Lancaster
Critical Mass: Does It Still Exist?
Published in Carlsson, Chris (ed.) (2002): Critical Mass: Bicycling's Defiant Celebration, Oakland, California: AK Press.
Lancaster
Critical Mass is dead, long live Lancaster Critical Mass! Critical
Mass hit the streets of rush-hour Lancaster on the last Friday of
January 1995. Over the next couple of years it became a
regular fixture of the local activist scene; we grew to know and
love the Mass as a familiar monthly event. But as the last
one took place over two years ago, surely Lancaster Critical Mass
is now dead, surely it no longer exists?
The history of
Critical Mass in this relatively remote corner of north west
England is an intriguing one. There had been bike protest
here before Critical Mass's 'official' arrival - during Green
Transport Week, in May 1994 for example, around eighty people
took part in a city centre bike ride which could've been called
'Critical Mass', but wasn't. Although Masses were by that
time already regular monthly occurrences in other parts of
Britain, it wasn't until the start of the following year that
activists here - having heard and learnt about the rides in
Birmingham and London - decided to bring the phenomenon to the
streets of Lancaster. That first ride, in January 1995, saw
four brave souls pedal around the city in blizzard conditions.
Things could only look up; and they did.
Every month
through 1995 and 1996, Lancaster Critical Mass hit the rush hour
traffic of the last Friday afternoon of the month. Cyclists
would meet in Dalton Square, with the statue of Queen Victoria at
its centre and the victorian Town Hall rising above, and ride out
onto the city's ordinarily congested one-way system. Some
months we had a police motorcycle escort, some months a
surveillance helicopter flew overhead, and some months we were
left almost completely alone. Lancaster is a small city,
and Critical Mass here never became the kind of large scale
protest event it did elsewhere. But a regular contingent -
mostly drawn from the city's alternative networks - always put in
an appearance, and good months would see sixty or seventy people
turn out.
So what's
happening now? Why, if it was an important and valued part
of local activism, did Lancaster Critical Mass stop occurring on
a monthly basis? Because Critical Mass came, during the
middle of the 1990s, to be a regular fixture on Lancaster's
activist calendar, its disappearance as a monthly event later in
the decade is easily regarded as somehow a failure, a visible
symptom of an erosion in activist energies and visions. Yet
Critical Mass here has not in fact disappeared; rather, it has
metamorphosed into an irregular but very effective tactic
which now forms one part of the local alternative movement's
mobilisation repertoire.
There's a whole
bundle of reasons contributing to this shift in form of our local
Critical Mass. During the mid-1990s, the regular monthly
mass was riding on both the wave of activist indignation over the
British Government's road-building frenzy, and high excitement
over the widespread and well publicised opposition to it. The
mainstream media fell in love with images of treehouse-dwelling
and tunnel-digging roads protestors, and quite suddenly it was
even a little bit sexy to be an environmental activist! Every
road building project was being met with fierce and sustained
resistance, and Reclaim the Streets events were breaking out up
and down the length of the country. Many Lancaster-based
activists had engaged in roads protests elsewhere, and now wanted
to express their opposition to car culture more locally. And
we had, actually still have, our own local road scheme to get
stuck in to. The City and County Councils, together with
our local Members of Parliament and the Chamber of Commerce,
spent most of the 1990s throwing vast amounts of time and money
at outlandish proposals for a Lancaster Bypass; the insane social
and environmental consequences of this scheme have done more than
anything else to animate a whole range of local groups and
campaigns, and to turn the car - here as elsewhere - into an
intensely politicised object. For many of us, it is
regarded as the principle saboteur of and obstacle to convivial
day-to-day life; a powerful symbol of the desecration and
desolation of our communities.
That was the
mid-1990s, and it felt like it would last forever, that monthly
dose of communal warmth, the adrenalin rush of taking our
rightful space and slowing down the pace of the city. But
times have changed and key activists have moved on since then.
