Statement of support from the Motorcycle Action Group UK, to the Union des Usagers de la Route.
Fraternal greetings, to our fellow riders and all supporters of the Union des Usagers de la Route, from the 60,000 individual and affiliated members of the Motorcycle Action Group in the UK.
We fully support your opposition to those who seek to impose their view of the world on even the most basic human activities.
We have a right to choose how and when we travel and a duty to watch out for each other. We have a right to expect that others will treat us reasonably and a duty to treat others with care when we share the road.
But that does not mean we should surrender our enjoyment of life or personal liberty simply to satisfy a set of theories about road safety, or because it suits political ambitions or because those entrusted with a position of authority have since forgotten why they were first entrusted.
Whenever we venture out in the world we know that we are taking a series of risks, but they are small risks that allow us to live our lives as we wish. We cannot remove risk from our lives without removing ourselves from life itself.
If we choose to wear luminous clothes, or light-up our vehicles in the daylight, or encase our heads in a helmet or strap ourselves in to a seat that is our decision. If we are forced to do those things because someone else has decreed it is best for us, then our ability both to reason and to give effect to our own liberty are diminished.
The social contract is once again being strained to breaking point. We are to be coerced on pain of losing our property or our liberty because it is deemed good for us – that is a misuse of power. We are to be trapped by hidden surveillance designed to catch every minor transgression to swell the government coffers – that is a misuse of power.
Modern Europe was first shaped here in France over 200 years ago when people found an answer to the question – does the state serve the people, or do we serve the state? Let us remind ourselves, and those who seek to govern us, that there can only be one answer to that question.
Riders are voters, all road users have a vote; remember that when the professional politicians and the public officials who depend on them to channel your taxes in their direction ask for your support.
In the meantime, let us use the very road itself to demonstrate our opposition to this anti-social obsession with public obedience.