The Big Flame

An attempt to show how a revolution could begin (if it caught on). In the sixties, when this was done, the Soviet Union was still in full bloom and the Americans profited from the "evil in the east" by looking nice in comparison. Today we have seen another side of the American system, the true side, and a film like this could easily be shown on the Internet. In the sixties, this film was very bold indeed and there are still dialogs in it that are surprising even today. I had the privilege to be able to talk to Jim Allen when he visited Locarno with the film Land and Freedom. He told me that he had read everything by Jack London, when I asked him if he had read The Iron Heel. Jim Allen was solid working class and a working class hero as far as I could see. Judging from his appearance nobody would expect that this man was capable to write as fantastic scripts as this one, for instance. He almost looked like a bum, who just had turned up from the gutter. He was so far removed from any shred of vanity that it almost made him disappear. I knew too little of him then to be deeply impressed but I sure am now. This film, looking like a documentary, is truly a remarkable. There are not many films like it.

This piece of work, originally made for TV as a BBC "Play for Today", was considered by many as being quite reactionary for its time. It still is, and given the climate of today's commercial world, remains just as relevant. In many ways, perhaps even more relevant...

Filmed in a semi-documentary style, it preempts the hand held style by some decades. Many of the cast were not professional actors, but actual dockers, which enhances the authenticity and feel of the whole film.

The workers vs management industrial battle depicted is not new, and although the insidious involvement of the government and overt use of the military in the dispute is disturbing, it is surprising how open it all is. One can't help but think that in a 'modern' democracy such tactics would be far more covert.

Dock workers in Liverpool go on strike (withhold their labour) in response to harsh new employment conditions. A feature length docu-drama television film first broadcast in 1969 by the BBC as part of their Wednesday Play series. A 'gritty' realist drama filmed in black and white director Kenneth Loach and writer Jim Allen's TV film deals with the topical issues of the threat of redundancies through so called 'modernisation', and the combined threats of 'containerisation' and the government's 'In Place of Strife'. Not surprisingly in the face of all this and inspired by a blacklisted unionist called Jack Regan (Godfrey Quigley) the 10,000 striking dockers attempt to take over the port docks and have worker control and self-management, in a story of union politics, negotiations (key scenes in which the drama comes alive), and betrayal and deceit on the part of the government, the employers, and even elements within the unions. A good cast also includes Norman Rossington, Peter Kerrigan, Ken Jones, Billy Dean and Kenneth Campbell, in the kind of political drama sorely lacking in more recent times.