Fancy a nice day out in Chester?

The first GoldWing Light Parade was held in Blackpool and over a period of several years developed into a standard format involving a seaside resort, a daytime static display, inexpensive accommodation which could also serve as a social gathering place, a best lit bike competition and finally the Parade itself, along the promenade and hopefully past lots of admiring spectators.

This formula was copied with only minor variations in Scarborough and, with a few more more variations, last year in Llandudno.  Both of these venues have proved successful, as has a smaller event in Hunstanton in Norfolk, which was the first attempt at a spring-time Light Parade and a smaller resort town.  Blackpool has been abandoned as a venue because the Parade Route became un-rideable but nevertheless the Blackpool model has proved successful and it lives on.

This year at least four GoldWing Light Parades are planned.  Three follow the Blackpool model: Hunstanton in March, Scarborough and Southport in September but a completely different and very promising GoldWing Light Parade is to be held in Chester  in April.

Firstly, and obviously, it’s not taking place in a sea-side resort – although of course Chester is a City which attracts a lot of visitors, so maybe that difference doesn’t count.  On the other hand Chester is a particularly attractive place to visit for the ladies and maybe that does count as significant.

There is inexpensive accommodation available but it’s not actually in Chester (it’s in a 3 Star Hotel about 15 minutes ride away) but that’s not very different because Southport is in a nice Hotel too and Scarborough accommodation is out of town as well.  And there is going to be a Light Parade – which will be escorted by the Police rather than merely tolerated, but that’s not the difference either.  And I guess there will be a a best Lit Bike Competition, with trophies and fleeces provides by Barry WAlton of Appleyards, so not much difference there either.

So what is the difference?  Why all the fuss about this Chester Event being ground-breaking?

This Event is being organised by cooperation between GoldWings North Wales, a local GoldWing Club and Chester Lions, established fro over 50 years and part of Lions Clubs International, a service club organisation which supports local communities and communities around the world.  The Wingers will have a great time, day out or weekend, as they choose, and the Lions will collect lots of money for their charity – probably well over £10,000.

Lions Clubs (and similar organisations like Rotary and Round Table) are strong on local contacts and are also usually experienced at organising local events, especially charity events – to a much greater extent than any local or regional GoldWing club is likely to be.  On the other hand GoldWing clubs can muster lots of GoldWings – and we all know how much of an eye-catcher and crowd-puller a display of GoldWings can be – day, night or better still both!

It’s potentially a very powerful combination of resources – as the fund raising expectations for this Event suggests.   It’s also, from a GoldWing Club’s viewpoint, a much easier way to get the opportunity and access to run an event of this type; getting someone else to overcome the considerable logistical problems of planning, organising, getting official approvals for holding and marshaling the event.

The Lions Members will be handling all that side of things, including all aspects of the charity collection, leaving the host GoldWing Club free to concentrate on making sure the Wingers enjoy themselves.  If you work with an organisation like Lions or Rotary, you can be sure that the money collected will be handled with propriety and go to genuinely good causes.

Hotels in Chester are prohibitively expensive and parking would be a nightmare but GoldWings North Wales have struck a terrific deal with a 3 Star Hotel only 15 minutes ride away.  Whether Winger come for the day or make a weekend of it and come rain or shine, it really won’t matter much, this is going to be a really enjoyable and worthwhile Event.

Chester is of course a very attractive City to visit and its medieval streets and attractive range of buildings, eateries and shops make it a very appealing place for a group of Wingers to park up and spend a day.  No risk of the ladies havig to shelter from wind and rain in a seaside shelter in Chester; it’s the sort of place where you can enjoy a nice day in any weather.

The additional option to ride through the same lovely, crowd-lined streets after dusk showing off your bike’s display lighting is pretty appealing too.  No question of being stopped by the Police from using your lights on this Parade; Chester Lions have got the Mayor, the Council, the local Police and everybody else who matters involved and supportive.  The Police are even escorting the Parade along its whole route, about four miles, which has been unheard of cooperation in other parts of the Country for several years.

Apparently the medieval buildings, some of which overhang, will not be able to cope with a goldWings horns or sound system at full blast (or certainly lots of them) so you might be asked to tone that side of things down a bit but otherwise it should be an excellent opportunity to show off to appreciative spectators.  Even if you are not usually into Light Parades or static displays and do’t have extra lighting on your GoldWing it doesn’t matter and you will still be welcome.  This really is an exceptional opportunity to enjoy a great time in a lovely place and mingle with other friendly Wingers.

This informal reltionship with Lions (or it could be Rotary etc) could turn out to be a new and very attractive model which lots of other GoldWing Clubs and Regions could take up in their local area – raising huge sums for charity lots of fun for Wingers, fulfilling the visionary idea which Bob Summers, the Winger who started off GoldWing Light Parades ten years ago, that Light Parades shoud be held all over the Country.

For more information about Chester and Southport Parades visit the GoldWing Light Parade Website – Spring and Autumn, these are both going to be Events which Wingers should make sure they don’t miss.  All Wingers are welcome, all GoldWing Clubs and their badges, banners and flags will be equally welcome and all proceeds, every penny, will go to charity. There is virtually no limit to the number of GoldWings which can be accommodated in Chester, although of course there is a limit (and a booking deadline for the cheap deal) for the Event Hotel.

If you would like to see the 2012 riding season starting with all UK Wingers getting back on terms and enjoying a worthwhile event together as friends, turning up to enjoy the Chester Light Parade, whether for the day or the weekend, might well be the way to get it all going.

Postscript

I have been asked to clarify that this Event is being organised almost entirely by Chester Lions who are also handling all sponsorship arrangements and the charity collection.  Dave Turvey and Dave Crawley are handling the GoldWing liaison and the facilities for Wingers, such as the Hotel, which is the one where they meet as members of GoldWings North Wales.  Dave Crawley is also a member of Merseyside and Cheshire Wings and has sought the support of GWOCGB for this Event, which open to all Wingers, any club or no club.  GWOCGB have however decided that since their own AGM is on the same weekend they will not support it.

This is very much a non-political, all welcome event at which any Winger, from any club or no club, will be most welcome.

It’s a Dinner Dance and there’s an opportunity for the ladies to dress up if they want to (and the blokes) but posh frocks are not expected or compulsory – especially for the blokes.

Two scrubbed-up Grahams!

The ticket includes drinks and canapes on arrival followed by an all you-can-eat carvery-type buffet with a selection of meats, fish and veggie dishes, folowed by pud and/or cheese with unlimited wine on the tables, a free bar afterwards and a fish & chip supper at 11pm.

Further details are available on the GoldWings North West Website.  You can book directly with the Hotel by ringing  01772 422922, quoting reference GW280112.

Accommodation is also available at the Hotel at a special rate if you will be travelling from afar or want to stay in order to make full use of the free bar.

A lot of Wingers reading this Blog must have at sometime or other asked themselves this question, as both organisations offer to cater for the Goldwing owners in the UK, but in different ways.

Irrespective of politics/delusions/snobbery etc, the bare facts are of importance and interest here so having read many articles I want to concentrate on these.

I believe in the present climate everyone is looking for the answer and it is not as straight forward as it looks, the doubt is creeping in and it is spreading a glum over an otherwise once very happy and stable Goldwing community here in the UK.    It’s like an “us and them” scenario which upsets me greatly and should not be the case at all.

I do not want to favour one or the other in what I’m writing here, but try to offer a suggestion so that all can move forward together and give our community a fresh start for 2012.  The Mayan calender is due to finish on 21 Dec 2012, but it does not mean the end of the world! , or does it?  LOL.  Well, one thing is for sure we can get through this and move forward.

