Cycling UK Forum

reohn2 wrote: I've got to ask myself where are we going as a nation if a (so called) respected newspaper prints this article and it passes without being even commented upon(exept by cyclists)let alone its author being prosecuted.

There are some interesting historical parallels out there. For example, we have all seen the 'clampdowns' in the UK on such low-status out groups as beggars and 'pavement cyclists' whilst the resources dedicated to dealing with the crimes of more dominant social groups- such as motorists- have been slashed and the remaining attempts to enforce the law as it affects motorists are portrayed as 'the persecution of the beleaguered motorist'. Back in Germany in the 1930's much the same happened, with amongst the first being rounded up and sent to the newly-constructed concentration camps (other than Hitler's political opponents, socialist and union leaders of course) being beggars and the 'workshy'. Also, whilst in Hitler's Germany attempts to curb motorists behaviour were left to feeble attempts at 'education', cyclists were targeted in high-profile 'clampdowns'. (Motoring bodies such as the ABD still support such an approach today!). As the journalist and road safety campaigner J.S. Dean wrote in his 1947 book 'Murder most foul: a study of the road deaths problem' (now available as a reprint from the Roadpeace charity with an introduction written by myself)

"Here, then, are some of the Nazis' "road-safety" methods: fines for "careless walking," collectable on the spot; "endangering traffic" and crossing against the amber made punishable offences; special tracks for cyclists; riding with one hand on the handle bars and riding two abreast made offences. In one week in Berlin (December, 1934) 4,627 cyclists were summoned and verbally admonished or temporarily deprived of their machines."

Similarly, many years before Thatcher spoke of 'the great car-owing economy' Hitler dreamed of a nation based on private car use (the Volkswagen and all that) where motoring speed and power were idolised. It was no wonder that many motoring writers in Britain at that time wanted to see Britain model itself on Hitler's Germany!

Sounds like an over-the top comparison? Well I believe that what happens on the roads is a mirror of attitudes which dominate in the wider 'society' (if such a term still has any meaning in 'there is no such thing as society' Britain…) and the UK, following the lead of the US, has certainly moved significantly towards the right in recent decades. Correspondingly, the sort of collective and social values which help to redress the balance of the power on the roads in favour of cyclists and pedestrians in many European countries have become an irrelevance in hierarchical 'might is right' Britain. Jeremy Clarkson once even claimed that "Social responsibility is for wimps". The problem is that more social responsibility is exactly what is needed if the excesses of the car culture are to be curbed and it is to be thought unacceptable that columnists should be allowed to print socially divisive hate pieces in the media.

As to just how far Britain has moved along the road to an even more hierarchical and authoritarian society, just look at all the authoritarian legislation Blair's 'New Labour Project' party have passed such as the Investigatory Powers Act, the various Criminal Justice and Anti-Social behaviour bills and 'anti terrorism' proposals which undermine traditional notions of justice and accountability to such a degree that even George Churchill-Coleman, the former head of Scotland Yard's anti-terrorist squad, was moved to say "I have a horrible feeling that we are sinking into a police state, and that's not good for anybody." Similarly, there has been legislation such as the Legislative and Regulatory Reform bill which allows ministers to by-pass the Parliamentary process and is almost a direct copy of Hitler's infamous 1933 Enabling act. Politics in Britain have even adopted the rhetoric of fascism!

http://www.guardian.co.uk/print/0,,5159 ... 77,00.html

They say that where the US goes, Britain follows and the US has moved even further along the road towards what can only be called fascism. Thankfully even there some are waking up to the danger:

http://www.oldamericancentury.org/14pts.htm

http://home.cc.umanitoba.ca/~altemey/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RjALf12PAWc

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GyOeZ_k8 ... re=related

Howard Peel wrote: Similarly, many years before Thatcher spoke of 'the great car-owing economy' Hitler dreamed of a nation based on private car use (the Volkswagen and all that) where motoring speed and power were idolised. It was no wonder that many motoring writers in Britain at that time wanted to see Britain model itself on Hitler's Germany!

