So, you spend 15 years writing and producing a book about a ten year period of your political life during which you turned yourself inside out, learned something new each day, tried harder, failed better.
Of course, there are far too many books out there and far too few people who want to know about a tiny fragment of the 1970s and 80s revolutionary left. I couldn’t even get Waterstone’s in Leeds to stock my book about Arthur France, a hero of the black radicals in Leeds from the 1950s onwards, so there is less than zero chance they will stock my co-authored book about Big Flame. But your local library might buy it if you ask them.
I won’t winge — I’ll hustle. So off I went to Norwich to talk about Big Flame at its remarkable little lefty shop called CaracolBooks. About 30 people, ranging from 25 to 75, engaged in a lively conversation with me, Kevin and Dave (all of us were members), and I came away heartened.
I worried that I felt good afterwards because my inner narcissist was stroked. But I was also boosted because I was reminded that (as Joe Todd put it in this interesting article on the Prometheus website) there are millions of socialists in Britain, and some of them are in a very similar groove to Big Flame.
And then the Labour Hub website kindly asked me to do a bit of advertising for the book, so I did this, where I say a bit about the wonderful Caracol, the book and the event. We’ve got another gig at the Working Class Movement Library in Salford on 6th February — let’s see what happens there. Keep talking. Keep writing. Keep changing.
(It’s 1975: Brian and Jenny are supporting Big Flame’s struggles against the Ford motor company.)