Both organisations have advantages for GoldWing owner’s:

Goldwing Owners Club of Great Britain (GWOCGB): is the older club internationally recognised by GWEF and offer centrally and local club run events throughout the year both at home and abroad.  They have a club magazine “Wingspan” and also have a membership directory which lists members willing to offer help if you have a breakdown or need emergency accommodation as part of their membership package.  The central committee have reps which cover most aspects of the regional clubs activities on a national level ie, Treffens, Events, PLI cover etc, they also have national rules which apply to all regional clubs but leave local events more to the regional committees to run as long as they do not breach national policy.  The club membership fees are flat rate for all and reflect this level of service for the national club as a whole.

The Federation of United Kingdom GoldWing Clubs: Formed more recently for Goldwing owners who   want more freedom of choice in what they want.   This concept involves local clubs running themselves totally but under the help and if required guidance of FUKGC which offers PLI cover for all the events which the individual clubs wish to organise.  Membership fees are set by the membership themselves and this is generally minimal depending on how the club intends to run.  As with the former organisation these local clubs have a Chairman, Secretary and a treasurer and meetings are held monthly.

These are the bare facts and I think you should choose which club suits you more to your own personal expectations and who’s to say you can’t join both!

So as can be seen there is light at the end of the tunnel, both offer similar or different benefits and outlooks depending on what you want out of being a member.

The bottom line is we all have a great hobby and the friendliness and joy of sharing our passion should not be marred by who’s in what club, we should have a sense of common ground or good foundation on which to build a thriving community as a whole and accept personal preference as to whom we hand over our membership monies to be it GWOCGB or Federation.  Let’s just get on with it and have a great time!

Wishing all a bright future in 2012!

This reshuffle brings in a new Chairman and involves two other job changes; the official announcement can be viewed here.

Ian Duxbury, already Chariman of GoldWings North West will also now be Chairman of the Federation and Bob Summers, who is reliquishing the Chairman’s job, becomes the Secretary, which is the job I used to do.  I will now be taking more of a background role, still one of the Team but concerned with development issues and with trade relations.

Dave Turvey(Treasurer) and Nigel Mackintosh (Webmaster) stay in the same nominal roles but their division of the labour will probably change too.

It helps to understand why and how these changes have been made (and that someone can come straight into the Team as its Chairman) if you bear in mind that the Federation isn’t a conventional bike club.  There isn’t a conventional committee structure or any hierarchy and indeed one of the cornerstones of the Federation’s approach is that it exists to provide a service to GoldWing clubs and Wingers in UK, rather than being anything like a ruling or regulating committee.

So Ian will chair the Federation Team Meetings if indeed chairing is needed; in practice the Team meets infrequently and mostly communicates by telephone and email and has never had difficulty achieving consensus without resorting to voting.  It’s a small team of volunteers each of whom does what he’s good at doing but consults freely with colleagues as he goes along rather than going solo.

Ian Duxbury is a Training Officer in his Day job and so he brings valuable presentational skills to the party.  Bob and Dave are seen as having diplomatic skills as well as good looks, so together with Ian they will be fronting the Federation’s dealings with both its affiliated Clubs and others – and indeed with the GoldWing Community generally.  Nigel and I will be moving more into the roles of back-room techies, with me continuing to try to be the future ideas man and Nigel the over-arching (rather than the everyday) geek.  Bob has therefore taken over editing the Federation Website from me as well as the administration of affiliated Clubs.

This Blog, although often covering Federation activities and develpoments, has always been my personal medium and while I’ve always tried to empahsise that I write about the Federation on here rather than on its behalf, now that Bob will be doing the official Federation Website that should become more obvious.

So, the Federation Team isn’t an elected club committee with a mandate to rule and doesn’t want to be; it’s a small group of skilled and willing volunteers who share ideas and resources in order to provide a range of services for GoldWing clubs and Wingers.  We will however be considering the idea of a representational system of some sort as the Federation grows, possibly a Clubs Council, and this is one of the development ideas I will be working on.

And, as demonstrated by these recent changes, the Federation is not standing still.  Nor does it want to risk getting stangnant by allowing the same people to get too entrenched, even in a  specialist role like Webmaster.

There’s no rush to get much bigger because so far small has turned out to be big enough and small also makes for easier communications.  New talent is however always going to be made welcome if the skills on offer meet the Federation’s needs – and for example Nigel is particularly keen that we recruit an additional volunteer geek who has WordPress skills as soon as practicable.

So if you have suitable skills and want to work for nothing, not even expenses, for the benefit of your fellow Wingers,  I’m sure that Bob Summers, the new Federation Secretary, would be delighted to hear from you.  Use the Contact page on the Federation Website.

Stylish or what!

Following a hugely successful Light Parade in Llandudno this year, the Federation Club’s premier Light Parade moves to Southport for 2012!

A plan was hatched some time ago that GoldWings North West and GoldWings North Wales, the two founding Federation Clubs, would take turns to hold a Light Parade in September to continue the spirit and fun of the Blackpool Light Parade when that could no longer continue and so for 2012 we have another new Light Parade Resort to look forward to experiencing.

Jeff Thornton of GoldWings North West is the Lead Organiser and he confirmed to his Club Meeting last Sunday that all the fundamentals for a great Light Parade Weekend are already in place with a keen and cooperative Town Council, excellent cooperation from Merseyside Police and a cracking venue, the 154 bedroom Prince of Wales Hotel on Lord Street, the Town’s main street, in Southport.

The Light Parade Website will be updated shortly and booking information which has already been released to GoldWings North West Members will be available on the Website as soon as possible.  All Wingers are welcome, regardless of club or other affiliation and there are no extra charges for non-Members of the host Club. This is an Event for all Wingers and you can book your family into the Hotel too for the weekend if you wish, there are no restrictions.

You will however need to quote the Booking Code to get the special deal and this will be posted on the Website together with the contact details as soon as practicable.

The Accommodation Package which Jeff has secured is very attractive at only £155 per double room for two nights dinner bed and breakfast and just half of that rate for singles, so there no single supplement at all.  You can stay for one night only if you wish.  No deposit is required, you will secure your reservation with credit card details but no money will be taken until you arrive.  There’s no cut off date for the special rates and there are no cancellation charges either as long as you cancel more than 48 hours before you are due to arrive, so this by far is the best accommodation deal we’ve ever had.  Oh, and there is secure bike parking at the Hotel and the beer is cheap too!

There will be the usual Best Lit Bike Competition, a daytime static display with a Charity Collection and a Parade Route has already been agreed with the Council and Police, who will be providing an escort.

Southport is a lovely Victorian Seaside Resort which enjoys an open and spacious layout with extensive gardens as well as promenades, which lends itself well to an Event of this type.  As well as the usual high street stores there is a particularly attractive range of independent shops along the length of Lord Street, on which the Prince of Wales Hotel is also located.  There is a campsite fairly close to Southport for those who prefer to camp and details will be on the Website.

Jeff, himself an experienced businessman, has a pair of deputies (Pete Rodgers and Bill Squires) who have already been involved in his preparation work and a ready source of volunteers – and of course access to help and advice from organisers of previous events, so it’s looking like Southport will be every bit as successful as past Light Parades.

We’re approaching Christmas, so I have decided to call a halt to coverage of club politics for the time being in favour of something lighter and more entertaining.  I will be pulling or modifying some of the recent articles for the same reason – although not, I hasten to add, as a retraction of any kind.  I have always taken some trouble to establish the accuracy of what I have revealed and that still stands.

The viewing figures for the Blog show, as they always seem to do, that revelations and analysis of club politics is popular reading so I will continue to cover it but I was starting to get unnecessarily personal in some of the criticism I had written and that was a change of style which I’m not comfortable with, so as well as taking a break I’ve removed or modified (or will be doing so) a few things accordingly.  If you haven’t read all the recent stuff yet and want to do so you’d better be quick!