The following is a taken from an article for my website which I have been working on looking at the legacy of Dean's book 'Murder most foul a study of the road deaths problem' and which give some more background on this issue.

"Scratch a road hog and you'll find a Fascist"

Dean's repeated references to Fascism in relation to the politics of 'the motor slaughter' (as in the earlier example relating to the activities of 'motor scouts') is both one of the more interesting aspects of Murder Most Foul and the one which, 60 years on, probably needs most qualification. However, especially if care is taken consider the context in which Murder Most Foul was written, it is clear that Dean was hardly overstating his case.

Firstly, it is important to consider that that the ideology of Fascism had dominated the lives of people across the world for many years by the time Murder Most Foul was published. Also, although the impression is often given in today's simplified accounts of WW2 that it was a "war against Fascism", in reality the picture was far more complex. In Britain in the 1920's and 1930's (as in the USA and other countries) many regarded Fascism as being the ideal political system to counter the 'threats' of 'Bolshevism', socialism and trade-unionism. High-profile figures in the British establishment were on very friendly terms with Hitler's regime, even as it's growing level of brutality became known. Mussolini was also favoured by some in the British aristocracy with Lady Houston, owner of The Saturday Review, inviting him to use his castor-oil treatment on British "Reds and Pinks". Newspapers made their support for fascism clear with The Daily Mail running it's infamous headline "Hurrah for the Blackshirts" in January 1931, whilst The Mirror ran the headline "Give the Blackshirts a helping hand" in January 1934. Abroad figures such as motor-magnet Henry Ford helped to fund Hitler and in reciprocation Hitler awarded Ford the highest possible civil honour he could bestow.

Enthusiasm for Hitler and Fascism was particularly strong amongst those involved in the aviation and motor industries, and the British motoring press frequently sang their praises of Hitler's vision of a car-based society, decades before Mrs. Thatcher alluded to "the great car-owning economy". C.G Grey, editor of Jane's All the Worlds Aircraft and (since 1911) The Aeroplane felt no need to restrain his Pro Nazi views, writing in The Aeroplane of March 1936 of how under the Nazis Germany was ruled by "sensible middle-class men of real intelligence" who had "freed Germany from Communism". He also praised Hitler's system of concentration camps writing: "I cannot imagine anything better for the morale of a nation than that all the discontented grousers and grumblers and agitators should be carted off to isolated places where they can grouse at one another until they are sick of grousing."

Dean was apparently well justified when he made the claim that: "So far as road safety is concerned, the spiritual home of the British motor interests is Nazi Germany" and noted "the deep admiration" British motor correspondents had for Hitler's vision of Germany, where, in Dean's words, "all good little Nazis were to have at least a Volkswagen". For example, The Motor of June 29 1937 argued that "Germany to-day is the nearest approach to Utopia, with a single political creed, whole-hearted worship of the Fatherland." The Motor went on to note that "cycle tracks (only 2 ft. wide) are to be found alongside the main roads and are used instead of the roadway by cyclists", concluding that "Germany was a motoring paradise".

Motoring publications were particularly impressed by Hitler's attitude to speed. For example, on July 12, 1938 the editor of The Motor railed against the "fatuity" of the questioning of MP. R.W. Sorensen when he asked the Minister of Transport whether he was aware that: "On a recent run to Cambridge a speed of 109 m.p.h. was reached by a motorcar and in view of the road danger of this speed what action he proposes to prevent such speeds." The editor, apparently with approval, noted that: "If a similar question had been asked in Germany, where they are motor-minded, the questioner by now would have been speeding himself towards a concentration camp!"

To the motor pundit, not only did Hitler offer a vision of 'paradise', according to The Motor of February 23 1937, following his 'motor-minded' example was a way to ensure the future strength of the race and nation. Quote: "It used to be said that a Briton was worth three Frenchmen…All this talk of speed limits, this fear of the police and the be-whiskered members of the Pedestrians' Association, and the wobbly, woolly bicyclists… where is it leading? To racial namby-pambyism, for we are breeding a people unfitted to take their place amongst the great nations of Europe."

