| National Clarion Cycle Club | |
|---|---|
| Motto | Fellowship is life[1] |
| Formation | February 1894 |
| Type | cycling club |
| Purpose/focus | "to combine the pleasures of cycling with the propaganda of Socialism"[1] |
| Region served | Great Britain |
| Membership | 600, organised in 26 sections |
| Main organ | The Clarion |
| Website | National Clarion Cycling Club |
The National Clarion Cycling club is a cycling club with some 26 member sections and over 600 members throughout Great Britain.
Contents |
The first club was formed in February 1894 in Birmingham, England[1] as the Socialists' Cycling Club. At its second meeting it renamed itself the Clarion Cycling Club after The Clarion socialist newspaper.
By the end of 1894, readers of The Clarion formed local socialist cycling clubs in five industrial centres: Birmingham, The Potteries, Liverpool, Bradford and Barnsley.[2]
In 1895 at Ashbourne, Derbyshire the five clubs gathered for their first annual Easter Meet.[1] Together they formed the National Clarion Cycling Club, which is
"the association of the various Clarion Cycling Clubs for the purpose of Socialist propaganda and for promoting inter-club runs between the clubs of different towns".[1][2]
The number of local Clarion Clubs grew to 30 by the end of 1895 and 70 by the early part of 1897.[2] They reached the peak of their extent and influence in 1914, when their Easter Meet was at Shrewsbury.[2] The illustrator and socialist Walter Crane designed the National Clarion Cycle Club's letterhead.[1][2]
In 1894 a writer in the Clarion under the pen-name "Numquam" suggested a "cycling corps of Clarion Scouts".[2] That summer, a meeting between The Potteries and Birmingham Clarion Clubs decided to put it into effect: "scouts" using their cycling trips to circulate socialist leaflets and copies of the Clarion wherever they visited.[2]
In November 1894, members of the Bradford and Liverpool CCC's campaigned for socialist candidates in local council elections.[3] By the end of that year, 22 of the Bradford CCC's 25 members were working as Scouts, distributing propaganda to villages around the town.[3] In March 1895 a new socialist magazine, The Scout, was launched for Scouts to read and circulate.[3] It was subtitled "A Monthly Journal for Socialists" and its first edition included a set of "Instructions for Scouts" written by The Clarion's editor Robert Blatchford.[3] The Clarion Clubs also did much to circulate The Clarion, Blatchford's book Merrie England and the socialist ideas that they expressed.[2]
When the Clarion Clubs were formed, socialists in Britain were divided between the Social Democratic Federation founded in 1881, the Independent Labour Party founded in 1893 and smaller organisations. The Labour Representation Committee that evolved into the current Labour Party was not founded until 1900. Clarion Scouts were encouraged to support either SDF or ILP candidates in elections, and Scouts in districts that lacked local socialist groups were encouraged to form either a local group of either SDF or the ILP, and to build unity between the disparate organisations of Britain's labour movement.[3]