So for the time being at least, unless newsworthiness or other provocation dictates otherwise, I will be steering clear of GWOCGB’s problems in favour of more seasonal and entertaining fayre.  Sadly that won’t mean that GWOCGB’s problems have gone away of course and there are unfinished and newsworthy stories which I will probably cover as they come to fruition.  But I’ll try harder to focus on issues rather than individuals from now on.

It’s the run up to Christmas, we’ve all got to get the decorations up and think about the presents (other than bike bits) which we should have bought by now but haven’t, so I’ll give politics, or at least the contentious side of things, a rest at least until next year.

Happy Christmas to all my Blog readers, whatever your club affialtions or aspirations might be and however you prefer to pursue your own GoldWing interests.

With a GoldWing engine, would this fit the Rules?

Lots of bikers, and lots of Wingers, like to combine their motorcycling hobby with camping; it offers social opportunities which are broader than simply gathering for a meal and a few drinks in a hotel after a day’s riding on tour – and of course camping can be significantly cheaper than other ways of getting accommodation when you are away from home territory.

Indeed camping will have been associated with motorcycling way back when motorcycling was the working man’s affordable transport rather than a predominantly recreational vehicle, so it was natural to try to make use of the bike, and especially sidecar combinations, for family outings and holidays too, including going to bike club camping gatherings – all of this long before GoldWings came on to the scene.

Camping gatherings would therefore have been the natural way for Wingers from different parts of the Country to get together and why from its earliest days, GWOCGB formed as a camping-based Club.  And for some Wingers camping with other Wingers might even have been and still be the sole or main reason for buying their GoldWing, which they might never have used for the long distance touring for which the bike was designed.  A substantial number of GWOCGB Members still look forward, above all else, to their season of WingDings and the annual major gathering, the Treffen, where they can meet up again with familiar faces, enjoy a bit of group riding and maybe get some new accessories and some technical help or advice, but above all enjoy the company of like-minded friends.

Not surprising then that because it was the way the Club formed that the main activity of GWOCGB has always been its annual calendar of camping events.  The Club’s Regions take turns to organise WingDings and the national Club organises, usually with the help of a host Region, the annual Brtitish Treffen.  This is one of an annual series of international camping GoldWing rallies in Europe, of which there are one or more each month in a different European Country during the riding season.

The Free Spirit Approach - take only what you can carry on the bike

Some of the Wingers who are members of other UK GoldWing or other biking clubs go camping too but not on the same scale as GWOCGB’s WingDingers.  If a regular programme of camping weekends socialising with Wingers who share this interest is your cup of tea, then GWCGB is the Club for you.

Or rather it has been in the past, because attendance at WingDings fell this year – and fell enough to provoke the Club’s Chairman, Chris Hinds, into asking ‘Appy Wanderers to adjust their schedule of GoldWing activities (which were not camping events) to avoid clashes, in the hope of bolstering them.  Longer and more adventurous group rides than the short outings which were a feature of WingDings, such as ‘Appy Wanderers have been providing for their members as their “Riding not Rows” approach to GoldWing club life, had been proving quite a draw.

GoldWings are after all grand touring bikes, so why wouldn’t some Wingers prefer to be riding their bikes in company and friendship rather than sitting around chatting for most of the weekend?  Chris Hinds presumably felt he could make this request because ‘Appy Wanderers was operating at the time as a semi-detached group of mostly GWOCGB Members but even so it seems an odd thing to have to consider doing, for the leader of what is still numerically the largest single UK GoldWing Club.  Doesn’t the success of what ‘Appy Wanderers were doing, and what other Wingers had been doing in other clubs such as Elite Wings, suggest that GWOCGB should have been responding to competition by offering broader fare itself rather than trying to persuade them to stop competing?

WingDing venue - tents only or motorhomes tucked out of sight?

But if you like camping and its social side, and especially if you like camping in a tent and also like dressing-up-type games and loud music, GWOCGB’s programme of WingDings still offers a way of meeting Wingers from other parts of the Country, seeing them again regularly and therefore of forming friendships which you might not otherwise have found.

By towing a trailer behind your GoldWing you can take a lot more stuff along make yourself far more comfortable than if you limit yourself to the small tent and basic kit which can be carried on the bike, although of course some Wingers are still content with that – and these days if you want to use a caravan or motorhome to sleep in that will usually be OK too.

Travelling across Europe to the various Treffens was always much more of a minority activity but tens and sometimes scores of British Wingers would attend Treffens in far flung places as well as handier Countries like Holland, Belgium, France, Spain and of course Ireland.  A few British Wingers, those who had the freedom and resources to do so, have attended many Treffens each year, making this their main way of enjoying their GoldWing, and a few still do so.

I met a Winger during this last Summer who had already been to several foreign Treffens including in Eastern Europe – where incidentally he had seen what must have been the first 2012 Model GoldWings to reach Europe, which would have been non-ABS US-Spec models imported personally by Czech or Polish Wingers, or perhaps by Czech or Polish motorcycle dealers, upon whom Honda’s lawyers are less able to bring down financial retribution.

Fully loaded on the road but still counts as a traditional, tent-based approach?

There are likely to be several factors in the decreasing popularity of GWOGB’s camping events, including of course the economic downturn.  Yet the decline in attendance at WingDings has been against the trend of a marked increase in popularity of camping generally in UK; reservations on UK campsites have been harder to make and membership numbers of camping, caravanning and motorhome clubs has increased.  And the proportion of Wingers who have attended GWOCGB camping events using motorhomes or caravans as sleeping accommodation rather than tents, i.e. more expensive ways of doing things, suggesting that the pursuit of comfort as well as economics is driving this change.

This is one way, albeit slowly and somewhat grudgingly, in which GWOCGB has adapted to changing demand.

There are however still objections, sometimes vociferous objections, to the admission of “tin tents” to GWOCGB camping events by Members who regard camping in a proper tent as the only acceptable way to turn up to a GoldWing or to any other biking rally.  This is claimed to be a cultural, perhaps even a cult conviction, about what constitutes a “proper” biking activity.

The bare essentials - especially if you dispense with the chair?

Proper bikers, according to self-appointed guardians of purity and tradition, well, maybe not purity, should only ever rally in a simple, uncluttered way, reflecting the freedoms and self-reliance of having all you need with you on the bike.  This allows you to roam as a free spirit – even if in practice, discretely adapting tradition to suit your own version of proper biking, you will be riding your trike, towing your trailer full of home comforts, straight down the motorway to get to a camping venue at which showers and other necessities have been laid on for you.

There is perhaps still an illusion of recapturing the simplicity of what you enjoyed, or wish you had enjoyed, during your long lost youth if you sleep in a tent – so that having to share the field with caravans and the like strikes a discomforting as well as discordant note.   But isn’t there an element of hypocrisy if you sleep in your big tent on an airbed in a separate bedroom and use a portable kitchen unit and a portable fridge, so that they arrive on site in an oversize or overloaded trailer, in the family car or by some other means rather than on your bike with you – and doesn’t jealousy about what other Wingers can afford sometimes lie behind “purist” objections some time?

I have sympathy with the free-spirit approach to camping while biking providing the free spirit purism is genuinely felt and genuinely practised.  If that’s what floats a Winger’s boat and they can cope with the constraints and discomforts without wingeing, good luck to them.

Keeping it simple

But I’ve always found difficult to understand why those Wingers who want GWOCGB camping events to be tents-only can’t solve their needs by organising tents-only events for themselves, if necessary as “non-recognised” events?   Why insist that everyone has to do things their way at all the Club’s camping gatherings?  Ironically of course the traditionalists/tenters would be completely free to form their own tents-only club under the Federation system and it would not be impossible even under GWOCGB’s restrictive rules but that’s not good enough – they want to use GWOCGB antiquated rules to impose their wishes on everyone else, almost as if it was a matter of evangelical religious faith.  This strikes me as a bit selfish.