More support for Germany's Fascist program, especially in relation to it's attitude to motoring, came from recently-retired British Admiral Sir Barry Domvile. Domvile frequently expressed anti-Semitic views, praised Hitler's Germany and urged a union between Britain and Nazi Germany. The 'rights' of motorists was a favourite topic of Domvile in his letters to the press and, perhaps not surprisingly, his greatest praise for Germany related to the Nazis attitudes to motoring. In his 1936 book By and Large Domvile wrote:

"I am a great believer in first impressions and some of my earliest in Germany made me wonder whether England is really quite so much a land of the free as we are all so fond of bucking about. In many respects poor oppressed Nazi Germany is much better off. To start with, you can drive your car at any speed that your reason considers safe, without the ever-present fear which haunts one over here of attracting the undesired attentions of a disguised policeman, intent on victims. There are no speed limits in Germany. Even in Berlin you can park your car pretty well where you please."

As the foregoing quotes indicate the enthusiasm of many 'motor-minded' persons in Britain in the 1930's for Hitler' Germany was based on far more than an admiration of the newly-built Autobahns. Although such details tend to be written out of the simplified histories of WW2, in reality there was much support for Fascism in 1930's Britain. (As Dean would have been well aware). In addition the all-pervasive hierarchism which so characterised Fascist ideology was not entirely dissimilar to the home-grown hierarchism which underpinned Britain's own class-based social structures. The greatest difference was that the Nazi system of 'ubermenschen', 'untermenschen' and 'sub-humans' 'extended the logic' of the hierarchical society to its 'natural' and horrific conclusion.

That the hierarchism which was so central to Hitler's Germany was also applied to it's highways and 'road safety' methods was one of it's greatest attractions to 'motor-minded' persons in Britain. Dean writes:

"Here, then, are some of the Nazis' "road-safety" methods: fines for "careless walking," collectable on the spot; "endangering traffic" and crossing against the amber made punishable offences; special tracks for cyclists; riding with one hand on the handle bars and riding two abreast made offences."

These were exactly the sort of 'road safety' methods that the 'motor-minded' in Britain had been demanding for decades. To such individuals Germany's worship of motoring speed and power, its system of fines for pedestrians and "strict discipline" for cyclists, along with a rigidly enforced 'hierarchy of the road' where cyclists were to be exiled to their own 2 feet wide ghettos was indeed a vision of a (motoring) paradise.

Howard, I think you are on the wrong forum. This is meant to be about cycling. If you want to write sub-marxian twaddle, at great length, then I think you should do so elsewhere, IMHO.

I'm uncomfortable with these fascist associations. Motorists who cause problems, in the main, are self absorbed, competitive or thick. A very few are psychotic. If anything the dangerous ones err towards extreme libertarianism which isn't the same as fascism.
For every national socialist I see a hundred with a mobile phone fixation, and fifty with a Pavlovian desire to overtake everything in front. It's a mistake to ascribe a politik to the very thick.

Auchmill and Glueman:

Read Howard's stuff again. And think.

For the Nazi ideal to flourish it was a requirement for ordinary people not to think for themselves. To think and question the party line was not a healthy option.

"Sub marxian twaddle". Is it? Are you sure about that?

Back in 1947, when 'Murder most foul' was written references to the Nazis had a lot more resonance with the General Public than they do nowadays.

One of the strange effects of computerisation is that history and the present merge in virtual reality. In the past, in the days of paper, the past would yellow, fracture and fade. With digitalisation, to some extent, we seem to really experiencing both an "End of History" (more real than Fukuyama's waffle) and an "End of Geography".

nigel_s wrote:For the Nazi ideal to flourish it was a requirement for ordinary people not to think for themselves.

