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MAG and the Cosmic Plot
In his analysis of pressure groups, Grant (1999) identifies the importance of organizations like MAG UK and argues that “insider groups are regarded as legitimate by government and are consulted on a regular basis. Outsider groups either do not wish to become enmeshed in a consultative relationship with officials, or are unable to gain recognition. Another way of looking at them is to see them as protest groups which have objectives that are outside the mainstream of political opinion. They then have to adopt campaigning methods designed to demonstrate that they have a solid basis of popular support” (ibid: 15).
His view is that MAG UK provides an example of a group which has moved from outsider by necessity to potential insider status. However, he points out that improving the political standing of an organization like MAG is not easy. (…) As the Parliamentary Under-Secretary for Transport, Robert Key, who had accepted MAG's offer of 'a serious cross country bike ride', commented: “they are great people . . . sometimes the image of motorcyclists is built up by the media, by films ... as very macho, very aggressive and one of the things I like about MAG is that they perform a very useful function in the community'. MAG has made a sustained effort in the 1990s to show 'that we are a serious pressure group that we really know what we're talking about” (Magnews, April/May 1994, p. 28; cit.op. Grant. 1999:15).
I interviewed a Director of MAG UK and we discussed the organization’s function as a Rider’s Rights organisation and its image. He explained that
“We were always perceived in a certain image, the radical group knocking on the doors of parliament, wanting to get in and that didn’t work, so a decision was made that if we wanted to talk to MPs and MEPs, civil servants, then we had to play the part. I think that now it’s a done thing, we go to meetings in suits or tidy trousers and a shirt and tie. However, if we were to turn up now in leathers and biking gear, I don’t think that they would really care. (...).
If we want to abide by the law, there needs to be a reason behind it and we’ve found that in most cases there usually isn’t a good reason, which is why we stand up and say that we won’t do that. This is typical of lobbying groups in Parliament, but really, they say the same things and then negotiate usually by compromising, but MAG and FEMA won’t do this. We start from a position and then fight, so we say the same things and explain the reason and why we want government to do whatever we think is right”.
Grant explains that “this has been done in a way that has made effective use of limited financial resources. MAG (…) has placed an increasing emphasis on discussions with local MPs and the establishment of contacts with civil servants. Recognizing the importance of the European dimension, it was involved in the establishment of a Federation of European Motorcyclists Association, with an office near Brussels staffed by a MAG UK member. In order to understand the operation of the EU, it sought free advice from political scientists, recommending a list of standard texts to its members. (…) When it has held discussions with ministers, it has raised not only substantive issues, but also questions about how the consultation process is undertaken and who is included. (…) it has shown considerable political sophistication in the way in which it has improved its bargaining position” (1999: 16).
Grant believes that “the value of the insider/outsider distinction is that it focuses attention on the choices that have to be made by groups and government and on the exchange relationship that develops between them” (ibid: 16).
MacDonald Walker’s research on Bikers, Culture, Politics and Power (2000), concludes that riders’ rights movements differ from traditional politics because they do not have a coherent belief system to offer explanations to different aspects of life. However, this point of view fails to recognize that the very existence of these movements is to protect and promote motorcyclists and their way of life which is the raison d’être of MAG. By not participating in political debates on issues of life such as terrorism and by focusing on threats to motorcycling, organizations such as MAG have endured for over 30 years.
However, as MacDonald Walker points out, there are strong cultural foundations underlying riders’ rights movements such as MAG. She argues that these philosophical concerns stem from the social networks and lived experience of the motorcycling community (…). In relation to current theorizations of the politics of choice (…) MacDonald Walker concludes that the political fight for the right to ride is cultural and that the two (culture and politics) are intertwined. She believes that “they are bikers first and came to political involvement in order to defend a culture perceived to be under attack” (2000:198).