All clubs have their share of “takers” as well as “givers” among their members of course and I see those Wingers who want to impose their ideas on others as sort of takers, even if only because they are seeking to take away other people’s freedom of choice.

Sometimes it’s the givers, i.e. the organisers and the grafters, who want to exclude Wingers of this or that type but if it’s their event I personally don’t have a problem with that.  Why can’t Wingers organise something of a specialised appeal or on an excusive basis if they are doing all the work?  If  organisers get too restrictive or exclusive, they are not likely to succeed are they?  So it’s a self-limiting problem isn’t it?  You don’t necessarily need rules to control everything, do you?

So I don’t have any problem with Wingers being as restrictive or exclusive as they like about events or activities which they are organising; it’s the people who are both takers and moaners with whom I have less sympathy.   For example advocating a “nomad” Winger lifestyle, with no attachment (or contribution) to any Region or Club but feeling entitled to turn up to enjoy regional or club events strikes me as potentially exploitive.

Few would object to Wingers who disdain the politics of GWOCGB Regions or indeed of any club structure or activity turning up to enjoy regional or club events as long as they pat their way and behave as a guest.  But choosing to be both a “taker” and wanting to moan and complain about the way other Wingers do things, when they are after all merely exercising their freedom of choice in their own way, seems to me both shamelessly exploitive and shamelessly disruptive.

GWOCGB being GWOCGB, does of course have formal rules about camping events and some of these get in the way, especially in the way of variety and progress.  The camping rules were developed when camping in tents was the universal approach and they have remained essentially unchanged, so they favour the status ante and present an obstacle to moving with the times, even to new approaches to camping in tents.

Any sort of camping you like, as long as ....

For example GWOCGB’s oft cited (but unwritten) “200 Mile Rule”, was presumably conceived to protect and foster a programme of “recognised” national Club events to which all Members could attend as of right, hence the discouragement of potentially distracting and competing alternative events, even if they are also camping activities.  The 200 Mile Rule prevents Regions, or any other groups of Wingers within GWOCGB, from organising small, relatively local (and therefore less costly in fuel) “tent only” camping rallies and mini-tours of the sort which might provide variety to existing members and help to recruit new ones.

Insisting that every Club event has to be open to (and suitable for?) every Club Member is enormously restrictive of innovation and creativity.  Why can’t a GWOCGB Member organise (and advertise to the Club) a camping mini-tour for a few solo bikes, tents only, no trailers, just because there is a traditional WingDing planned somewhere else?  Would there really be a conflict?

GWOCGB’s rules don’t really help to foster anything, not even attendance at WingDings, they merely prevent innovation and freedom of choice.

Stars & Stripes, Tatton Park

Outside GWOCGB, where there is more freedom from rules unless you make your own, innovation can flourish and it does, including in the way Wingers go camping.   Camping events have featured in at least one Federation Club’s calendar, my own, and will probably continue to do so because they’ve been very successful.  There is no rigid formula to be applied, which has helped, so we sometimes camp for a weekend at someone else’s event, for example at the Scorton Country Fair and the Woodvale Rally, which although in its origins and at its core a model aircraft gathering, has expanded to a huge size and attracts a wide variety of exhibitor/campers, including at least a dozen different sorts of bike clubs.

The attendance by Wingers at Woodvale this year was up on previous years and attracted Wingers from other GoldWing clubs – including quite a few GWOCGB members.  Wingers camped together, regardless of club or other affiliation.  This Event has in the past tended to be attended primarily by Wingers who also have caravans and motorhomes because facilities, when you are camped way out on an airfield, are a bit distant.

So we learned this year that we will need to plan and provide more effectively for tents to allow our Winger friends to participate with us and Winger attendances to continue to grow, which we would be happy to see.  It’s a fun occasion when we can show our bikes off to very large crowds but after 5pm, when the public have left, we get the use of the runways for riding practice – and after dark we even do an impromptu Light Parade to entertain the many hundreds of other exhibitor/campers.

Minority appeal among Wingers but the variety is there at Woodvale if you want it

We could of course simply say that Woodvale is only suitable for motorhomes and caravans or that Wingers who come in tents will have to rough it and sort their own toilets out but we’ve often had a few tent-dwellers along in the past and managed somehow, and more likely we’ll try to be as accommodating as practicable, to look after our friends, even if it’s not a problem which affects us personally.  (Sorry Ted, but that doesn’t quite mean that you can rely on using our motorhome shower and loo at Woodvale next year!)

So we try to adapt and to exploit new opportunities rather than stick to a narrow organisational model.  And we certainly don’t try to discourage let alone stop anyone else from doing their own thing just because it isn’t our cup of tea.

I suppose the point I’m making here is that camping goes well with a GoldWing hobby in a variety of ways, although of course camping is by no means the be all and end all.  Ours is after all still a motorcycling hobby.

If you are making a transit journey, why not take the bike this way, to enjoy when you get there?

Weekend camping rallies of the GWOCGB, WingDing-type are still a good option and they will continue to be attractive to some Wingers, some of the time.  But there is scope for other types of event or activity involving camping too, such as sharing other people’s events (eg taking part in Woodvale or Stars & Stripes) and low cost, camping-based mini-tours.

And a GoldWing club which wants to thrive, especially as a national club, needs to be willing to cater for more than one appetite; GWOCGB has been a one trick pony for far too long and that’s probably fundamentally why it’s now failing.  Fundamentally unfriendly too of course, which hasn’t helped but that’s a theme I’ve already explored and I don’t suppose the welcoming crew at a GWOCGB Event will be overheard saying things like “not more trailer trash” again for a while.

And I suppose I’m also saying, to the moaning minnies who want it all their way, and especially to those who also want other Wingers to lay it all on for them, so that they can just be a nomad and turn up and enjoy it when they feel the urge, and then moan about other Wingers turning up with the wrong sort sleeping accommodation, that a friendly club can only stay friendly and thrive (or in GWOCGB’s case rise from the ashes, to become friendly and thrive again) if there is tolerance as well as initiative.

GWOCGB is in sore need of a new structure and new leadership but it also needs to be rid of the blinkered and short-sighted attitudes of those who resist change for selfish reasons or indeed feel entitled to tell others what they should be doing for any reason.

If you are a GWOCGB Member who is undecided about renewing your membership for next year, don’t expect anything other than the same-old, poorly attended camping weekends, where you will still get an uncertain welcome unless you turn up with a tent because on present showing there’s nothing much else likely to be on offer – except of course if you like the GWOCGB approach to club politics.  There’ll be plenty of that next year, as usual.

GWOCGB has only ever tried to be a national Club.  If the Club’s National Committee lose the confidence of the membership and there is no prospect of replacing them with people who could  run the Club as a national Club, GWOCGB as we have known it will indeed fail.

And with the announcement today that another Region, Surrey Wings, has folded, things are not going well.

The National Committee were told recently of another Region which is currently tottering on the verge of leaving the fold.  The first reaction was to point out that all remaining funds would have to be handed over.   Perhaps they thought it would discourage desertion.  Don’t worry was the reply, we’ll have a party or something, there won’t be any money left.

It hasn’t been a good NEC Show for the Club this year either; the Club usually gets a decent crop of new recruits each year and has had over a hundred in the past – this year there have been less than a handful, indeed if I overheard correctly when I was there yesterday only one couple have been signed up all week.  And all week long Members of GWOCGB have been calling at the NEC Stand to make it clear that they won’t be renewing this time.  Things are not going well at all.

