31st Anniversary ride!

A thousand or so riders assembled on the southbank and spontaneously rode out to North Greenwich, and went through the newly constrructed Silvertown Tunnel, which is prohibited to cycle through.

The ride then made its way back to Potters Fields, stopping briefly on Tower Bridge for a bit of a celebratory dance.

This report is short as there is extensive coverage elsewhere online of what happened.

If you have never been to CM before, come to the ride on Saturday 17th May before the Reclaim The Streets 30th anniversary reunion. Meet at midday at the Southbank.

Celebrating 30 years since Camden High Street

Ride meets at 12pm, leaves at 1pm

This evening’s ride commemorated the tenth anniversary of when CM London visited the Caledonian Road in 2015, where 15 year old Alan Cartwright was murdered in a knife attack by a bike thief. Two other cycling groups, The Fixed Pirates Crew, and Bikestormz, also joined in with the ride this evening, as a statement against knife crime.

About 600 riders set off and first visited the Caledonian Road, heading towards the City and then north from the Old Street roundabout. At the Cally pool where Alan Cartwright was killed, riders erected a banner and lit distress smoke flares. The banner said “Bikes Up, Knives Down / Bikestormz, Fixed Pirates, Critical Mass / United Against Knife Crime”. Alan’s family was not in attendance due to a quiet family gathering but sent their immense gratitude to riders coming back after to long to remember Alan’s awful death. The ride stopped for about twenty minutes and then moved on. Detectives from the Met Police were in attendance but kept their distance away from the banner and memorial.

The second stop for the ride was on Tufnell Park Road, outside the home of Mohamed Abdi Noor, aka Blanco, who had been murdered in a knife attack near the junction of Holloway Road. Blanco was an active member of the Pirates and had been on several CM rides before his murder. He was only 21. At this stop, friends of Blanco spoke on the microphone and talked about what a fantastic person he was. Three members of his family then spoke, talking about their anguish from what had happened, their voices breaking as they talked. They were overwhelmed with emotion, as the riders three-cheered for Blanco and then made as much noise as possible with their bells and horns and voices.

The third stop was at the south east corner of the outer circle of Regents Park, having ridden along the eastern side of the park. This was in response to recent morning incidents with cyclists in the park, where thieves on motorbikes had been using hammers and knives to threaten riders for their bikes. The ride stopped for about fifteen or twenty minutes here, and then moved on.

The ride headed back south, down towards Holborn, and then east via St Pauls, then London Bridge, and finished in the small park opposite Hop Kingdom, where the Fixed Pirates were having a raffle prize draw as a fundraiser for one of their riders Laura, who has been diagnosed with terminal cancer. The pirates there raised the banner above their heads to more cheers from the crowd as the tickets were drawn. The police came to ask for the noise to be dropped down, and then left shortly afterwards.

A larger than usual crowd for a January ride assembled on the Southbank, on a dry evening but with the ground underfoot still damp from rain earlier in the day. Many of the initial attendees were on Lime or Santander hire bikes in groups of 3 or 4, possibly as “new year’s resolution” riders to come and see CM for the first time. A popular video circulating on a social media platform documenting the various rides of 2024 may also have been a factor in getting new people along.

In mid-January a 22 year old man was killed in Stratford on a busy section of the High Street, near the Waterworks River bridge. Leaflets were handed out at the start of the ride asking people if they would consider travelling to this location, to install a white bike as a tribute to the unnamed fallen rider. The other side of the leaflet warned attendees to be aware of the potential of phone thieves in balaclavas infiltrating the ride. Thankfully they were not present again this month.

The ride headed south first, avoiding the traffic in the west end, towards the Bricklayers Arms and then north across Tower Bridge to travel east through Whitechapel. Despite this being a long straight drag out to Stratford, the ride stayed reasonably well together, and stopped intermittently to let others behind catch up. By the time the ride had arrived in Stepney, almost all of the casual / first time rider groups had individually peeled off and headed back to central London. Whitechapel High Street is unappealing to cycle on with friends, and casual riders would likely not have wanted to travel all the way to zone 3.

The ride went up and over the Bow roundabout flyover, and after a bit of confusion with some riders stopping at the greenway path, the ride ended up at the junction where the young rider had been killed two weeks previously. A locked bike acquired by CM participants was sprayed white, with red smoke distress beacons lit up. People living in flats and the guests in the adjacent Holiday Inn looked on from their windows and applauded as the riders chanted “Whose streets? Our streets!” and rang their bicycle bells and hornits.

