Motorcycle lobby groups: missing a trick?

[Scootabout]

Are groups like the BMF and MAG risking becoming irrelevant by focusing too much on a dwindling pool of older bikers riding for leisure?

I'm a BMF member, and recently received a newsletter in which the BMF announced that they were leaving FEMA, the Federation of European Motorcycle Associations. The two reasons given, 1. It's expensive, 2. post-Brexit the UK can't influence EU policy much any more, struck me as possibly valid, but it also struck me as another symptom of the decline in influence of this organisation. I've thought for some time that it focuses on the current motorcycling demographic: older blokes with either classic bikes or newer, expensive machines who ride mainly for leisure. Should these organisations not be looking more broadly at PTW use (or potential use) and trying to promote the use of scooters - maybe, horror, even those small e-scooters that are illegal except when hired, electric bikes, etc? Without doing this there's a risk, I think, of biking dying with the current generation of practitioners, at least in the UK. I'm particularly disappointed at how the use of PTWs has been discouraged in London thanks to a combination of over-promotion of cycling on the one hand and a squeeze on (free or cheap, secure) parking facilities on the other. You see very few PTWs these days in London except for food delivery scooters.

What do you think?

[Le_Fromage_Grande]

I thought MAG and the BMF were a waste of space in the 1980s and I still do, the TRF are little better, they're all undemocratic.

[Yorick]

I personally hate the BMF and MAG etc. But that's just me.

Even though I've been riding 53 years, I don't get this perceived brotherhood and needing leaders to fight for us.

I love to talk bollox about bikes, but many folk who know me, won't know I even own a bike.

Carry on

[Buckaroo]

They're useful when tackling issues that really impact all bikers, scooterist and so forth. Given that this is rare, their true value is minimal. But, stop by the MAG stall at any bike show and you would think they're out there fighting for us everyday. Personally I don't feel particularly persecuted.

[ZRX61]

BMF is that old codger down the street with the Ariel Red Hunter. MAG were never relevant.

[Cousin Jack]

They are all clique-ridden and very insular groups.What is needed (but won't happen) is a single, wide all-PTW group that represents all.

If it were ever invented MAG and BMF would fight it tooth and nail, because it would threaten their own little fiefdoms.

Saw it happen over pistols, with the NPA, NRA & NSRA. Together we might stand, divide we will fall.

[JackyJoll]

If their members are old farts with old bikes, it’s going to be a struggle to focus on something/someone else.

[DefTrap]

Have any of these bike lobby groups ever genuinely succeeded in changing anything?

I've a vague memory of FEMA being successful, but that might just be my local experience of french bikers being pretty militant and easy to call into a demo. No surprise.

[MrLongbeard]

I love to talk bollox

Oh we know, we know

[Skub]

Using the acronym PTW is definitely a 'biker's rights' thang. I think today I will go for a ride on my PTW.

They are clubs with all the internal power struggles most clubs exhit,while getting paranoid/exercised and tilting at load of windmills.

That's them,that is.

[Horse]

They are all clique-ridden and very insular groups.What is needed (but won't happen) is a single, wide all-PTW group that represents all.

Saw it happen over pistols, with the NPA, NRA & NSRA. Together we might stand, divide we will fall.

Slightly OT ...

I spent a couple of years (some of 2020, most of 2022 into 2023) working with the 'road recovery' industrial.

It was unbelievable how many separate representative organisations they have - often with the same names cropping up across 2 or 3.

However, this is where it does link to post. In the last few years one person is carving out an empire for himself and trusted associates, currently three separate but interlinked organisations with different purposes. Someone described it to me as a dictatorship. And, since I don't know how the founder and self-proclaimed president could ve removed, I can't argue. He's a lovely chap, I'm sure.

[Dickyboy]

You see very few PTWs these days in London except for food delivery scooters.

Not sure where you've been in London but I see plenty & £1 to park a bike all day in central London with zero congestion or ULEZ (if the right bike) to pay ain't bad in my book.