The principal value of having a national Club, as GWOCGB has always focused on, is that friendships across the whole country can be fostered.   Every member has a right to attend every meeting or activity and, in theory at least, private cliques or clubs-within-clubs cannot form.  GWOCGB Members are, above all, “all of one Club”.  Years ago, when the Club was small and friendly, it probably served well.

However this system does mean that Regions cannot easily sort their own problems out or at least it becomes difficult to do so and even more difficult to nip them in the bud.  They tend to escalate and someone or other tries to get the National Committee involved, often to apply the rules in their favour.   When John Bates was confronted by pressure from his fellow Yorkshire Wingers to clear off, they couldn’t actually expel him from their Club, all they could do was show him by their weight of numbers and the strength of their feelings that they didn’t want him around, at least not in Yorkshire Wings any longer.

Even when Lancs & Lakes Region voted formally and unanimously to expel one of their joint Reps from their Region for what they regarded as gross misconduct, all they could actually expel her from was her job as Rep. And in theory, under the Club Rules, they probably couldn’t even have done that if she’d resisted.   Lancs & Lakes had had to get rid of a Rep some years previously by voting to elect a new Rep and he came up with a Club rule which said he had to be allowed to serve for a minimum of two years.

In this more recent case if the deposed Rep had had the brass neck to continue attending  Regional Meetings, which fortunately didn’t happen, the Region would have broken Club Rules if they had refused her entry because she was still a Club Member.

Under GWOCGB’s system only the National Committee can exclude anyone or impose anything and even this authority is, in theory at least, limited by the provisions of the Club’s Constitution and Rules for elaborate safeguards.   There is supposed to be a formal disciplinary hearing before anyone can be expelled and after that there’s a right of appeal.

In practice the National Committee don’t even try to follow the rules closely, not unreasonably because the Rules don’t actually make a lot of sense, so the Committee interprets or ignores the rules as they see fit.  But they get burdened with an awful lot of things which would be much better left to the Regions to sort out for themselves; the “all of one Club” principle and centralised control has a downside.

David Duffield’s unsavoury incident at this year’s Treffen (or rather the incident which he got bogged down in) became impractical to deal with under the rules and the knock on effects of the Committee’s failure to deal with that incident properly and decisively at the time continue o escalate.  The talk of PLI cover in that connection is because of the risk that it will lead to legal action.  And as it happens the Rules do allow for summary action in the circumstances of that incident, or most certainly they used to.  The Committee would almost all have been around as well but even with a quorum present they couldn;t get it right.  Was there failure of resolve or failure to agree or was it, as David has subsequently so tactfully put it, merely failure of communication?

Getting back to the Lancs & Lakes case, as well as voting unanimously to sack their Rep from her job and require her never to darken their doors again, the Region voted almost unanimously at the same Meeting to ask the National Committee to expel her from the Club, so gross did they consider her misconduct to have been.  The National Committee had a bit of a problem here because they had, only a few weeks before receiving this request, given her the Club’s Winger of the Year Award.  Ironically this Award had been made because of the contribution which the lady had made to their efforts to go behind the previous Regional Joint Rep’s backs in order to undermine their credibility and salvage what they could of a Region which might otherwise have quit the Club en masse.

It was therefore the remnants of the Region (which had by then split) which discovered gross deception on her part and felt so betrayed by her that they almost literally threw her out.  But the National Committee, having supped with what turned out to  be the devil with a short spoon, found themselves between a rock and a hard place.  They could hardly expel her as formally requested by her Region without explaining the bizarre coincidence of having only just given her the Club’s Winger of the Year Award at the Treffen.  So they declared her to be suffering from mental illness and therefore deserving of understanding and thereby ducked the issue of expulsion.

Dr Mike Pearce made that somewhat expedient psychiatric diagnosis and strangely enough he probably wasn’t wildly off the mark although, assuming he was genuine in his assertion that she was deserving of sympathy which is uncertain, he was one of very few people who were in the know who wanted to give her any.

Under GWOCGB’s system Regions only exist and regional meetings only take place as local gatherings of the national Club and although regions can and do operate in some ways as independent local clubs, for example by building up their own nest egg, perhaps by collecting their own subscriptions or holding raffles, they are supposed to hand their money over to the national Club is they fold – as Surrey Wings will now presumably be asked to do.

I suppose they too might decide to have a farewell party with their money; there probably won’t be much money anyway and the National Committee will hardly resort to suing them.

The point here is that the “all of one Club” principle, originally one of the great strengths of the Club and the basis upon which the friendly national Club had been able to build up its numbers has, as the Club became institutionalised, become an enormously corrupting bureaucratic burden.

I don’t mean corrupting in the financial sense, or certainly not in any frequent or widespread way, but in the sense that fudging and much worse became the norm and skullduggery too often and too easily resorted to.  Sadly there are more tales I could tell, if necessary, to prove this point.

Even if the current National Committee could be replaced with new and appropriately skilled blood, the Club’s rules have become unworkably complex.  As evidenced by its inexorable numerical decline, the very idea of a national GoldWing club which has a ruling National Committee-which spends all the money and calls all the shots, often in a hidden if not also an underhand way, is obsolete and no longer worth trying to preserve.

Those Wingers in Surrey who have decided not to renew their GWOCGB Membership and instead to continue to meet and ride together are unlikely to be alone.  Lots more Wingers  will be voting with their feet by not renewing this year.  The National Committee is failing, and so therefore is the very idea of a centrally directed national Club.

It's ALL about Freedom of Choice!

It’s a bit early to be writing the history of the Federation of UK GoldWing Clubs but it is now approaching the end of its third year and it’s having a very big impact on the UK GoldWings scene, so perhaps it is time to record how and why the Federation came into being – not least because its origins have had a big impact on what the Federation is and where it’s going.

The idea of a federated GoldWing club organisation in UK, or rather the seeds of the idea, arose one evening in January 2008 when I was having a quiet moment in the bath with a glass of whiskey in my hand.  I was reflecting on problems I was facing at the time and probably feeling a bit hard done to or sorry for myself because they were only partly of my own making.  But soaking in the bath and sipping a good whiskey is a privilege which reminds you to count your blessings and look on the bright side and it might have been this effect which turned my thoughts away from the immediate problems towards the bigger picture and the longer term.

It might even have been my favourite whiskey, Lagavulin, one of the peatiest and most aromatic of the Islays and now a rare treat at over £40 per bottle.  In 2008 it could be bought for around £25 per bottle and sometimes less but even so it would have been a special treat, worthy of sipping slowly rather than drinking for effect.   Nearly three years on, with the Federation established and thriving and the problems I was facing back then water which has long since flown under the bridge, it’s perhaps time I treated myself to some more of that magical fluid to say thank you.

In January 2008 however the problem of the failed launch on the GWOCGB Forum of the Blackpool Light Parade was a big one and it was potentially insurmountable.  I’d taken over the reins from Bob Summers after a successful 2007 Event with ambitions expand it and I was already, within less than three months, facing something of a disaster.

Bob had organised a Blackpool Light Parade every year since its inception five years earlier and he’d wanted to give the idea a rest as well as to take break from organising it himself.  But a few of us in Lancs & Lakes, the more actively involved members of the Region, were keen to keep the momentum going and I was all for trying to make it even bigger and better.  I’d originally expressed an interest in organising the marshalling aspects of the Parade but in the end, for lack of any other volunteer, I’d offered to take over from Bob as the lead organiser providing Bob agreed to hold my hand as necessary, which to his credit he did without the least hesitation.  Organising the Event had by then become and would continue to be a team effort but there was nevertheless a need for one person to take on the overall coordinating role and to handle liaison with Blackpool Council and the Police etc. so that was to be my job.