For cycling to flourish we need to take it out of the right-on, pinko, tree-hugging ghetto we've been painted into. Calling the dominant mode of transport, one colluded with by all colours of government fascist, is to provide the Parris's of the world with the broadest brush already dipped in paint.
Communists drive cars, liberals drive cars and reactionary majors drive cars because the alternatives have largely been done away with. When there is a choice we can start shouting Nazi, till then for the thinking and unthinking it's Hobson's.

glueman wrote:

nigel_s wrote:For the Nazi ideal to flourish it was a requirement for ordinary people not to think for themselves.

For cycling to flourish we need to take it out of the right-on, pinko, tree-hugging ghetto we've been painted into. Calling the dominant mode of transport, one colluded with by all colours of government fascist, is to provide the Parris's of the world with the broadest brush already dipped in paint.
Communists drive cars, liberals drive cars and reactionary majors drive cars because the alternatives have largely been done away with. When there is a choice we can start shouting Nazi, till then for the thinking and unthinking it's Hobson's.

Happy New Year, anyway...

George Riches wrote:One of the strange effects of computerisation is that history and the present merge in virtual reality. In the past, in the days of paper, the past would yellow, fracture and fade. With digitalisation, to some extent, we seem to really experiencing both an "End of History" (more real than Fukuyama's waffle) and an "End of Geography".

Sorry George, but this is a standard Marxist rant against the post modern. The big ideas died in the concentration camps and the gulag and will have to be headed off again in religious totalitarianism. Pluralism is the way forward old chap.

glueman wrote:The big ideas died in the concentration camps and the gulag and will have to be headed off again in religious totalitarianism.

Post modernism is cultural relativism gone mad.

We may have a very imperfect democracy, we may have an over-centralising government ("Stalin to Mr Bean"), we may have a largely appalling press, we may have a car-centric vision of transport, etc etc, but to suggest that our situation is even remotely reminiscent of Hitlerism is frankly nonsensical and an insult to those who endured its horrors. The fact that we can have this discussion, in its own small way, refutes the thesis.

How about getting back to the OP and how we can mobilise against those who peddle insults against those of us who pedal?

Auchmill wrote: to suggest that our situation is even remotely reminiscent of Hitlerism is frankly nonsensical and an insult to those who endured its horrors. The fact that we can have this discussion, in its own small way, refutes the thesis.

Sorry, but you seem to be making a pretty determined effort to misrepresent what I am actually arguing. In short, the more hierarchical, inequitable and status-conscious a society is the more likely it is that there will also exist a well defined 'hierarchy of the roads' with the interests of 'higher status' motor vehicle users being allowed to completely over-ride those of 'lower status' groups such as cyclists. It is no coincidence that the countries where the 'hierarchy of the roads' is the least pronounced, and the most effort made to protect the interests of children pedestrians and cyclists, are those countries with a long history of holding 'social' values in high regard, such as Denmark, Holland and so on. Conversely it is no coincidence that the countries which have the most dominant hierarchy of the roads and are the least cycling-friendly also tend to be right-wing, hierarchical, inequitable and 'individualist' countries such as the UK and US.

As to the relevance of what happened in Hitler's Germany in the 1930's, although we have obviously gone nowhere that far along the road towards genuine political fascism (yet) I feel there are some very powerful lessons to be learned, as is also recognised by many commentators both in the UK and US.

Ultimately, the sort of attitudes toward minority and social 'out groups' which so typified Hitler's Germany were in no way unique, with the underlying psychology being common to all those of an hierarchical or 'authoritarian' outlook. The only real difference is, thankfully, that most people do not have the sort of Nitschean 'Will to power' necessary to 'extend the logic' of the rightwing authoritarian mindset to its 'natural' conclusion, although at times people like Parris do come worryingly close to at least thinking in such terms. As Zoe Williams once wrote:

"A social observation: The kind of person who routinely prefixes "cyclist" with "kamikaze" is exactly the kind of person who prefixes "asylum seeker" with "bogus"."

glueman wrote: Sorry George, but this is a standard Marxist rant against the post modern. The big ideas died in the concentration camps and the gulag and will have to be headed off again in religious totalitarianism. Pluralism is the way forward old chap.

