Getting my bike nicked was like losing a pet. I didn’t want a new one; I wanted to go back in time and not lose my old one. But, in the end, an inanimate object is not infinitely grievable and I need wheels. This is how I fetched up with a Liv bike, my precious first born putting the seat up for me. I said how proud and heart-filled I was, watching him do a little job that I didn’t want to do myself for the first time, and he said: “I’ve been showing you how to use a remote control since I was six years old,” and I thought: OK, fair, but, more to the point, look at my lovely bike.
Freshly re-enamoured of the world of two wheels, I have plunged straight back into the cycling discourse, the perfect microcosm of the wokeness split in all its forms. Take the ex-footballer Joey Barton, who is being sued by Jeremy Vine for calling the broadcaster a “bike nonce”. Meanwhile, the socials are full of people furiously agreeing that aggressive cyclists pose more danger to them than articulated lorries. The fervent attacks on low-traffic neighbourhoods (LTNs) and low-emission zones such as Ulez in London are really just a full-throttle loathing of people on bikes, aggrandised by acronyms and libertarian bat signals.
Before our very eyes, Nigel Farage is channelling the world-changing rhetoricians of yore in an argument against “anti-car fanaticism”. Who would want more cars? Someone who finds cyclists really annoying, that’s who. On LTNs, meanwhile, the data is in: they bring down traffic and are broadly popular. But this has served only to intensify the rage, the source of which was never unhappiness about where cars were allowed to go, but rather a distillation of: “Who did those obnoxious cyclists think they are?”
Anti-cyclists are easy to categorise: they find the concept of the do-gooder infuriating and the idea of minding their own business untenable. Cyclists, on the other hand, are impossible to categorise; you might just as well try to build a theory of mind for pedestrians. Some of us are rude, some of us are not; some of us shoot red lights and won’t wear hi-vis; some of us obey the rules of the road and behave very responsibly. Some of us think we are looking after our health and fighting the good fight against climate catastrophe; some of us just like getting places faster. It’s not a political act; it’s fun. Especially when you have a new bike.
So, the polarisation is asymmetric. While one side is building an anti-green, anti-woke, anti-liberal architecture around transport initiatives, the other side doesn’t even cohere. I mean, sure, back against a wall, I am in favour of Ulez and I don’t think you should be able to say jaw-droppingly untrue things about Jeremy Vine, but I wouldn’t go on a protest about it, let alone commit any acts of political vandalism.
Yet, this picture is turned on its head for the purposes of the “debate”, wherever it takes place, so that cyclists are the warriors, the lunatic fringe, the people who are coming for your way of life. In truth, I am medium-sure that most of us are just ambling about, wondering whether or not to invest in waterproof shoe covers.
Wherever cyclists do cohere as a group, it’s for one of three purposes: to watch other, better cyclists; to go on a bike ride together; or to argue for infrastructure that makes it easier to stay alive. The cycling lobby, such as it exists, has almost no interest in the passions of its enemies, preferring to ignore that a schism even exists.
Should we be paying more attention? Is there a lesson here about the concept of the wokerati, illustrating that it doesn’t exist, except in the imagination of the right, and that maybe the self-styled centrists of our wider culture should push back a bit harder, rather than getting popcorn and enjoying the show? I think so, yes. But what do I know? I am a bloody cyclist.
• Zoe Williams is a Guardian columnist