I’d started in this role immediately after the 2007 Light Parade in September of that year and I had already had promising contact with Blackpool Council and especially with HondaUK about supporting an expanded Event for 2008.  The aim from our viewpoint, as Wingers who were members of Lancs & Lakes Region and therefore GWOCGB, was to exploit the Light Parade – still the only one in UK at the time – as a bigger and better showcase event for the Club.  The omens were starting to look good from these early contacts I made and I’d also been optimistic about a good reception within the Club for the expansion plans when I announced them on the Forum.

As I lay in the bath sipping my glass of whiskey that January evening, my announcement of the Event on the Forum had gone very seriously wrong and I was facing a very considerable challenge, perhaps even mission impossible, to try recover the situation.

I have my rights!

The announcement had backfired when it came under persisting and really quite unpleasant attack from some Club Members on the Forum. The GWOCGB Forum had never been a place for the feint hearted but even by the Forum’s standards this was quite an attack and it soon developed a personal dimension as well.   The trigger was one Member objecting stridently to the Event being restricted to GoldWings only because she, a GoldWing owner’s wife, had ridden in the previous Parade on her non-GoldWing and wanted to do so again.  Other Members quickly rallied to what rapidly became her cause.

It somehow became my personal fault for committing this abuse of her membership rights and explaining that I (i.e. we, the organisers) were simply acting on specific instructions from the Club’s National Committee that the event must be for GoldWings only (and that I would happily ask for this restriction to be removed) made no difference at all.  It didn’t help either that the Club’s Acting Chairman then piped up on the Forum and denied that the Committee had done any such thing, presumably because he didn’t know that they had.  I posted a copy of the formal written instructions we had received (very formally from the General Secretary, signed “for and on behalf of GWOCGB”) proving that we had indeed been so instructed – but that didn’t do any good either.

By this time the knives were out in a big way and the damage had been done; the launch of the 2008 Blackpool Light Parade had been well and truly ruined.  I was being accused of lying to cover my tracks and I was well on the way to becoming something of a Club Pariah.  I found it really quite difficult to believe that this nightmare was really happening in our so-called friendly Club but unfortunately it was all too real.

My efforts to get the Thread pulled from the Forum as a way of limiting the damage to the Light Parade and maybe starting again later failed when the National Committee Member responsible refused point blank to help on the grounds that she didn’t want to be criticised for censorship.  I wasn’t so thin-skinned as to be all that bothered by the personal criticism, although of course it wasn’t pleasant, but it seemed to me to offer some leverage because it was blatantly defamatory in its nature; I was quite unfairly being accused of lying.

Oh bother!

I then made what turned out to be the big mistake of hinting, as a way of forcing the reluctant moderator to do the job on the Forum which she was clearly ducking for her own reasons, at using legal action to force removal of the offending Thread.  This was subsequently taken to mean (which it certainly didn’t) that I was “threatening to sue the Club”, i.e. to get financial compensation.

In retrospect I can see from the emails which were exchanged at the time that I was being set up for this accusation and I’ve since kicked myself for being so naive as to fall into the trap.  Anyway, a gross exaggeration (indeed I believe a deliberate misrepresentation) of what I was doing and why I was doing it was then broadcast with extremely damaging effect, including to the Light Parade’s prospects.

It had the effect of completely ruining the launch of the 2008 Light Parade and rousing a mob-like adverse reaction to it and against me personally.  It couldn’t possibly have been accidental on the National Committee’s part.  It was dirty dealings of a sort I’d never encountered before anywhere and it was surreal that it could possibly happen at all in what was supposed to be a friendly bike club.

We had been struggling in our dealings with the National Committee prior to this episode and they had seemed to me to be making very heavy weather of everything, for example the formal instruction to, among other things, restrict the Event to GoldWings, cited specific Club Rules in what was nothing short of an officious way.

Surprising difficulties with public liability insurance cover had also arisen.  The Committee were insisting that our Event wouldn’t be covered by the Club’s public liability insurance, even though we had by that time secured, after some prevarication and delay by the national Committee, the necessary “Recognition” of the Event under the Club’s Rules.

Nowadays there are several organised GoldWing Light Parades each year in UK and there’s no issue about their inclusion in ordinary club PLI cover but for 2008 it was a big obstacle.  Bob had organised the Blackpool Light Parade several times before, including with “Recognition” and the question of insurance exclusion had never cropped up before but for some reason this year it became a puzzling source of great difficulty.

I had crossed and probably incurred the ire of two key members of the National Committee in the preceding few months but surely these people wouldn’t stoop to deliberately trashing a big and promising Club Event just because I was now running it and they had some sort of personal score to settle?  I can’t remember the words I spoke to myself about the Club’s National Committee as I lay in the bath that evening but it probably included “unhelpful” and I might even have called their personal legitimacy into question.

What is the point in having a Club Committee, I asked myself as a lay in the bath, if they don’t try to help when a promising new idea is being developed?  And what could possibly justify what was pretty blatant, active obstructiveness?  There’s no point, I thought to myself, in having a National Committee at all if all they do is boss you around and chuck spanners in the works.  I’d had much quicker and better cooperation from Blackpool Council than from my own Club’s Committee.

While the immediate problem facing me was to find a way of dealing with the Committee which we had, who were after all elected to run our Club and so had a mandate to do so, I also found myself pondering, because they were being so incredibly awkward, what alternative system of running our Club would work better.

A great place for thinking

And a federal structure, in which the Club’s central organisation would have less authority over the Regions, struck me as offering potential – a bit like the United States of America, whose Federal Government has to leave lots of things to the individual States, although if course for a UK GoldWing organisation the arrangements would be on a somewhat smaller scale.

It was nothing more than hypothetical musings on my part and I had no thoughts of actually trying to convert GWOCGB into such as structure at the time, let alone forming an external, alternative organisation.  I merely mentioned, as a conversational afterthought, at the next meeting of the Light Parade organising committee, that we’d be better off not having a so-and-so National Committee for all the help we were getting from them and that a federal structure would be potentially much better for the Club.  There was no discussion of it as I recall, it was just a comment in passing made because I, as probably all of us at that stage, were feeling surprised as well as let down by the way our own Club’s National Committee were treating us.

In the run up to our next organising committee gathering, about a month later, sometime in February 2008, I’d been shopping around for alternative insurance cover and was coming up against all sorts of obstacles including quotes for £500 or more, for which we had no resources.  It emerged that we would only be possible to get insurance at all if we declared ourselves to be a motorcycle club in our own right rather than a subordinate part of a bigger national club – because of course in theory our national club should have been sorting out the insurance problem, if indeed there really was one, for us.

We did eventually get our own separate insurance cover by affiliating (and by calling ourselves for the purpose “Lancs & Lakes GoldWing Club”) with the British Motorcyclists Federation (BMF).  I had been able to establish quickly and easily, with one phone call, that there was no doubt at all that the BMF Club Insurance Scheme covered all types of club activity including both static light displays and moving light parades – which according to the National Committee GWOCGB’s PLI cover didn’t.

Suddenly it became clear that a deliberate smoke screen had been laid

Sometime later I discovered that GWOCGB’s PLI cover was also with BMF and on exactly the same terms, so we had been adequately covered all along.  The National Committee were therefore either ignorant of the scope of the Club’s insurance or had been deliberately misrepresenting it; either way Lancs & Lakes Region were now paying twice for the same thing.

In this and other ways our Club’s National Committee were being unbelievably difficult, seemingly deliberately so.  It had become clear that we would have to organise the 2008 Light Parade in spite of our Club’s National Committee rather than with their help.  We decided to go ahead.

