NEWS: The home of the Chopper has fallen victim to foreign competition and to what an MP believes are the politically motivated desires of a group of allotment holders
Do you remember the Chopper bike? Can that day, probably in the late 1970s, when you cycled past your friends on your shiny new Grifter ever be topped - even now that you're married and have a few kids of your own?
Every child with any street-cred wanted a Raleigh bike in the 1970s, such was the universal appeal of the cool design and sleek silver frame of the Chopper and the heavier, tank-like Grifter. And in the days when a piggy-back ride on your brother's or sister's bike could be a painful experience, the arrival of the Chopper with its high-backed, foam sports seat meant skids and jumps over homemade ramps could be performed with something approaching style.
The Raleigh bike has a special place in grown-up kids' hearts. It evokes memories of summer days spent exploring that little bit further than we were allowed and feeling part of a select group of like-minded Raleigh devotees.
Indeed, the 30-somethings' eulogy to Raleigh, the Nottingham-based makers of Choppers and Grifters, would read like a love letter from a simpler age of childhood when the only computer game around was the curiously named television tennis game Pong.
Of course Raleigh's reputation as one of Britain's manufacturing success stories was not only built on children's bikes. In the 1940s, Raleigh's design engineers produced a custom-made racing bike for four-times World Track Champion Reg Harris, whose legs were so strong he regularly snapped the frames of his bikes. Harris won his last world championship in 1954 and in the 1960s and 1970s Raleigh's focus shifted to road racing and the adrenalin rush of the big European tours, such as the Tour de France, Giro d'Italia and the Spanish Vuelta.
Under the famous heron trademark, Raleigh has sponsored the premier league racing teams competing in national and international race meetings. The high point came in 1980 when Joop Zoetmelk of Holland, riding for TI Raleigh Creda, won the Tour de France in 109 hours, 19 minutes and 14 seconds.
In the mid-1980s, Raleigh's focus shifted off road to mountain biking and its success story has already brought the mountain biking world cup to David Baker and international honours to female cyclist Isla Rowntree.
But now, more than a century after Sir Frank Bowden bought into a small bicycle company on Raleigh Street in Nottingham and established the Raleigh name, one of the most famous names in British manufacturing has fallen victim to foreign competition and to what a local MP believes are the politically motivated desires of a handful of small allotment holders.
Last month, the 112-year-old company announced the closure of its Nottingham assembly factory, at the cost of 280 jobs, eventually bowing to the pressure of cheaper competition from southeast Asia. But that was not the whole story.
The other problem for Raleigh was a disastrous decision in 1999 by previous US owner Derby Corporation, to sell the historic Triumph Road factory site to Nottingham University without securing a new home.
In a bridging deal, the Triumph Road site was eventually leased back to the company until 2003 when Raleigh was due to move into a new £14 million sterling (€23 million) site on a garden allotment on the edge of Nottingham.
It was at this point, at the end of last year, that Raleigh's problems got even worse.
In a break with the allotment association, three of the 144 allotment holders on the site - which is also home to bats and toads - began legal action to prevent the new factory being built. The legal action delayed Raleigh's tight relocation schedule and, coupled with the financial squeeze posed by foreign imports - some manufacturers in China and Bangladesh were able to undercut Raleigh by 25 per cent - the management decided the factory was no longer viable. About 100 jobs will be saved but, in Britain, Raleigh will only design and distribute bikes, with assembly and packaging transferring overseas.
"This was the straw that broke the camel's back," said local Labour MP, Graham Allen, angered by the loss of Raleigh's historic assembly making factory.
The small number of people who brought the court action had links to the Liberal Democrat Party in the local area, according to Mr Allen.
"You would have thought all political parties would come together and not play politics with people's jobs. Raleigh is part of our heritage. The Liberal parliamentary candidate saw this as a bandwagon and saw that his party could be portrayed as environmentally friendly by supporting the allotment holders," he said
"I hope that the handful of individuals who deliberately created this delay will get some satisfaction at the 300 redundancies which their handiwork created."
Mr John Stuart, principal lecturer at Nottingham Business School, believes the closure of Raleigh's assembly line has to be put into the context of job losses at other British manufacturing giants, such as Rover, and the "evolutionary" nature of manufacturing.
"Raleigh is a prestige name, a heritage name and it is another in a long line of heritage companies feeling the winds of change," he says. "At one level we can blame ourselves as consumers; we are fickle and we have been conditioned over 30 years to expect ever-reducing prices from whatever sources. It is an evolutionary process. About 30 or 40 years ago Raleigh bikes were bought with a bit of patriotism and a belief that it would endure. Now, we're becoming conditioned and subject to fashions and change, and manufacturing across the world is going through this cycle in a never-ending chase for lower prices."
A scaled-down, leaner Raleigh has an uncertain future. Just like the electrical goods manufacturer, Dyson, costs and competition could eventually drive it outside Britain.