Put my hand up as a long term MAG member bitd day, attended the Paris euro demo in 94 & recon MAGs work did help in squashing the proposed 100bhp limit at the time.

Nowadays I don't have anything to do with them at all, local MAG group has become all clubby with funny handshakes more like a biker club with cut off leathers than a pressure group so I keep my distance & yes they do seem irrelevant since their internal squabbles god knows how many years ago.

[Bigjawa]

BMF always struck me as codgers in Derriboots and Sam Brownes riding about on immaculate R80RT's.

MAG, on both of it's incarnations over here, seemed to appeal more to the Ogri types, but it always seemed to die out due to lack of interest from everyone involved.

Like @Yorick , I'm firmly of the belief that the whole "brotherhood" thing is complete BS.

[Horse]

Have any of these bike lobby groups ever genuinely succeeded in changing anything?

100hp limit, bikes in bus lanes, Peter Bottomley's leg protectors?

I think their main, long-term, achievement has been to be an 'awareness' for decision-makers to know that they're likely to be challenged. Not something that would get headlines, but very necessary.

[Yorick]

They're useful when tackling issues that really impact all bikers, scooterist and so forth. Given that this is rare, their true value is minimal. But, stop by the MAG stall at any bike show and you would think they're out there fighting for us everyday. Personally I don't feel particularly persecuted.

At a MAG stall, you'll see a load of scruffy bastards who think they're important

[Scootabout]

Have any of these bike lobby groups ever genuinely succeeded in changing anything?

I think their main, long-term, achievement has been to be an 'awareness' for decision-makers to know that they're likely to be challenged. Not something that would get headlines, but very necessary.

Seems these groups are not generally admired on here

Horse's comment touches on what I was trying to get at, namely, if their value is to act as a challenge to decision-makers, but the base of those they represent is dwindling, their influence is going to wane commensurately. Eventually they'll be ignored.

[Le_Fromage_Grande]

Have any of these bike lobby groups ever genuinely succeeded in changing anything?

100hp limit, bikes in bus lanes, Peter Bottomley's leg protectors?

I think their main, long-term, achievement has been to be an 'awareness' for decision-makers to know that they're likely to be challenged. Not something that would get headlines, but very necessary.

Do you have proof that MAG etc. had any effect of any of the above, was a 100 bhp limit ever a serious thing, bikes aren't legally allowed in most UK bus lanes and leg protectors were never a real proposal.

MAG might as well say they stopped the Klingon Invasion of 2003

[Le_Fromage_Grande]

Have any of these bike lobby groups ever genuinely succeeded in changing anything?

I think their main, long-term, achievement has been to be an 'awareness' for decision-makers to know that they're likely to be challenged. Not something that would get headlines, but very necessary.

Seems these groups are not generally admired on here

Horse's comment touches on what I was trying to get at, namely, if their value is to act as a challenge to decision-makers, but the base of those they represent is dwindling, their influence is going to wane commensurately. Eventually they'll be ignored.

What do you mean, eventually, they've always been ignored.

[Yorick]

I remember when it was all black and white, and a MAG delegation turned up at Number 10 to present something to an MP or whatever. Dirty scruffy bastards. Just clowns

The MP was just gobstruck that these scruffy bastards turned up looking like that. The letters in MCN the next few weeks killed off MAG

[Horse]

Have any of these bike lobby groups ever genuinely succeeded in changing anything?

...

Do you have proof that MAG etc. had any effect of any of the above, was a 100 bhp limit ever a serious thing, bikes aren't legally allowed in most UK bus lanes and leg protectors were never a real proposal.

IIRC it was a European-wide campaign, possibly co-ordinated by FEMA, not just MAG.

Also IIRC there was already a 100bhp limit in France, the proposal was to introduce it across the EU. And it didn't happen. That's the nearest I can get to 'proof'

But it was ages ago and I don't think you actually care, so I won't try and break Google trying to find evidence for you

Before MAG's campaign, bikes weren't allowed in any bus lanes.