In order to legitimise the separate “club within a club” status which we had to adopt for insurance purposes, and also to get the National Committee off our backs, we decided to relinquish “Recognition” of the Event.  The 2008 Light Parade would be a Regional rather than a Recognised GWOCGB Event.

This move turned out to be a red rag to a bull to the National Committee and triggered a whole series of hostile actions, the first one of which was to refuse us access to advertising in Wingspan, the Club’s magazine.  We were told that because we had relinquished Recognition we couldn’t even advertise our event in Wingspan even if we paid for the advert.

This took being unhelpfully to new heights and for Bob Summers it was the last straw.  If our own Club Committee would go to the lengths of denying us, a Region of the Club, the right to publicise our Event in our own Club Magazine, he would leave the Club.

I remember at the time being quite shocked when Bob came out with this because none of us had voiced and I suspect none of us had even thought of quitting the Club at this stage.  We were all really ticked off with the National Committee by then of course, but this was the first mention of any idea that the remedy would be to leave the Club rather than to live with the problem or to try to reform the Club from inside.  We had all been Members of GWOCGB for many years and known no other GoldWing club.  GWOCGB was to all of us “the” GoldWing Club.

The prevailing mood was of disappointment and disillusionment at the way things were unfolding but there had also been one ray of considerable hope.  Because we were now running the Event as a Region rather than behalf of our national Club, I felt I’d had to own up to HondaUK about this and I was half expected them to pull out as a consequence.

"Certain personalities" had got in the way

To my surprise the reaction was quite the opposite;  HondaUK were more than pleased to continue supporting us and it emerged that they were by no means displeased that our Club’s National Committee were no longer involved.  I learned that HondaUK had tried many times over the years to develop a constructive relationship with GWOCGB but “certain personalities” had always seemed to get in the way of progress, to the extent that HondaUK had given up.  My approach had presented a fresh opportunity which they were happy to develop.

In addition to the help we’d already been offered I was asked by HondaUK if we would like some of their Star Racing Riders to attend.  It didn’t take me long to say yes.  The loan of four brand new GL1800s for use by the visiting American Drill Team we were hoping to bring over wouldn’t be a problem either.  HondaUK were being absolutely marvellous.

As we finished our Light Parade organising committee meeting on that February evening in 2008 there was therefore hope as well as frustration – and we’d learned that we weren’t the only ones to have found our National Committee hard to work with, which probably helped to come to terms with that as well.  Having sorted out the practical steps we would take to deal with the problems we faced that month, the ten of us, five couples, tucked into some comfort food which my wife had kindly laid on.

We were already a group of firm friends and had worked together before in various ways on Regional activities but coming together for this larger and more ambitious project, and then having to face escalating difficulties had brought us closer together.  There was never any argument about how to proceed that I can recall, we just tossed things around as friends and formed a consensus view, even when a difficult decision had to be faced.

I hadn’t handled the announcement of the Event on the Forum at all well (and certainly I’d handled it unsuccessfully) and I had a bit of a conscience about that.  But there was never any recrimination or criticism; we just worked out between us how we would proceed from where we now found ourselves.  Some of the difficulties which had been popping up were so unbelievable compared with our experience and expectations within our hitherto friendly Club that I suppose we bonded more tightly in facing them together.

Anyway with the practical planning issues dealt with for the time being, as we relaxed over our comfort food and a glass or two of lubricant, the bonhomie broke through and our problems were set aside in favour of enjoying each other’s company.  The reminiscences, the jokes and the leg-pulling were flowing freely.

Meanwhile, prior to this organising committee meeting, I’d been doing a bit more pondering on the idea of a federal structure for our Club, or if necessary for an alternative national GoldWing organisation – to the extent of dreaming up a name for it.  And in the post-meeting conversation, after the comfort food and the drink had done their work, I decided to share these musings with my friends.  In a natural break during the after dinner conversation I struck a more earnest tone as I confided that I had been giving the idea of a different sort of national GoldWing organisation further thought.  I had their attention.

I then expounded briefly the virtues of a federal structure over that of an elected ruling committee which could turn into a Stalinist Politburo, such as we had been suffering from, and then, pausing slightly for effect, postulated a name for this utopian creation.

We should call it, I suggested with suitable gravitas, the Federation of United Kingdom GoldWing Owners Clubs – and then paused to let it sink in.  As Members of GWOCGB we were of course used to referring to our Club by its initials, so I waited for the penny to drop.  And drop it quickly did and  they were all soon laughing their heads off.  Cries of “Long Live the Federation” broke out.  In the context of what we’d been experiencing at the hands of our National Committee, it was something of a cathartic as well as an entertaining moment.

We didn't know it at the time but the seeds had been sewn

But that’s all it was for some considerable time, a tongue-in-cheek, siege-mentality way of dealing with the pressures of our struggle.  Whenever we were on the receiving end of yet another dollop of obstructiveness or unhelpfulness or some dirty trick or other was being played to scupper our Event, and there were plenty of those during 2008, someone or other in our little group  would say “Long Live the Federation!”.  Maybe the seeds of an idea for the future had been sown in this way although we were far too preoccupied with organising the Light Parade and keeping our Regional Members informed about what was going on to take the idea any further.

The line which our two Joint Reps decided to take with the Region was to be open about the difficulties we were encountering with the Committee, e.g. about the Forum and insurance, but to avoid getting drawn into any discussion of what we might want to do about it.  Instead we encouraged everyone to concentrate on making a success of the Light Parade and consider any other issues at a later stage.  And indeed there was an attempt from the floor at the next Regional Meeting to challenge whether we needed a National Committee but this was nipped in the bud.

“Long Live the Federation” certainly wasn’t voiced outside the organising committee and the idea of actually forming a Federation wasn’t even being seriously considered, even in private among the organising committee members.  The federation concept wasn’t even the basis of an idea for the future, it was just something we referred to occasionally, when we were being messed about in some way, yet again.  Bob had of course already declared that he wasn’t going to renew his GWOCGB membership and during that Summer others in the organising team gradually made similar feelings and intentions known but the federation idea was very much on the back burner.

Come early September 2008 we had run what turned out to be a very successful 2008 Blackpool Light Parade with terrific support from Honda and the involvement of the Central Florida Motorcycle Drill Team who came over especially for the Event to give a display using GoldWings provided for their use by Honda.  I had hung back from actually saying that I would quit GWOCGB and in the end I didn’t have to, because the National Committee wrote to me, in a letter dated on the very day of the Blackpool Light Parade, which was therefore waiting on the mat when I got back home, to tell me that they had voted unanimously to expel me (and my wife) from the Club for “bringing the Club into disrepute”.

My friends on the Light Parade organising committee stayed in touch with me socially after my expulsion and we did start to look forward together to the independent GoldWing Club we would be forming for next year, 2009, but the Joint Reps, Frank Goodman and Pete Rodgers, both, together with their wives, part of the Light Parade committee, were keen to finish their term of office with dignity and diligence.  So having explained myself to the Region on one occasion, which might explain why I was subsequently voted to have been the Lancs & Lakes Winger of the Year for 2008 even though I’d been thrown out of the Club, I stopped going to the Regional Meetings to give them a clear run.

We had by then also had contact with our friends in GoldWings North Wales, which had by then formed as a breakaway club from North Wales Wings.  Outline plans were made during the tail end of 2008 that we would become sister clubs in some way or other and the concept of a Federation as a shared and potentially national umbrella organisation was discussed in outline too.

Our new independent GoldWing Club, to be called GoldWings North West, following the lead of our sister club, was not announced until after the AGM of the Lancs & Lakes Region in January 2009 had been completed and formally closed.   Then Bob stood up, announced that a new GoldWing Club would be forming and invited all present to attend the inaugural meeting if they were interested.   Bob became Chairman of GoldWings North West and the other male member of the 2008 Light Parade organising committee, Ian Duxbury, became Club Secretary and Pete became Club Treasurer.  Frank took a break from office-holding but nevertheless stayed actively involved.