In her book entitled ‘Risk and Blame’, Mary Douglas summarises trust within voluntary organisations and pressure groups and how threats are dealt from within. She argues that “the cosmic plot provides an idiom for bringing hidden hostilities into the open. At one point the threat of being accused controls and at another point it fuels factional discord, allowing the social unit to get rid of elements it cannot contain peacefully. In all these cases, disasters, natural and man made, trigger the enquiries which trace the real distribution of power and its challengers” (1994:77)
Douglas suggest that perhaps this language is too dramatic to bridge the gap between anthropological work and the current bemusement about perceptions of risk. “But fetish power, ancestors and cosmic plots are not more dramatic than what we commonly read about impending catastrophe or the vituperations against the deceits of the tobacco industry, advertising interests, the industrial-military complex, and the aggressive ploys of the nuclear industries” (ibid). In Douglas’ view the language of civic criticism should be dramatic.
According to Douglas, another reason why the bridge is difficult is that this sort of analysis takes the focus off physical dangers and turns it inward to the state of trust in political life. She points out that as people are being asked to attend to the physical dangers on the horizon, this argument turns to the kinds of political contests in which they are made to figure. “The key point is the way that nature is politicised and engages in the legitimation and de-legitimation of power” (ibid).
Douglas argues that organisations which are most keenly alert to low probability, high consequence danger are religious sects, political lobbies, new political movements, public interest groups, i.e. voluntary organisations. The difficulty they have in holding their membership together and getting common dues paid, the more they are tempted to call in the cosmic plot as a low-cost solution to their organisational problems.
Mancur Olsen (cited in Douglas 1994:74) contends that when there is no coercion and no selective individual benefits – such as in a voluntary organisation, this group is going to be bothered by free-rider problems. Each member will expect to be able to enjoy the public benefits created by the others without anyone noticing whether or not he puts in his bit.
Olsen argues that such a group has a problem even in raising funds for its minimum organisation costs and must be judged to be especially fragile and especially vulnerable to internal dissension.
Douglas believes that the voluntary organisations need the existence of ‘the dangerous Other’ to keep membership and she argues that “the first step towards a solution for this kind of organisation when trying to collect contributions and prevent secession, is to draw a clear boundary around members against the outside world, painting the latter as a corrupt and nasty place.
Second, it will need to keep the hundred per cent participation rule so as to prevent any one member from seeming to reap more benefits than the others and so creating discord. Further, the organisation works much better if an ambitious power-hungry member is said to reveal those very corrupt tendencies which make the outside world so threatening” (ibid:74).
Douglas maintains that “being committed by internal political needs to make a virtue of equality, this organisation will be led to associate ambition with inequality, corrupt stratification, and the inhumane machinations of the outside world. So long as there are no internal crises, this is enough of a shared metaphysic to promote latent intentions that the organisation should survive” (ibid:74).
Finally, Douglas comments that voluntary organisations are prone to factionalism. She identifies faction leaders as a threat and accordingly “one way to control them is to accuse them of treacherous alliance with the bad outside world. The more the internal crises heat up, the more it suits the latent goals of the organisation for everyone committed to it to shade their eyes, staring at the horizon, spotting there, the signs of conspiracy and cosmic disaster which can only be staved off for the world if everyone converts into the egalitarian doctrines of the group. In a more extreme case, the disasters on the horizon justify expelling the unpopular faction leader” (ibid:75).
Reading the archives of MAG from the minutes of the first meetings in 1973 and publications over a twenty year period, I found that over the years there have been personalities in MAG who have suffered the fate of the ‘cosmic plot’ as described by Douglas. Though, in spite of (or because of) the identification of potential ‘conspirators’, the organisation has survived and continues to thrive.
©. Elaine Hardy (This article is from Elaine’s PhD thesis)
Douglas M. (1994): Risk and Blame. Routledge: London and New York.
Grant W. (1999): Pressure Groups and British Politics. Macmillan: Basingstoke.
MacDonald Walker S. (2000): Bikers, Culture, Politics and Power. Berg: Oxford.
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