After about fifteen minutes at the junction, backing up the traffic, the ride then headed north on Carpenter’s Road, travelling through the Olympic area and then into Hackney Wick, then travelling back towards Potters Fields (where the ride ended) via Mare Street, Bethnal Green Road, Shoreditch, and then across London Bridge. The rest of the ride passed without incident. The number of riders with large backpack mounted speakers has increased, likely after the post-Christmas sales, so the ride is rarely without loud music any more.

It had been raining constantly for the two days in advance of today’s ride, but thankfully, by midday on Friday, the rain had stopped and the streets had begun to dry up. A smaller-than-usual crowd of between 500 and 600 riders gathered on the south bank. A BMX trick and stunt rider entertained the gathering crowd underneath Waterloo Bridge, dressed as a jester with spirals and paint on his BMX.

The ride left south bank at 7:30pm and headed south towards Elephant and Castle roundabouts, stopping at traffic lights and waiting for the rear to catch up, keeping the bloc of riders fairly consistent, The ride then headed out south, passing by Kennington Park, again stopping and waiting quite well at large junctions for people behind to catch up and move off as a block again. There was also a nice diversity on the ride, including some families with children, recumbents, and a handcrank-driven wheelchair.

Leaflets were handed out at the start of the evening, asking people to stay together and not to filter through traffic lights. As the nights draw in and it gets darker, in the past the ride has also been infiltrated by phone thieves. The other side of the leaflet warned people about their potential presence on the ride again during the winter.

The ride then took the eastern fork at Kennington and headed down towards Brixton. The ride went as far south as St Matthews Church, and then young wheelie riders looped back around the triangular junction the way the ride came, straight into traffic, filtering between cars. This filtering continued pretty much all the way back up towards the Kennington Junction, where eventually the ride stopped and waited for everyone to recombine.

The ride drifted back towards central London via Little Portugal, stopping again occasionally where the BMX trick rider entertained the waiting crowds. The younger wheelie riders charged on ahead near Lambeth North station, but the remainder of the ride stopped and waited for everyone to catch up, and the fast riders were gone from the ride. The bloc then headed across Westminster Bridge and along the embankment, finishing unusually at St Paul’s Cathedral on the steps. where people socialised for longer than usual.

The ride left the Southbank at 7:30pm as it usually does these days, with about 800 riders in attendance. The weather was good and again with the summer months, there were a lot of newer and first-time riders there, including groups of teenagers still off school. Unusually, the ride turned right coming out of “Theatre Avenue” and did not head up the slope towards the IMAX roundabout, instead going under Waterloo bridge and south on Belvedere Road, then halting in Chicheley Street to regroup and bunch up before heading out on to the A3200. This was actually better in some ways to start moving the ride off into car traffic than the slope and the IMAX roundabout, which is a narrow road and strings out the Mass as it only gets started. There were no City Of London Police in attendance for this ride, compared to the previous two months. There were also no phone thieves trying to inflitrate the ride.

The ride headed in a large bloc through the Vauxhall gyratory, whooping and cheering coming out of the rail tunnel and travelling down Nine Elms Lane towards the old Battersea Power Station. This is a long straight stretch, and as the road opened up ahead, a group of younger riders accelerated off the front of the ride. As the road narrowed past the south western corner of Battersea Park, these riders squeezed between the stopped cars ahead, with others following them. This meant the ride got separated into multiple sections, with car traffic in amongst the ride.

After about 1.5km of this “filtering”, some older riders were able to stop the ride, and allow it to recombine into a single group again, before heading down towards the Wandsworth roundabout. For the remainder of the ride, there was no more filtering through stopped traffic, corking of large junctions was effective, and the ride regularly paused at major intersections to allow the riders behind to catch up with the front, so the Mass moved off safely together without allowing people to drop off the back.

The ride continued to head south west but then turned up towards Putney, and crossed the river at Putney Bridge into Fulham. The riders then piled en masse into Eel Brook Common for its customary midway stop for about half an hour. The “Goldfinger Soundsystem” bike was in attendance on the ride and some riders were dancing in the common as the DJs took turns to play some tracks. This affluent part of the city would be unaccustomed to Critical Mass visiting, and residents nearby came out to their doors making phone calls, with one walking through the stopped riders. The Police arrived very shortly afterwards in a van and a car, but then left again without any sort of contact.

The ride then headed back towards central, avoiding Kensington and Chelsea, travelling back in along the embankment, and turning back towards south across Chelsea Bridge when roadworks impeded sensible progress for the ride. The ride then retraced its steps heading northbound in through Battersea, finishing up at the steps of Potters Fields next to Tower Bridge.