In time things started to drop into place

As we inaugurated GoldWings North West in February 2009 the two independent Clubs simultaneously combined to form the Federation.   Nigel Mackintosh had already built a website for their new Club and he and I cooperated to develop a website for the Federation as well as one for GoldWings North West.  Not that I was up to any of the geeky stuff of course but I got stuck into writing some “copy” for the websites, which is how I started on the road which led to launching this Blog the following year.

I suppose we could have thought of a different and less potentially provocative name for the Federation but we were keen to distinguish ourselves from our former Club (because we were not seeking to compete with it in any direct way) so “UK” was better than variations on British and we dropped the “owners” bit of the original, joke name – partly to avoid being overtly provocative but also because we had by then decided that the Federation wouldn’t have any unnecessary restrictions, so involvement wouldn’t be restricted to owners of GoldWings.

But we weren’t going to bend over too far backwards to avoid causing offence to the paranoid or humourless among the GWOCGB hierarchy or membership, so while we always refer to the Federation as such rather than by its initials, we decided to stick with the rest of the original name simply because it described precisely and concisely what we were about.

The cornerstone features of the Federation: low cost, no rules, respecting freedom of choice and so on emerged from discussions involving the founding members of both new independent Clubs and we also worked out a way of sharing the roles in the Federation to exploit the available skill sets.

The Federation was of course pretty much an empty shell of an organisation during these very early days but we had everything we needed, especially with Nigel Mackintosh’s IT skills, to start building the internet presence upon which the Federation would gradually develop.  Bob Summers became the Chairman of the Federation, Dave Turvey, the Chairman of GoldWings North Wales, became Deputy Chairman, Nigel became Federation Webmaster  and I took on the role of Federation Secretary.  And that’s more or less the way the Federation team has stayed, except that Dave Turvey is now Treasurer.

The fundamental idea, that the Federation would be a radically different sort of organisation from the national, all-of-one-club GWOCGB which we had left behind us, had been established before it formed but a lot of the flesh went on to the bones as we went along.

Above all the Federation wasn’t going to be any sort of ruling national body; we’d learned the hard way how damaging to a friendly bike club a power-crazed ruling committee could be, so we certainly weren’t going to have any of that sort of thing creeping up on us.

Respecting freedom of choice was a key element of our thinking from the early days, which meant of course respecting the choice which Wingers might make to stick with GWOCGB, as well as or instead of joining us.  Dave Turvey came out with a phrase fairly early on which has since become one of the Federation’s strap lines: “It’s all about Freedom of Choice”.

Another important part of the Federation’s approach and its dealings with everyone in the GoldWing community, including and especially with GWOCGB and its more belligerent members, has been resisting any temptation to fight fire with fire.  This was very much down to Bob Summers’s thinking and leadership as Chairman.  We would not retaliate by being nasty or dishonest in any way, nor would we be indulging in any “negative selling”, i.e. belittling or denigrating the opposition to further our aims.  Bob’s insistence on what was almost a “turn the other cheek” approach took a bit of swallowing to start with, given what came our way, but it has served the Federation well.

I have exposed some of the nastiness and dishonesty of some of the people in GWOCGB in articles on this, my personal Blog, so that GWOCGB Members can find out what’s been done in their name – but the Federation has never done even that.

And so far, as evidenced by its steady progress and growth, the Federation is doing well.   The two founding Federation Clubs have been joined by others and more are expected.

The Federation is a Club of Clubs rather than an individual membership organisation and that’s fundamentally the way things are likely to stay.  There are ideas for providing for individual Wingers but this isn’t likely to take the form of personal subscription membership to a national club in the way that GWOCGB is structured.

The Federation is at least as much a non-subscription service organisation as it is an association of GoldWing clubs and individual Wingers, so it works for the benefit of the UK GoldWing Community as a whole.  That is part of its appeal to the motorcycle trade for sponsorship funding – the Federation isn’t an exclusive organisation.

So the Federation’s success and its potential for future development shouldn’t really be seen in terms of numbers of affiliated clubs or members or implied from the relative decline of GWOCGB membership while The Federation has been growing.  The Federation is much more about providing opportunity and choice, including of course continued involvement in camping rallies through membership of GWOCGB if that’s what Wingers choose to do, even if that’s all they choose to do with their GoldWing hobby.

An aid to creative reflection

In summary therefore, the Federation was born out of struggle with GWOCGB’s ruling National Committee which should never have been necessary in a genuinely friendly bike club and which holds valuable lessons for the whole UK GoldWing Community.   That struggle is however now history – the Federation has been moving on steadily and looks set to continue to thrive, based on respect for the freedom of choice of all Wingers and a determination to deliver low-cost, high value services for Wingers rather than to demand subscriptions and to command obedience from them.

The Federation will continue to do its own constructive and creative thing rather than concern itself with what GWOCGB is doing or failing to do.

The new thinking which the Federation has brought to the UK GoldWing scene presents opportunity and choice for Wingers without obligation – except perhaps an expectation that all who are involved will be genuinely friendly towards other Wingers, which all decent people would want to do anyway.

It might owe its origins to the thought-provoking effect of a sip or two of whiskey in January 2008, but three years on the Federation has become firmly established, it’s growing nicely and it’s all about friendliness and Freedom of Choice.  Long Live the Federation!

Click on the image for an enlargement

One of the benefits for an existing GoldWing Club or Region which affiliates with the Federation of UK GoldWing Clubs is a free, ready to go club website and Elite Wings have just taken advantage of this and taken control of their new one.  It’s on the same domain name they’ve had for years, www.elite-wings.co.uk, but they are now benefitting from a new, high performance webhosting service and new, specially adapted website software has been installed.  And it hasn’t and won’t cost them a penny.  Even the webhosting charges are covered by the Federation.

The reason why it was worth Elite Wings going to the trouble of switching to a new website is that as well as being free of charge, the Federation’s club websites are user-controlled and easy to operate, so that the Wingers who run Elite Wings can add and modify stuff themselves, including adding pictures to a sophisticated (i.e. easy to load) photo gallery.

They will now be able to enter their own information about forthcoming or past events, add images if they wish and update the information any time they wish.  All their Members can also comment on anything which appears, for example to say “count us in for that one” and suchlike, so it works as well as having a club forum for most purposes, without having any of the risks or responsibilities of having a club forum.  Elite Wings like many clubs these days, also has a Facebook Page on which real-time chat can take place so the combination of the two works well.

If you visit the recently launched GoldWings North Midlands website, which the Federation provided from scratch in less than three weeks, you will notice similarities but also differences.  If you know what to look for you could also recognise that the GoldWings North West website has similarities too – and since that one is more established and has a lot more stuff on it, you will also see how much scope Elite Wings will now have to develop the content of their new website.

All this comes with a friendly support package of training and troubleshooting as the operators of these websites learn the ropes.  “Driving” one of these websites is a lot less complicated than operating the switches on an average GoldWing and it is completely unnecessary to be a geek to be the Club’s website operator.  Or one of the operators because there is no reason why several Club Members can’t have access to put stuff on the website if that’s the way Elite Wings wants it.  Parts of the website can be (and in this case already are) restricted access, for Elite Wings Members only, protected by a password which the Club itself can update anytime it wishes.

The Federation can provide this service to GoldWing clubs, free of charge, because the underlying development work to construct the website system is shared across all of them, so that although they look different and will look more different as their varying content builds up, they use the same website “engine and chassis”.  So there is economy of scale and there are advantages of commonality for purposes of training, troubleshooting and so on.