I would say that it is post-modern cultural relativism itself which is leading to the imposition of tyranny. Plenty of commentators in the US already see this, what with the 'construction of reality' by the Republicans and media. The denial that there is any such thing as objective morality (outside of the limits set by religious fundamentalism) is also becoming ever-more widespread, with all issues from the 'right and wrongs' of bombing civilians to whether or not is right that road deaths should be tolerated being held to be nothing more than 'matters of opinion'.

As anyone who has read Orwell will know, the way relativism can be used to undermine Enlightenment rationality were a central theme of his book '1984'. For example:

"Nazi theory indeed specifically denies that such a thing as 'the truth' exists. There is, for instance, no such thing as 'science'. There is only 'German science', 'Jewish science' etc. The implied objective of this line of thought is a nightmare world in which the Leader, or some ruling clique, controls not only the future but the past. If the Leader says of such and such an event, 'It never happened' - well, it never happened. If he says that two and two are five - well, two and two are five. This prospect frightens me much more than bombs - and after our experiences of the last few years that is not a frivolous statement."

From "Looking Back on the Spanish War" (written 1942, published 1943). And from '1984' itself:

(O’ Brien) ‘Do you remember,’ he went on, ‘writing in your diary, ‘ “Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four”?’

‘Yes,’ said Winston......

‘How many fingers am I holding up, Winston?’

‘Four.’

‘And if the party says that it is not four but five-than how many?’

‘Four.’

The word ended in a gasp of pain.......

‘You are a slow learner, Winston,’ said O’Brien gently.

‘How can I help it?’ he blubbered. ‘How can I help seeing what is in front of my eyes? Two and two make four.’

‘Sometimes Winston. Sometimes they are five. Sometimes they are three. Sometimes they are all three at once. You must try harder. It is not easy to become sane........

(Winston) ‘But how can you control matter?......You don’t even control the climate or the law of gravity. And there are disease, pain, death-...’

O’ Brien silenced him by a movement of the hand. ‘We control matter because we control the mind. Reality is inside the skull.....There is nothing that we could not do. Invisibility, levitation,- anything.....You must get rid of these ninteenth-century ideas about the laws of nature. We make the laws of nature.’

‘But the whole universe is outside us. Look at the stars! Some of them are a million light-years away. They are out of our reach for ever.’

What are the stars? said O’ Brien indifferently. ‘They are bits of fire a few kilometres away. We could reach them if we wanted to. Or we could block them out. The earth is the centre of the universe. The sun and the stars go round it’.

glueman wrote:I'm uncomfortable with these fascist associations... If anything the dangerous ones err towards extreme libertarianism which isn't the same as fascism.

I would question that, at least in terms of the end result. For example, most laws are set in place to protect the less-powerful from the more powerful, or for 'the common good'. Every time such laws are dismantled there is no net increase in liberty. Rather the power of the already powerful is reinforced. This is the case whether we are talking about attacks on speed enforcement (which naturally acts to the advantage of the speeding motorist and to the detriment of vulnerable road users) or the scaling down of 'Big Government' in relation to the regulation of the way business' operate, which acts to undermine the rights, pay and working conditions of employees.

Also, much so-called 'libertarian' thought is intrinsically far-right in it's outlook. Just read up on the ideas of people like Ayn Rand and her doctrine that man "must exist for his own sake, neither sacrificing himself to others nor sacrificing others to himself. The pursuit of his own rational self-interest and of his own happiness is the highest moral purpose of his life."

With political fascism the government is all-powerful, often with the backing of big business. So-called 'libertarianism' simply leads to a different form of tyranny, with powerful interests such as corporations wielding the whip directly, or mob rule.

Its interesting that one of their other columnists has now posted a reply:

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/commen ... 110970.ece

Of which most of the responses seem to be 'yeah but they dont pay road tax'...

Personally i've noticed that most of the things that newspaper columnists suich as Mr Parris, Jeremy Clarkson etc seem to moan about (See an episode of grump old men/women as an example) are symptoms of living and/or working in london. Why don't they just move?