The ride left Southbank at 7:30 as it usually does these days. Between seven and eight hundred riders assembled, with many friends and colleagues of Matheus Piovesan in attendance, who had been killed at the start of the month in Shadwell. A report from the Evading Standards summarised this part of the ride:

“Friends of Mr Piovesan and cycling activists from Critical Mass London unveiled the ghost bike – an old bike spray-painted white – on Friday evening near the location he was hit. An estimated 800 people were present at the event, which was part-protest and part celebration of his life. An earlier celebration had been held by his friends in Victoria Park on July 7, the day following his death.

Brazilian friends of Mr Piovesan had contacted Critical Mass riders via social media, and asked for support to mark the passing of their friend. He was from Rio Grande do Sul in Brazil and had been living in London for more than five years. He was a journalist and music producer, with a regular show on Brixton Radio, and also a keen leisure cyclist. He lived with friends in Limehouse and was returning home from central London after working a shift in a brewery at the time of the crash.

The Critical Mass ride headed to Shadwell, where friends and family of Mr Piovesan had gathered. The crowd paused in Cannon Street Road, and occupied the length of the narrow street. Car traffic on this section of the street is usually fast moving, coming off the nearby A1203, but there are no calming measures on the road as it approaches the residential area and the first-generation CS3 “cycle superhighway” on Cable Street.

A bike donated by community bicycle shop Babyldn Bikes was locked to the fence adjacent to where Mr Piovesan had been killed. Cargo bike riders carrying mobile sound systems played his favourite music, as his friends spray painted the bike white and adorned it with colourful glitter. As the “ghost bike” was being spray-painted, nearby residents watching out of their windows applauded. Mr Piovesan’s ex partner addressed the crowd, thanking them for their support, saying that the carnival atmosphere and energy was something Mr Piovesan would have loved.

Many of the friends and family were crying, as smoke flares were lit as a sign of cyclists in distress. They then applauded as the ride moved on after a stop of 20 minutes.”

After this stop in Shadwell, the ride headed north towards Hackney. The ride split in two at the southern end of Mare Street, as a group went to London Fields, but others went on towards the skate park at Mabley Green, where a BMX and Skate jam was happening underneath the flyovers of the A12 adjacent to the Hackney Wick marshes.

After watching the tricks on the ramp for about twenty minutes, the ride then turned back and returned to central London, heading back via Bethnal Green and Shoreditch, before finishing up at the Potters Fields steps next to Tower Bridge.

A crowd of about six or seven hundred gathered on the Southbank to leave at 7:30. The first desination was a return to London Bridge. After the trauamatic events of last month where an 18 year old rider was driven over and dragged across the bridge, his friends supported the Mass returning to the bridge and doing something as a show of solidarity with the rider as he still recovers from his injuries.

The City of London police showed up at the Southbank before the ride began which was unusual – some riders asked why they were there, and they said that they were there to monitor the ride to London Bridge and stop any phone thieves infiltrating the ride. It was unclear whether they were just there this month, as London Bridge is in the jurisdiction of the City; or whether this was going to be an ongoing thing. They remained with the ride until it headed into Westminster, where a Met van seemed to take over from them, tailing the Mass until it reached the old Battersea Power Station later on.

Despite being a bit cooler than the previous days, and overcast during the day, the sun broke through just as the Mass turned into London Bridge from Duke St Hill. The ride stopped on the northbound lane, occupying most of the bridge, and riders lifted their bikes in the air, cheering and ringing bells and horns. After a few minutes on the bridge, the Mass moved off again, this time looping around towards Monument, and heading downhill towards Lower Thames Street. The ride fractured a bit here as some riders went into the cycle lanes, followed by the police, but it joined back up again as people waited on the northern end of Southwark Bridge.

The ride then headed west towards Westminster and into Whitehall. Some cycling activists had created a banner that said “Tory Transport Policies Kill Kids and Cyclists / End Fake Culture Wars” and unfurled this at the gates of Downing Street. At the time of writing it appears that Rishi Sunak will lose the election later this week. Over the last year and a half, he has deliberately amped up a culture war against cyclists and councils attempting to make neighbourhoods cleaner and safer, in an attempt for votes in London suburbs. This has resulted in some councils being emboldened to remove LTNs and other cyclist and pedestrian friendly infratructure. The banner was a way for the cycling advocates to express their frustration with the policies and dangerous language in the media that has become the norm in recent months.

