Thursday, September 16, 2004 AD
The politics of pedalling
I enjoyed this Guardian leader column in praise of cycling, following the recent Tour of Britain:
On the other hand, it's hard to think of a better advertisement than the bicycle for the values of self-reliance, personal freedom, and taking responsibility for one's own actions, which is probably why Norman Tebbit notoriously told the unemployed in the 1980s to "get on their bikes". The state can't pedal your bike for you. You just get on your bike (which you've purchased using whatever's left from your hard-earned salary after the government has expropriated its share), put on your optional, non-mandatory helmet and set off where you want to go. No licence, no registration, no compulsory insurance, no speed limit. Few laws other than those which are necessary to protect other people from harm. Surely the bicycle is the ultimate conservative vehicle, which is perhaps why Boris Johnson is so keen on cycling.
Indeed, in a (slightly absurd) speech that John Major gave when he was (a slightly absurd) Prime Minister, one of the images he sought to evoke of conservative England (along with warm beer and village cricket) was "old maids cycling to Holy Communion through the morning mist". But perhaps the fact that Major should have echoed George Orwell (who referred in his essay The Lion and the Unicorn to "old maids biking to Holy Communion through the mists of the autumn mornings") is just evidence of the bicycle's ability to transcend such mere political distinctions. After all, you won't get far on a bike unless it has both a left and a right pedal... :-)
Taken literally, there are few more worth-while instructions than "Get on your bike", if you want good health, an enjoyable hobby and a quick, pollution-free way of nipping about. It is a shame that the phrase was ever purloined as a brusquer way of saying "hop it"...The writer refers to the increasing popularity of cycling, referring to a recent opinion poll which found that, in some parts of the country, "80% of young people would rather go cycling than play football". While part of cycling's appeal is the success of British cyclists at the Olympics, and part is down to the "welcome coolness to modern bikes, with slender graphite frames and ... staggering number of gears", the Guardian also praises the modern bicycle as "wonderfully inclusive" (well, it would, wouldn't it?):
It has always been difficult to be bad at cycling. Nowadays it is impossible. By selecting the lowest click in the lowest twist of the lowest register, the most sportingly inept of us can sail uphill. There will always be a place for the medal winners and the aces at team sports. But it is grand to see a return to the tradition of the socialist riders of the Clarion Cycling Club, who genuinely wanted sport and good health for all.Those references to cycling's "inclusiveness" and its socialist credentials called to mind the comment by Tim Hilton in his recent memoir on cycling in the 1950s and 60s, One More Kilometre and We're in the Showers, in which he asserts that:
Cycling is not a political sport, but it does belong to the leftward side of humanity.It intrigues me that cars are seen (by people at all points of the political spectrum) as a right-wing or conservative form of transport, while cycling is seen as more left-wing. After all, cars can be seen as one of the biggest drivers (geddit?!?) of Big Government, with the need they create for vast, state-funded road networks, stringent safety regulations, and complex traffic laws. And few inventions have done more than the motor-car to erode traditional patterns of life, damage historic landscapes and towns, and promote the dissolution of those ties of family and place which are supposedly valued by conservatives.
On the other hand, it's hard to think of a better advertisement than the bicycle for the values of self-reliance, personal freedom, and taking responsibility for one's own actions, which is probably why Norman Tebbit notoriously told the unemployed in the 1980s to "get on their bikes". The state can't pedal your bike for you. You just get on your bike (which you've purchased using whatever's left from your hard-earned salary after the government has expropriated its share), put on your optional, non-mandatory helmet and set off where you want to go. No licence, no registration, no compulsory insurance, no speed limit. Few laws other than those which are necessary to protect other people from harm. Surely the bicycle is the ultimate conservative vehicle, which is perhaps why Boris Johnson is so keen on cycling.
Indeed, in a (slightly absurd) speech that John Major gave when he was (a slightly absurd) Prime Minister, one of the images he sought to evoke of conservative England (along with warm beer and village cricket) was "old maids cycling to Holy Communion through the morning mist". But perhaps the fact that Major should have echoed George Orwell (who referred in his essay The Lion and the Unicorn to "old maids biking to Holy Communion through the mists of the autumn mornings") is just evidence of the bicycle's ability to transcend such mere political distinctions. After all, you won't get far on a bike unless it has both a left and a right pedal... :-)
