Classic Bike Guide - Real rides, real riders

Clarky's Corner - Talkin' 'bout my generation

When I first started motorcycling there was no requirement to wear a crash helmet, though I was restricted to 250cc, or at least an outfit of some kind and could take my test if and when I felt like it. Many of my fellow riders would not have even had those limitations.

My lad is 17. He has to wear a crash helmet at all times, be restricted to 125cc, then to carrying horsepower limits for the next few years once he’s successfully undertaken a compulsory training scheme and taken a test within a specified time. To be honest, I couldn’t blame him if he just walked away and stuck L plates on a car.

While browsing through the 1961 bound volumes, for this month’s archive images, there was a report upon a Hanwell club meeting, which attracted over 90 delegates, all hell bent on ridding motorcycling of the cafe racer and coffee bar cowboy. This was essentially because rags like the Daily Mirror had been sensationalising this element as a menace to society, a brush which was tarring the motorcyclist per se, and the government was getting twitchy and threatening, so they were after heading off any potentially limiting legislation. The paper was portraying the ton up boys as the norm and that ‘all motorcyclists were moronic and their machines inherently dangerous.’

A gentleman by the name of Harold Booty, representing One Make Clubs showed the meeting a newspaper report on his club’s attack on café racers and put forward a proposal to form a working party to address the PR situation through the press and to instigate immediate measures to combat potential anti motorcycling legislation. He put forward what he called ‘a dreadful image of the future.’ “Imagine a 50cc motorcycle with a 12in silencer and governed to a maximum of 30mph with its wretched rider clad in compulsory protective helmet and padded clothing.” Imagine indeed. Like Mac’ said “We’d never had it so good.” - Nigel C