncovered a key part of the spy cops' tradecraft; the use of a dead child's identity as the basis for their cover name and legend.
However, Big Flame never went public with that information, as activists could not ascertain whether Gibson had been sent by Special Branch, MI5 or MI6, the army or even by the extreme right.
The witness statements of Richard Chessum , a member of TOM who had considered Gibson a good friend, give more detail on the role the undercover played in the groups he infiltrated and the investigation into his true identity.
Later in the 1970s, Big Flame intended to join forces with other Marxists to form a new revolutionary socialist organisation. It was in discussion with the Revolutionary Marxist Current, an offshoot of the International Marxist Group. When the plan failed to come to fruition, Big Flame dissolved in 1984.
Sources
East London Big Flame.
Big Flame 1974-1980.
The Big Flame Archives are available to view at The Mayday Rooms, 88 Fleet Street, London EC4Y 1DH.