Национальный союз велосипедистов Великобритании: история и развитие

The National Cyclists' Union (NCU) was an association established in the Guildhall Tavern, London, on 16 February 1878 as the Bicycle Union. Its purpose was to defend cyclists and to organise and regulate bicycle racing in Great Britain. It merged with the Tricycle Association in 1882 and was renamed the National Cyclists' Union in 1883. The National Cyclists' Union selected teams for world championships and regulated circuit and track racing in England and Wales. It was a founder member of the International Cycling Association, forerunner of the Union Cycliste Internationale, the world governing body. During and after the Second World War, the NCU became involved in a dispute with a rival body, the British League of Racing Cyclists, which defied the NCU's rules that massed start races should be held on public roads only when they were closed to other traffic. The struggle between the two lasted for a decade, after which they merged to become the British Cycling Federation.

The Bicycle Union was formally established at a meeting in the Guildhall Tavern, London, on 16 February 1878, instigated by Gerard Francis Cobb (a Cambridge University music tutor, president of the Cambridge University Cycling Club, and also a member of the Cyclists' Touring Club's national council). Its purpose was to defend cyclists and to organise and regulate bicycle racing in Great Britain. In July 1878, Cobb, as its first president, led the Bicycle Union's lobbying of the Local Government Board, one of the official bodies managing British highways, and also actively campaigned for highway improvements in Cambridge. In October 1886, the CTC and NCU pooled resources and formed the Roads Improvement Association. This did not present itself as a cycling organisation, instead initially focusing on production of technical literature distributed to highways boards and surveyors to promote improved construction and maintenance methods.

The NCU was a founder member of the world's first cycling authority, the International Cyclists Association. NCU championships, until 1937 open to riders from any country, had been considered the unofficial championships of the world. France was due to promote the world championships in Paris in 1900. It refused to accept the NCU's position and, after failing to have the issue discussed at an ICA meeting, convened a meeting in Paris to form the Union Cycliste Internationale. Not only would it permit just one team from the United Kingdom but the NCU and Britain's other governing bodies were excluded because they had not been at the founding meeting. It took until 1903 for Britain to be admitted.

The NCU banned all cycle racing on public roads in 1890, fearing it would again jeopardise the position of other cyclists. It compelled members to hold their races on velodromes, although the word was not known then, or on closed roads such as in parks and airfields. The only races allowed on public roads were time trials, in which riders competed against the clock at intervals, and distance and place to place record attempts. Such a ban did not operate in other countries and massed road racing continued as before. That made little difference to the British because the few international events to which they sent riders, notably the Olympic and world championship road races, had been run as individual time trials. It was as a 100 mile [162 km] time trial, in Shropshire, that Britain organised the world championship road race in 1922. Then in 1933 the UCI decided that championships would be massed start events. The NCU organised its 1933 world championship trial as a circuit race at Brooklands near Weybridge in Surrey. This and Donington Park in the north Midlands remained the sole venues for massed start racing on mainland Britain until 1942, along with the Snaefell Mountain Course on the neighbouring Isle of Man. The trial led to a series of races at Brooklands, organised by the Charlotteville cycling club under Bill Mills, a professional rider who founded the weekly magazine, The Bicycle. Mills was one of few authorities to whom the NCU could turn for advice on road racing and it was he who wrote the NCU's rules, at the request of the secretary, H. N. Crowe. The wording that Mills chose in 1933 led to the NCU's long civil war with a later rival body, the British League of Racing Cyclists. Mills wrote: "No massed start race shall be permitted, other than on an enclosed circuit, unless the course is closed under statute by the competent authority, to other vehicular traffic." Nine years later, in October 1942 and after the BLRC had broken away from the NCU because of that insistence on closed roads, Mills regretted what he had done: "In 1933 it was impossible to foresee the future the war, the changing conditions on the road, the decline of track sport, the growing demand for massed start under real road conditions. My notes covered conditions as they existed in 1933." At the time, said the writer and team manager Chas Messenger, "there were thousands riding in time trials and, apart from a once in a while article in the cycling press, they knew little or nothing about road racing." The Brooklands races inspired some riders and one, Percy Stallard, took advantage of low wartime traffic in 1942 to organise a race on the open road from Llangollen to Wolverhampton. The NCU banned him sine die until further notice and he and others formed the British League of Racing Cyclists as a rival.

The NCU and the BLRC (British League of Racing Cyclists) remained rivals for 17 years, a position which split British cycling. The BLRC's position was that racing on the road was not illegal, that it did not obstruct other travellers, and that it gave riders from England and Wales the experience to compete internationally. The NCU had entrusted its wartime administration to an emergency committee which did not have power to change major rules. The journalist John Dennis said the NCU still believed that racing on the road threatened all cycling and did not want to make any change while so many members were out of the country, fighting in the war. The two sides maintained their positions when peace came in 1945 and for many years each banned the members of the other. The rivalry ended in 1959 when the two merged to form the British Cycling Federation.

The National Cyclists' Union leased the velodrome at Herne Hill for 21 years from 25 March 1942.

The papers of the Bicycle Union and the NCU, mainly committee minutes, are held by the Modern Records Centre at the University of Warwick Library, England.