Riders' Rights: Freedom, Identity, and Authenticity in Grassroots Activism
Riders’ Rights Organisations (RROs), campaigning organisations that work on behalf of motorcyclists, have existed for several decades, indeed the British Motorcyclists Federation celebrated its 60th anniversary in 2020.
The 1960s to the present day has seen the creation and development of riders’ rights movements across the world – in Europe and the USA in particular, although developing nations have also seen political activism channelled through motorcycle clubs in recent years, including the promotion of women’s rights in India through the ‘Bikerni’ women’s motorcycle collective, and the ‘Female Bikers Initiative’ in Nigeria. RROs provide a window into two contemporary bases of political mobilisation that are poorly understood: self-chosen identity and ‘self-authenticating’ consumption activity.
Political identities have typically been associated with production functions (labour movements), gender, or with forms of national or ethnic identity. Consumer behaviour has been seen, broadly, as apolitical. RROs show a clear tendency for the politicisation of a self-chosen, consumption-based identity. Nobody is born to be a biker, yet that identity is capable of mobilising people to give up time, money, and personal freedom in the service of a ‘greater’ cause.
This project examines the ideologies of RROs, and looks at how the discourses employed relate to the mobilisation of their members, through interviews with RRO leadership and lay membership, and analysis of RRO published material. While the discourse of RROs is relatively broad, the dominant theme is ‘freedom’, and the threats to that freedom from national governments, international administrations, and multinational corporations. Symbolically, in 1972 the US National Custom Cycle Association changed its name to ‘ABATE’ – ‘A Brotherhood Against Totalitarian Enactments’ deploying the ubiquitous eagle as the symbol of biker freedom.
Freedom is a concept that has been analysed extensively in political philosophy, but we know less about how non-specialists view it, as they are much less likely to record their views. Recent analysis of learner comments from a ‘massive open online course’ by myself and co-researchers has shown that non-specialists often frame their conceptions of freedom through direct personal experience. This project continues our research into the interpenetration of political concepts and everyday life, looking at how ideas of freedom relate to the political mobilisation of biker identities.