These days, Lancaster - with a bunch of dynamic, young and eager
Green Party City Councillors, and a Green County Councillor - is
earning a reputation as a 'green city'. And just possibly,
the institutionalisation of this highly energised group of green
activists has increased the cultural gap and reduced the amount
of communication between the more 'radical' and more 'reformist'
activists within the local area. We've also just got a
Millennium present, a little late but better than never; there's
a brand spanking and actually quite brilliant new crossing of the
River Lune, the Millennium Bridge, devoted to cyclists and
pedestrians. More widely, the local network of cycle paths
is - albeit very gradually - improving and expanding. There's
some sense, then, that - at least in our roles as cyclists -
we've won some important gains. Although plans for a
Lancaster Bypass remain an important focus of activist
opposition, and will continue to be met with the contempt they
deserve, in general roads and cars can feel a bit like
'yesterday's issue'; other concerns - such as oppositon to
genetic contamination of our food - have come along, and many
activists are increasingly turning their attentions to globalised
protest as part of the 'anti-globalisation' movement.
But, in spite of
everything, Lancaster Critical Mass is not yet dead. Instead,
it has shifted in form and so retains its relevance to a changing
wider context. As part of the global day of action against
corporate capital of June 18th 1999, for example, a
Critical Mass formed an integral part of Lancaster activists
mischievous festivities. Amidst a range of other local
actions, and while another contingent of Lancastrians took to
creating some timely mayhem in the financial district of London,
seventy of us took to our bikes and reminded the people of
Lancaster, one more time, that the future really can look
different.
In this new guise
as an occasional action, Critical Mass is highly effective partly
because it has already - in its previous incarnation - entered
local folklore. We are that anarchic bunch of militant
cyclists who disrupt the totally legitimate journeys of decent,
law-abiding citizens and bring complete chaos to the city centre.
All by ourselves, clever things, we created what has become known
locally as 'Black Friday', one beautiful afternoon in 1996 when
motorised traffic within the city ground to a complete and utter
halt, finally - though not, unfortunately, permanently -
paralysed by the sheer weight of its own collective stupidity.
So today, merely the mention of those two fine words - Critical
Mass - is enough to generate hysteria among certain sections of
the local press, always on the lookout for the most unlikely and
overblown reasons to explain Lancaster's traffic problems.
But Lancaster
Critical Mass is not, and never has been, solely an attempt to
influence transport policy. On the surface, rides are
comprised of cyclists, concerned with and publicising the
ascendancy and domination of car culture, and the consequent
marginalisation - almost to the point of extermination - of the
bicycle on city centre streets. But in Lancaster it is, in
general, a ragtag assortment of social and environmental
activists - some of whom have to borrow bicycles - who take part,
and the rides have never attracted more than one or two club
racing or touring cyclists. And the local cycle campaign
group, Dynamo, have always had an ambivalent and uncomfortable
relationship to the Mass. Some Dynamo activists have been
keen and central participants, but others express outright
hostility to the 'unreasonable' and confrontational approach
implicit within the claiming and taking of space without a formal
invitation from the authorities. From their perspectives,
Critical Mass risks alienating those local decision-makers with
whom we should be building good, productive working
relationships; the Mass is an incomprehensible and confusing
collection of strange and unspecifiable 'anarchist types', whose
understanding of and sensitivity towards local bicycle politics
is naïve or non-existent.
So whilst
Critical Mass certainly represents an important intervention into
debates surrounding urban transport and the future of our cities,
I think its primary importance, at least in Lancaster, lies
elsewhere. Here as everywhere live and work people with
roughly compatible but distinctly oppositional political and
value positions. Most of the time, they exist independently
of one another, perhaps getting angry at the same news stories,
showing support for the same issues and campaigns, whilst
unknowingly crossing paths in the local wholefood co-op or
sitting at adjoining tables in our green-friendly vegetarian
café. Such individuals share an alternative culture, but -
for as long as they remain anonymous to each other - are unable
to develop joint projects from their shared ways of life, values
and goals. Critical Mass made - and continues from time to
time to make - visible and tangible the connections between them,
transforming anonymous inhabitation of an imagined community into
meaningful and possibility-laden participation in a realtime
face-to-face community.
