Anarchist scooterists invade Ryde

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Matthew Chatfield

Editor at Naturenet

Uncooperative crusty. Unofficial Isle of Wight cultural ambassador. Conservation, countryside and the environment, with extra stuff about spiders.

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Every August bank holiday an extraordinary thing happens in the Ranger’s home town of Ryde, on the Isle of Wight. Estimates of numbers vary widely but certainly more than 2,000 scooters and their riders descend upon the town for the Ryde International Scooter Rally.

Scooters of all sorts – and I do mean all sorts – fill the town. The air is literally blue with two-stroke fumes and the buzzing of tinny engines is a constant drone throughout the weekend. Various events go on, and there is music and jollity, but the main event is the Sunday ride-out, when all the scooters gather on the seafront before riding off to some location on the Island. They dress up in remarkable costumes and drive some bizarrely-customised machines. This has become a big spectator event, and crowds of locals come out to line the streets, waving the scooterists off on their parade. It’s fun, and quite a spectacle. But it’s particularly interesting to me because of something unusual about this event: nobody organises it. It just happens, and for one weekend Ryde’s parks, streets and pavements are full to bursting with scooters. This is striking to a public servant like myself who spends a lot of the rest of the year hiring out these same parks for public events – checking insurance, taking fees, policing disputes between neighbours, and all the million-and-one things that local councils are obliged to do. And yet this big, internationally-renowned event just happens. How does that come about?

Of course, there are bits of organisation spread throughout the event. Somebody decides the ride-out route, and there are a whole range of well-publicised events in the evenings, as of course scootering is closely associated with music. A few marshals are provided by scooter clubs to get the scooters on their way, but largely it is unregulated. The scooters and spectators, by sheer weight of numbers, take over the roads and, for the ride-out at least, all other traffic comes to a standstill.

Look for the line of helmets – yes, there is a parade of scooters riding through this throng.

It’s an unusual experience and one which some people find uncomfortable. With a crowd of others I stood with my kids in the middle of an A-road for the best part of an hour watching the parade, and it struck me that nobody in their right mind would have stood there on a normal day. Behind us, a queue of cars built up to turn into a side road, and it was probably 20 minutes of inching forward, signalling and beeping before they finally realised that there was just no way, and turned off their engines, got out and watched the spectacle. One lady in a mini persisted: got in and out of the car a dozen times, futilely moving her car forward by inches at a time and going to look at the gap thus created. These motorists simply could not understand the idea that they were going nowhere until the scooters had gone by. Some grew irate. “But… but I want to go over there!” said one gentleman, gesturing impotently at a place a little way away. You can’t sir, was the unspoken reply in my mind, because all these other people want to go the other way. You’ll just have to wait. Because nobody is responsible for the annual episode of emergent behaviour, there’s nobody to blame, and nobody to regulate. Even if somebody tried to ban the event, people would still turn up as the date and time are simply fixed in tradition. Nobody needs to arrange or publicise it. Every year for as long as anyone can remember there are vague mutterings from locals afterwards, complaining of the noise, the danger, the smell, the rude scooterists or whatever. But of course nobody can do anything about it so it continues – whereas events such as the Ryde Carnival or Ryde Regatta which do have organisers are obliged to apply to close roads, to have licences, fence off areas, provide many marshals, submit risk assessments, liaise with the police and so on. For example, in Newport, a small part of the land I manage is regularly invaded by visitors who enjoy watching the Isle of Wight Festival for free (see previous post). Good for them – but amongst many other precautions we have to pay the police many thousands of pounds to patrol the site for the few days of the Festival. For the scooters at Ryde, by contrast, the police are certainly there, but who can they send the bill to? Nobody.

It’s hard not to admire the fun that the scooters bring to the Island, and it certainly seems that there are few accidents or other problems. Most of the scooterists are respectable types with jobs – they might remember being young and fighting in the street, but they’re more likely to go back to a comfortable B&B for cocoa these days. And yet, perhaps with a hint of irony, these middle-aged chaps who once wore anarchist T-shirts in earnest are unwittingly demonstrating that anarchy – or at least, libertarianism – can sometimes work. It’s worth noticing how people manage when left to sort themselves out: surprisingly well. Perhaps we’re too keen to introduce regulation and control, without reflecting on the cost and trouble of implementing it.

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