About a quarter or a third of the ride had shot ahead to Trafalgar Square and missed the banner display, but turned around and rejoined the ride as it waited in front of Parliament. The ride then headed out to Battersea area. It was stopped on Nine Elms (unclear why) and then headed in towards the area around the old power station, just as the Met van which had been tailing the ride stopped and the police inside starting walking towards the front. The old power station has been heavily gentrified into apartments and a high end shopping centre. This is another vague semi-public / private space (akin to More London) with security guards patrolling the outdoor area. They were panicky and agitated, and so some lead riders went down the pedestrian path to Battersea Park, and the rest of the Mass followed, stopping at the western end for about 20 minutes at Albert Bridge.

The ride then headed back towards central and ended at Tower Bridge. On the way back in, there was a minor altercation between some teenage riders and some older cyclists, near the northern end of Chelsea Bridge. A petrol motorbike was riding with the teenagers. While electric bikes and scooters are commonplace on many CM rides now across the world, petrol bikes are still a rarity and generally unwelcome with the fumes. The cyclists wanted the motorbike to leave, but the biker was with his friends who did not back down. The confrontation was eventually de-escalated and the ride moved on back towards central London without anyone getting hurt. For most of the evening, the ride stayed together and stopped and waited, so there was still a sizeable crowd on the ride after 10:30pm.

Later on when the ride had finished, out of the heat of the moment on the ride, the motorbike rider (also a teenager) was approached calmly and talked with at Potters Fields. The ride has started to regularly finish there as there is space to sit and talk with each other by the steps at Tower Bridge. Some older riders explained the history of the ride, and its genesis from environmental movements, to the motorbiker. Many teenagers on the ride, who are more from a bikelife/rideout/bikestormz background, are not necessarily conscious of the ethos of CM. Older cyclist activist type of riders who might have come before Covid have left London or WFH on Fridays and do not attend Mass regularly any more. It is only through talking with teenagers on a human level, and listening to them too, that they can learn about why Mass exists and still continues. The motorbike rider explained that his own bicycle was in need of repair, but he wanted to join his friends on the Friday night, but understood and would come along on his bicycle next time.

Mass left the Southbank at 7:30pm, as it usually does these days. Leaflets were circulated before the start of the ride, asking participants to come to Homerton, to put up a white bike for Harry Webb, who was killed there last September. At the time of writing the trial of the driver involved has been adjourned. Harry’s parents were contacted directly beforehand by members of Hackney LCC group, who approved of the proposed ride and white bike.

There were approximately five to six hundred participants on the ride. The Mass headed east towards Tower Bridge. Due to road closures in the central area of London, for the Champions League final, car traffic was heavy and movement was slow. The ride managed to stay together reasonably well, and headed east along Whitechapel High Street. A north turn up Cambridge Heath Road and then east on Well Street brought the ride to Kenworthy Road after about an hour and 20 minutes.

A bike that had been locked in place during the week, with pictures of Harry Webb attached to it, was spraypainted white, and a hundred tea light candles were lit around the bike as a memorial. Red distress smoke was lit, and the participants broke into spontaneous applause, cheers, and bell ringing as the smoke cleared. A bandmate of Harry’s attended on foot, and thanked Critical Mass riders for coming and remembering his friend.

The ride then took a slightly chaotic but fun route through Mabley Green and Victoria Park, riding over grass, before coming back to the roads around the south west corner of Victoria Park and heading towards Shoreditch via Bethnal Green. The front of the ride still stopped regularly, waiting for people behind to gather, and then move off again in a tighter bloc. This meant during the incident at the end of the ride after 10pm, there was a fairly large number of riders still participating.

The ride then headed south towards Borough Market, crossing London Bridge. At the junction of Tooley Street, while the ride was stopped again waiting for others to catch up, there was an incident which is still being investigated. An 18 year old rider became trapped under the wheels of a car and was dragged for approximately 50 metres across London Bridge. Multiple ambulances and police vehicles arrived on the scene. The rider is still recovering from his injuries, which included a broken nose, and heavy brusing and lacerations to his body – but thankfully, nothing more serious and he will make a recovery. The driver of the car was arrested by the City of London Police on the northern end of London Bridge after Mass riders caught up with him. After approximately an hour on the bridge, the police dispersed the crowd and riders went home.

A GoFundMe was set up with help from Critical Mass riders and friends of the injured rider. At the time of writing it is still open to make donations, but within less than 48 hours after it had been opened, the GoFundMe had reached its target of £1000 for a replacement bike for the rider. Although the ride was overwhelmingly positive, and it had been memorable to mark where Harry Webb had been killed, it had come to a very upsetting and traumatic end for anyone who had seen the incident at the south end of London Bridge. To see such genuine and immediate solidarity being displayed by Critical Mass riders with support for the rider, was a real sign of positivity and community.