Critical Mass
here has always been an occasion for the coming-together of the
city's ordinarily dispersed constituency for social change, a
coming-together which creates a highly visible demonstration of
an alternative culture and produces those pleasures associated
with immersion in good company. This alternative culture is
of course always there, but it ordinarily remains out-of-sight,
hidden from public view. The vast majority of the time, we
go from day to day doing what we can to make the world a more
socially just, greener place and experimenting with, and trying
to forge, new and more appropriate ways of living. And
then, just occasionally, we throw a party, come together and
cause a scene.
During the
mid-1990s the ordinarily invisible networks of Lancaster's
alternative culture mobilised in a demonstration of unity once a
month. These monthly gatherings publicly announced a
locally-existing alternative; we demonstrated to our own selves,
to each other and to the district more widely that we were a
community carrying a different agenda. Critical Mass gave
us the opportunity to parade, indeed flaunt, our (internally
actually quite diverse) politics. It provided an
affirmation of ourselves as a political community with
demonstrable values and tangible goals. And today, ten
years on from Critical Mass's inception in San Francisco and due
to the occasional instigation of a handful of enthusiastic
individuals utilising the Internet and activist word-of-mouth and
attaching flyers to bikes parked around the city, Critical Mass
rides still put in irregular appearances and demonstrate to all
the continued existence of a local culture of resistance.
As a regular
event, Critical Mass was very powerful in helping to sustain, as
well as to extend, a local subterranean movement network
reflecting a distinctive if diverse kind of cultural politics.
Critical Mass pulled in lots of different individuals, with quite
a range of orientations to the world, and allowed them to
participate in a joint project. Critical Mass provided us
with an opportunity to set aside those minor differences which
often keep us separate, and to unite instead along our
similarities. And acting together, protesting and having
fun, brought us closer together - making us more likely to stop
to say 'hello' in the street, go over for a chat when we spotted
a now familiar face in the green café. And, ironically,
being lumped together as Critical Mass - one homogeneous crowd of
people - by the local press helped to cement this sense of
ourselves as a 'we' which outlasted the duration of the Mass.
This still
remains the case, albeit in slightly diluted form, today. The
real beauty of Critical Mass, at least as it ordinarily tends to
play itself out here in Lancaster, is its continuing ability to
bring together a broad bunch of people. It acts as a real
umbrella event, with progressive social and environmental
activists of many persuasions joining together for a gentle
pedal. Partly, of course, this is because Critical Mass is
a relatively 'low-cost' action - it demands no discernible
commitment beyond turning up with your bike intent on having a
good time. And herein lies the undoubted importance of
Critical Mass; it is a tool not only for enhancing the activist
identities of individuals, but also for building a wider sense of
political community. By bringing together people who might
not otherwise and ordinarily meet, it helps to generate a
stronger sense of solidarity within local social movement
networks. Of course it's easy to romanticise the past, but
back in the days when the Mass was always either just about to
happen or had just happened, it felt like I knew more people, I
could tell you which people were involved in what kinds of
visionary action, and it seemed as though activists in general
knew one another better. It was, put simply, a fantastic
community-building mechanism.
Once the boldest
move - the greater act of deviancy - of taking back space from
cars is accomplished, all manner of smaller acts become
thinkable. Reclaimed space becomes the setting for a
festival in which the ordinary rules of interaction are subverted
- the blowing of whistles at passers-by replaces the impatient
growl of engines; suddenly the separation and safety constructed
by the 'windscreen' is gone - face-to-face interaction becomes
not only possible, it's unavoidable. During Critical Mass
we pedal out the kinds of lifestyle and society we want, in the
present.
These days, now I
no longer automatically know what I'll be doing on the last
Friday afternoon of the month, Critical Mass feels a bit like a
barometer for the more general health and vitality of the local
protest scene. Those of us with the fondest memories of
Critical Mass during its regular phase are no doubt much more
prone to bouts of nostalgia, when we start ruminating on the need
for another Mass to perk things up a bit - get everyone's spirits
and energies up again, stimulate some contacts, maybe instigate
some fresh projects. Often, and of course this is also a
cop-out, we are also the ones now trying to turn our activist
experiences into a means of paying the bills, or struggling hard
to be good counter-cultural parents; and we are generally
beginning to lose touch with 'the spirit of the times'.
