The Clarion Cycling Club was formed in 1895 after a group of like-minded individuals got together in Birmingham in 1894. It took the Clarion name from Robert Blatchford’s socialist newspaper.
The National Clarion cycling club grew during the early 1900s with 8000+ members at one time and with sections all over the UK. Working class people were getting their freedom on bikes in the countryside and the Clarion was spreading the word and the newspaper to industrial towns and villages. In those days before most people could own a car, the bike gave freedom and fellowship…the Clarion thrived.
We now have 2,000 members in over 30 sections, which makes us one of the bigger cycling clubs in the country.
The Clarion Cycling Club has a history which it’s members can be proud of. To learn more about the Clarion history, why not buy Fellowship is Life by the late Denis Pye, available by contacting bike@clarioncc.org.
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National Clarion Cycling Club, not to be confused with National Clarion CC 1895
Our National Clarion Cycling Club first met in 1894 and by Easter 1895 the National Clarion Cycling Club was established and we have been in constant unbroken operation since then. In these years we only missed one Easter Meet in 1918 which was quite understandable.
We want to make it clear to everyone who reads this that the National Clarion Cycling Club (this one, running since 1895) is not the same as another organisation which calls itself National Clarion Cycling Club 1895 (which was founded in 2006). You may find this other club extolling the origins of the original club, using its logos and name, as well as using the suffices of ‘North Lancs Union’ and more recently ‘Southern Union’, but it is not this club.
Due to historic and political sympathies, a number of our members and friends are also members of the ‘other’ club, but we wish it to be known that it is not in any way affiliated to, or representative of this, the original National Clarion Cycling Club.