The festival of fiftieth anniversaries for cycle campaigning in London has pedalled off in style with a ten minute video from ICAG – Islington Cycle Action Group (now Cycle Islington). This has plenty of footage from the time of cycling in the metropolis, plus progress in the borough to the present day. If you want more, check out their 50th anniversary web page, although the first sentence gave me pause. It states that ICAG was set up “a good two years before our mothership the London Cycling Campaign”, overlooking the fact that LCC was effectively established from autumn 1977 by a raft of local/borough groups including ICAG, with the seeding body starting in autumn 1976! See my blog 45 Years of Cycle Campaigning for the details, and a further comment below.
Fifty plus
If you scroll down far enough on that article from December 2021 you’ll see an update revising my 50th cycle campaign anniversary to 2025, celebrating when I produced a couple of reports for Greenwich Friends of the Earth, published on June 15th 1975. So I’m only a year out to add some further evidence (writing this on 14th June 2026). Firstly ‘Spaceship Earth’ (the brand for local Friends of the Earth newsletters) for June 1975:
And repeating below an undated press release (but must be May or June 1975) featured on the Early London Cycle Campaign page:
The cover of ‘Cycling Meantime’ is also reproduced on the Early London Cycle Campaign page.
What’s in a date? Greenwich Cyclists
Greenwich Cycle Action Group, as it was sometimes called, had an initial meeting on 15th November 1976, at Charlton House, SE7. Sadly it didn’t really get established as a group separate from the local Friends of the Earth, so doesn’t exactly count as the founding date of current LCC member group Greenwich Cyclists. But I won’t object if they want to take it on board!
What’s in a date?LCC 50th
When is London Cycling Campaign’s ‘real’ 50th anniversary? For me, the organisation’s starting point is when the name was agreed – which was at a Liaison Committee of London Cycling Group’s meeting in August or September of 1977. Or should it be the initial meeting of LCLCG itself, a year earlier i.e. 1976? And does anyone have the actual dates of those recorded?!
Whatever the case, the official press launch for London Cycling Campaign was at the Cheshire Cheese in Fleet Street in September 1978. Perhaps the establishment should be revisited for a 50th bash sometime in the next two years!
Downhill from Ditchling
Already whistling past in the wind is the fiftieth anniversary for what became a large annual cycling celebration, the London to Brighton Bike Ride, with its first run out on 1st May 1976. See some photo history here.
The event was quickly taken on by Friends of the Earth with assistance from LCC and Bricycles. Then after some years it moved over to Bike Events, with British Heart Foundation becoming its main fundraising beneficiary.