Stuart’s GoldWing Blog

How will this new independent Club in North Wales fare, and what are the prospects for other independent GoldWing clubs that may be forming in UK this winter?There have been breakaway clubs in the past and while some of them have thrived, others have withered away in isolation from GWOCGB, which has so far been the only Club to establish itself on a national scale. There are other UK GoldWing clubs which have achieved a national spread of Members (for example Elite Wings) but this is a special interest Club (hotel-based UK and European GoldWing tours) and they therefore operate well with the 200 or so members they have accumulate.  Former GWOCGB Regions and other local GoldWing Clubs have also thrived in their local areas, for example Scotia Wings in Scotland, but they have not attempted to become large or natinal clubs so they have stayed relatively small and local. A substantial number of GoldWing owners belong to other motorcycling clubs too of course and , for example, the Honda Owners Club of Great Britain is understood to have around 300 Goldwing-owning Members.

But GWOCGB is so far the only UK purely GoldWing club to have achieved a national scale of membership.  Its numerical prominence and its established communications with Wingers have hitherto allowed it to remain unchallenged.  In combination with its exclusive policies, for example keeping the events calendar obscure to non-Members (so you had to join to find out what was available) GWOCGB has mantained predominance.

Breakaway clubs, with the exception of Elite Wings, which was an internet based Club from the outset, have therefore tended to remain local clubs or clubs of the same few breakaway friends. Some, having set out only to provide for their own fellowship and not sought to recruit new members, have stayed small or fizzled out altogether after only a few years. Because of GWOCGB’s exclusive policies there have been very limited opportunities for them to develop links with other GoldWing clubs -  and limited scope for them to promote themselves to prospective members too, even with the advent of the internet.

But things are changing. GWOCGB’s membership has been falling steadily for several years at the rate of 10 – 15% per year and it now has little more than 1,000 Memberships, i.e. counting bikes rather than their riders and pillions separately. There are about 7,000 GoldWings in UK, so GWOCGB’s predominance, and its capacity to exclude opposition, is weakening.

GWOCGB’s Membership now consists of only around 200-300 hard core loyalists, including the 100 or so activists who turn up for national meetings and from whom the National Committee is drawn. There are perhaps another 400-500 memberships which are renewed annually purely to have access to the calendar of events but don’t ordinarily go to meetings other than local ones and are less likely to help to run the Club or its Regions.  There are also 200-300 who join each when they buy their first GoldWing and then mostly don’t bother to renew when they find the Club is not for them.

At the current rate of decline GWOCGB will not be able to sustain its considerable overhead costs on subscriptions alone and its reserves will shrink rapidly unless its starts to cut the suit according to the cloth. The losses which GWOCGB has made on Treffens in most years doesn’t help the dwindling reserves either; the 2008 Treffen lost the equivalent of 10% of GWOCGB’s financial reserves. Turbulent events of 2008 within the Club are also likely to have had a bigger than usual adverse effect on GWOCGB Membership renewal.  There was an advert on EBay for a GL1500 recently which was being sold “because I am sick of what’s going on in the Club”.

Likewise the extent of the belligerence seen on GWOCGB’s Forum and at its national meetings during 2008 will hardly have been to everyone’s taste.  While the loyalists will see it all as a laudable rallying and reinforcing of core GWOCGB values and principles, to others it might seem more like an awful and profoundly discouraging display of bigoted selfishness and personalised belligerence and vilification, quite the opposite of what a genuinely friendly GoldWing club should project. The circumstances surrounding my own trumped up summary expulsion from GWOCGB by its National Committee are likely to have disturbed the confidence of some Members in the Club too. One way and another GWOCGB’s future as the predominant UK GoldWing Club is beginning to look far from rosy.

All this would seem likely to favour the formation and prospects of independent Goldwing clubs in UK during 2009.  Will an even more direct threat to GWOCGB, i.e. an alternative national strucure for the UK GoldWing Community emerge too?  There are certainly some encouraging signs.