|
The Trojan Scooter Club is one of the world's oldest scooter clubs. Founded in 1968 in Morecambe, Lancashire, it has run continuously since. The founding members of the club all attended the same youth club, and the name, surprisingly, does not come from the Trojan record label that founded in the same year, but from the Trojan House where the old Lambretta boys used to meet. Not only is the club one of the oldest in the world, it is one of the few to have a Latin motto, nulli secundum, "second to none". In the 1970s, the club expanded to cover most of the Lune Valley area, with members joining from as far away as Kendal in Cumbria, and the surrounding locations. In those days, the club attended all the major Northern Scooter Rallies, venturing to Scarborough and the like, as well as organising local rides out with some of the other clubs that were around at the time such as the Preston Wild Cats, which occasionally led to minor clashes with some of the local bikers, a common enough feature of those early days. Towards the end of the seventies, as the scooter scene that had mainly developed in the North of the country started to grow into a more organised national scene, the club began attending the newly organised National Scooter Rallies. Still with a large membership from the earlier days, a new generation came through the ranks to supplement and eventually replace many of the older members as family and work commitments took over. This new generation, bred on a diet of early punk rather than the more traditional mod scene, gathered a fierce reputation throughout the scootering world, often having run ins with the law as well as other scooter clubs. Whilst the new generation prospered, an even newer generation watched from the sidelines in awe, awaiting the day they would get scooters of their own. In the late seventies and very early eighties, the tradition of punk was still running strong and the members of the club were as much into football, music and generally having a wild time, as well as tuning there scooters and attending rallies. By 1984 / 85, only 1 or 2 die hard members remained in the scooter club, family commitments and work accounting for the rest. It was at this time that 2 chaps who had previously and only fleetingly been in another club from Morecambe, the North West Invaders, met one of the last remaining Trojans whilst attending their driving lesson / tests, and were invited to join and bring in new blood. From here, the club rapidly began to grow again, and in a short time had over 30 members from all over the Morecambe, Lancaster and Cumbria area. At the time, there were several minor clubs going in the Morecambe area. The core element of the club was enhanced with a new wave of members from the Milnthorpe, Kendal and Settle areas, with members also joining from as far north as Whitehaven and South to Chorley. By the late '80s / early '90s, membership was standing at around the 50 mark, most attending all of the National rallies and playing a major part in organising events and the running of the scooter scene generally.
|
|
|