YOU NEVER FORGET YOUR FIRST, THEY SAY. IT was the summer of 1983, a Sunday, about 1.30pm. I strolled into my favourite disreputable Exeter watering hole to find a friend looking the worse for wear, patting his pockets. His girlfriend beckoned me over and slipped me a set of keys. “Could you take his bike home for him? He can barely stand.”
Well, of course I could. He had a Triumph TR65 Thunderbird, which was about six months old.
I borrowed his helmet, slung my leg over the Triumph, looked with some confusion at the ignition switch where the rev counter should be, turned it on, kicked it over, and marvelled at the lack of resemblance or feel to any motorcycle I had ever ridden before. I took it home, but I went the long way. I was smitten.
Hanging on, still fighting
Although it did not survive, the Meriden Co-operative was one of the more successful workers’ co-ops of the 1970s; yet this is often unrecognised. The People’s History Museum in Manchester has not a word to say about the 10-year history of the Meriden lock-in and the subsequent Co-op, while waxing lyrical about the Upper Clyde Shipbuilders that lasted 18 months.
As the 1980s approached, the Meriden workers tried pretty much everything they could to keep the company going, taking to Triumph’s worn-out tooling to create a whole range of machines based on the oil-in-frame twin, while fighting NVT’s efforts to wring every last penny from them.
They tried a partnership with Moto Guzzi to build a 125cc two-stroke single, the Meriden Co-Uno model, which was made on Saturday mornings so it didn’t interfere with big twin production. They were very nearly bought by Suzuki, and by Armstrong. They almost partnered with Hesketh, a partnership of aristocratic chutzpah and
