Online Exhibition: Keep The Flame Burning
Here we present a selection of some key exhibited pieces. You can see the exhibition in full at the WCML until 10 April 2026.
Keep the Flame Burning is an ambitious exhibition co-produced by a group of volunteers, all aged 16 to 25 and working class. The exhibition centres on the legacy of the libertarian socialist group Big Flame (1970 – 1985), of whom the Working Class Movement Library holds a substantial archive.
Between September 2024 and June 2025, the group worked together to discuss their thoughts and feelings on class, contemporary politics, and the role of archives in political movements – using Big Flame material as a rich stimulus for these discussions.
The exhibition is organised into key thematic areas, selected and curated by the group. You can view some of the material from each theme here.
We hope that this exhibition tells some of Big Flame’s story, and illustrates that though the shape of struggles change, our resistance to them must continue – we must keep the flame burning.
This project and exhibition has been made possible by funding from the National Lottery Heritage Fund. With thanks to our project partners, RECLAIM, exhibition graphic designer Amrit Randhawa (Taxi Cab Industries), and 3D Designers, M3 Industries.
Organising Tactics and Daily Operations
Socialist Feminism
Internationalism
Youth Empowerment
Spotlight Campaigns
Who were Big Flame?
In 1970, Big Flame, a revolutionary socialist and feminist organisation grew out of Liverpool. They were influenced by the 1968 student movement and Italian activist network ‘Lotta Continua’ (trans. ‘The Struggle Continues’), whose ‘base groups’ linked students and rank and file workers.
Throughout Big Flame’s existence, it attracted members and sympathisers from libertarian, anarchist and other left wing traditions from across the country who were organised into regional branches in London, Manchester and Sheffield, amongst others. They attempted to bring together their commitment to de-centralisation, rank and file workplace and community organising with the emerging women’s liberation and other autonomous movements.
Alongside starting a newspaper, Big Flame involved themselves in major campaigns such as the Kirkby Rent Strike and the Ford Halewood campaign. Despite the wide range and the severity of the issues they attempted to tackle, Big Flame members, like many on the left, were positive that their work would be part of an imminent socialist revolution.
Who are the Little Flames?
The Big Flame project has brought together eleven wonderful young people, all of whom expressed interest in the project through being working class and passionate about community organising, archiving and heritage, or both. We met for a number of fortnightly sessions between late September 2024 and early June 2025, where the group got to know each other more, discussed what ‘class’ meant to them today, learned about Big Flame’s history and the WCML’s archives, and eventually began to put this exhibition together.
We had trips out and skill-building sessions along the way, and the group have come to see themselves as a community, a group of friends, and comrades. They call themselves The Little Flames.
The Little Flames are:
Ally Hussain, Chloe Burke, Danny Tye, Ezrin Owen, Ley Edmondston-Douse, Lucy Mortell, Kongo de Barros, Jack Clarke, Jason Hao Ran Lee, Patricia Vulc, and Seth Connor-Fullwood.
You can read more about the Little Flames and legacy of the project here.
Big Flame and the Little Flames