The more
inward-looking and subcultural orientation implicit in the
community-building function of the Mass is not to say, though,
that it doesn't also and always retain a strongly outward-looking
orientation. Rides never fail to engage with and creatively
prod the imaginations of appreciative onlookers. All kinds
of flyers have, over the years, been produced and handed out to
waiting (most often very patiently - motorists in Lancaster are
habituated to, and so remain largely passive in the face of,
hold-ups) motorists and passing pedestrians. And on the
whole I think we have always been greeted with an appreciation
borne of the recognition that something needs to be done about
the congestion and pollution which daily strangles the life from
Lancaster city centre.
And the Mass
never fails to construct a space, carved out of the ordinarily
car-dominated city streets, which has a powerful impact upon all
those who experience it. Despite the whoopees and whistles
of the Mass, the street turns amazingly quiet; the sound of the
voice is slight compared to the incessant and oppressive grind of
motorised traffic. Quite suddenly, and in a way which has
never failed to surprise me, the street becomes a participatory
space. Time is slowed right down, almost like it's standing
still, and an alternative set of urban rhythms becomes
discernible. To hear in broad daylight on an ordinarily
traffic-choked street the sound of another person laughing,
without knowing why, is to experience the desirability of a
transformation in urban space. Critical Mass signals to the
rest of Lancaster the presence and possibility of an alternative.
The answer - both to city centre gridlock and to existing
unsatisfactory forms of community interaction - can be put into
practice, here and now.
Undoubtedly,
Critical Mass within Britain forms an important part of a much
broader anti-roads movement, which - whilst it continues today -
was at its most intensely vibrant during the mid-1990s. As
such, it has contributed to shifting understandings of the place
of the car in our cities. Today, for example, almost noone
in Britain would dispute both that the car is a problem, and that
the personal freedom to drive where you want, when you want must
inevitably come to an end. But Critical Mass, or something
very much like it, still clearly has an important place within
the protest cultures of Britain's cities. In Lancaster, as
an occasional rather than regular action, Critical Mass is no
longer these days always referred to as Critical Mass. The
various flyers circulating in advance of the ride of June 18th
1999, for example, mentioned an 'Urban Promenade' and 'The
Call-it-what-you-want' ride. Importantly, though, the idea
that lots of people riding around our city centre is an
incredibly effective way of taking action is now firmly embedded
within the repertoires of a generation of activists.
Wherever it takes
place, the Mass announces actually-existing alternatives to
'business-as-usual'. The priorities and values of
subterranean networks, committed to the cultivation of liberatory
struggles for social and ecological justice, are paraded and - as
in all good parades - succeed in stopping the traffic. And
most importantly, Critical Mass helps to build and nourish those
moral and political communities which engage in very many
different protests, plans and projects for grassroots social
change.
So what are the
possible future paths for Lancaster Critical Mass? I think
its capacity to make protest participatory will almost certainly
see its continuation as an important strategy in future days of
action. But there are also clear ways in which it could be
made, should there be a bicycle entrepreneur so inclined, more
populist and large scale. It's always felt ironic to me
that, given Critical Mass is consistent with all kinds of
government policy - to do with Local Agenda 21, reducing car
dependency, building participation in sustainability and
reinvigorating city centres - it has sometimes met with such
hostility from the authorities (actually, in Lancaster it feels
like we provide the local constabulary with a rare opportunity to
test their procedures for dealing with civil disturbances).
With its
developing car-free transport infrastructure, the local district
is becoming more popular with leisure cyclists. Such people
form a potentially mobilisable base for mass participation bike
rides which might inculcate the idea that cycling is a viable
means of transport in the next generation, who are currently
growing up with the idea that cyclists are an extinct or at least
endangered species of road user. More intense local
promotion of 'Car Free Day' and similar events might also see
something not unlike an officially sanctioned Critical Mass
bringing more people by bike into and around the city centre.
But, in the more immediate future, I have a feeling that Critical
Mass will dust itself down and wheel itself out for another dose
of bicycle carnival sometime fairly soon.