RESOURCES: Review - How motorcycle activism is reclaiming the road

It starts with a brief but fascinating history of the motorcycle, at first almost an upper-class toy, then a cheap, practical means of transport for the working class and only later associated with the ton-up boys - though they were usually mid-twenties - and Brando and Dean. Recollections of the "fighting on the beaches" in the early 1960s by those who were there suggest it was embellished, even concocted by the press, throwing into question the academic and populist analysis that emerged from that time. But from then on bikers had a bad name.

They have attempted to rehabilitate themselves in a number of ways, not least to claim their rights on the road, and elsewhere where their presence, simply because they are bikers, is unwanted. The core of the book is concerned with the riders' rights organisations (the British Motorcycle Federation, MAG and, in the face of EU regulation, the Federation of European Motorcyclists Association) that have sought to promote motorcycling and protect the rights of motorcyclists from the 1960s on.