Tonight’s ride left at 7:30pm as it usually does these days. Before this a crowd of approximately 500-600 riders gathered on the Southbank. Many in the crowd were coming for the first time, confused and excited, arriving on hired Santander or Lime Bikes, having seen videos on social media of the 30th birthday ride two weeks before. Other people came who had not attended mass for months or even years, but had come back to rejoin the ride after the 30th anniversary ride, which was a really positive development.

The weather thankfully had held off and the sun was poking out between the clouds. Leaflets alerting people to the potential presence of phone thieves on the ride were handed out again to attendees, giving people information about ride etiquette. The text of this leaflet includes points about staying together, stopping at junctions, corking, and not filtering through traffic. Participants discussed beforehand, and a vague destination of Greenwich was agreed. Generally speaking, these days, a majority of participants prefer to avoid travelling in towards the west end for at least the first part of the ride, to avoid getting caught in rush hour traffic and breathing in fumes, and the ride sitting there, or else filtering through cars and become all broken up. Central London is thankfully better for individual cyclists (while still always needing improvement), with wider footpaths and narrower single lane roads; but for a mass group ride, which mimics vehicular traffic in some ways, central London can be difficult and slow moving. Going into parts of zone 2 and 3 for the ride generally means it is more freely moving.

The ride went south from the BFI roundabout. At the junction of The Cut and Waterloo Road, a drinker at the Old Fire Station pub, diagonally across from the Old Vic Theatre, hurled a pint glass unprovoked at the Mass. Thankfully, nobody was hit or injured, the glass landed between riders and smashed on the ground. These sorts of incidents of random violence against the ride are rare. And participants did the right thing in not rising to the aggression shown by drunk Friday night morons just there to elicit a response. But aggression like this is a reminder of the coarse level of debate generally, where anti-cycling bias in the media emboldens people to do this sort of thing when they see a group ride.

The ride headed towards Elephant and Castle and out the New Kent Road, over the bricklayers arms flyover and south on the Old Kent Road towards New Cross. Thankfully the ride managed to stay reasonably together, having stopped at Elephant, again on the flyover, and then further down the Old Kent Road at the junction of Ilderton Road, and then again the intersection where the New Cross Road begins. These little pauses, even if they only take a minute or two, are really important for the Mass to stay together. The corking along the Old Kent Road was excellent, with people putting in shifts as the ride became a bit more strung out, which happens on long straight stretches. There were two reported incidences of drivers getting out of cars and challenging people, including one incident where a female rider who was corking was grabbed and was pushed out of the way, but was then supported by other riders. The driver wisely got back in the car and waited the extra two minutes they had to until the ride had fully passed. Another potential flashpoint with a BMW driver at the Greenwich Market was also firmly but peacefully dealt with. Any driver attempting this sort of thing is likely going to have to wait longer as more cyclists come and back others up.

The ride then had a customary pitstop at the area near the Cutty Sark in Greenwich, where people played a bit of music as the sun went down, had a beer and a smoke. About 20 minutes later, the ride eventually reconvened and headed back towards Central London, heading in along the the northern route along Evelyn Street, passing through the top of Deptford and then along Jamaica Road through Bermondsey. Again, the ride is slowly getting better generally, stopping every so often waiting for people behind to catch up (including some wheelie riders near the front, who have been befriended over time and are slowly more on board with the message of Mass), so the ride moves together in a single bloc.

On Jamaica Road, the ride turned into Long Lane, heading towards Borough High Street, and then turning back in towards Newington Gardens MUGA area, where the London hardcourt Bike Polo crew were having some Friday night games and a party, as one of their players was leaving London for good. The Mass managed to catch the last 15 minutes of games there before the floodlights turned off for the night. Some of the Polo crew had helped out with the corking on the 30th Birthday ride, so they were very happy to see Mass come along and have a chance to watch some of their games in action. A small campfire had already been lit at Newington Gardens by the Polo crew, so it was a nice way for people to interact with each other from the two different scenes and warm up.

By 10pm, the ride had thinned out and approximately 100-150 riders remained. They rolled the small distance to the steps at Potter’s Fields next to Tower Bridge, where the ride finished up. People stayed there for a while having a drink and chatting. The security guards for More London are generally standoffish when the Mass arrives there on a Friday night, they see that we are peaceful, and are not interested in having any confrontation with us, as long as the music is at a reasonably tolerable level for the residents living in the blocks of flats nearby, some of which are not luxury apartments, but actually social housing for City of London tenants.

There were no incidences of any phone thefts or similar antisocial behaviour from balaclava riders on the ride tonight, which is a really positive thing to remember, and to take forward into the summer rides.