Bikers, God, and medieval pageantry
Thursday, 23 March 2006

Biker gangs are back in the news after a violent brawl at a kickboxing tournament on the Gold Coast in which members of the Finks and Hells Angels clubs were shot and stabbed.

It's not easy to get people to talk about the outlaw bike scene, but one man who will shed a little light on this world is the founder of the God's Squad CMC, Dr John Smith, "When you've got very close, closed cultures, whether they're because of occupational bonding, or whether ideological bonding...You don't talk about what's going on inside...I think there are some real myths. One size does not fit all. I've got some beautiful friends inside the outlaw scene who just simply want to be left alone, they wear their colours, they want to say the system's stuffed, and want to run their own blokey thing. There are clubs that range from some who may have been caught out in activities that I wouldn't agree with...I think that there are some clubs that are hard drinking but never touch drugs, there are some clubs where there may be individual members that do criminal activity and the rest of the club don't. There just isn't one size fits all, and to try and to say this is some huge massive organised mafia is simply untrue."


they're a mixture between medieval pageantry, and partly a blokey thing
"The bike clubs are a strange mixture", Smith explains, "they're a mixture between medieval pageantry, and partly a blokey thing, 'You insult my woman and you better get on your horse, grab your lance and we'll have it out'...I'm not saying that's right or wrong, but in the medieval days that was seen as a thing of honour. One of the things the bikers have is, as a code is 'death before dishonour'. To a certain extent, we live in a society from the highest level of politics down the old business of true trust and mateship that are essential to a cohesive community have just been thrown to the winds inside the political process."

"It's amazing the beautiful women that hang around the outlaw bike scene...There are some blokes and some women who like the days when there was a more distinct line drawn between the sexes. They might be wrong, they might be right. The fact is, they've formed a social arrangement. My doctoral studies were mainly in cultural anthropology. Some of them have formed their own subculture to try and sustain certain things they regard as values, and I don't think society understands that."


Jesus hung out with the wrong end of town
Many might think Christians wouldn't associate in bikie circles, but Dr Smith finds no reason not to, "what we read in the New Testament is that Jesus hung out with the wrong end of town. It's easy to go out there and preach stuff at people, but to bond and become friends with people requires that you put your reputation at risk. St Paul says that Jesus made himself of no reputation because he identified with publicans and sinners and other outcasts. As far as we're concerned what we're doing is totally in keeping with the ancient tradition of true Christianity that risks its life to go to the wrong end of town. If God loved the whole world, my mates there are just as much objects of God's love just as much as the nice blokes at the top end of town."

"One of the things that gets me online to be willing to talk", Smith explains, "is that the reality is that I know blokes who were hopeless alcoholics, hardcore addicts, that decided they wanted to find honour by belonging to one of these groups, and the groups actually straightened them out and made them far less dangerous than they would have been as loose cannons outside of the club scene."

But what about incidents like the one on the Gold Coast with shooting and stabbing, surely that kind of thing doesn't give the bike clubs a good reputation? "The behaviour that happens with the American military in prison situations in Cuba and Iraq", Dr Smith says, "do you say all soldiers torture? Do you wipe an entire institution on the basis of that? My word to my mates inside the scene is that if the guys want to push the thing too far, what's likely to happen, society could in actual fact put all it's resources under terrorism acts to shut the whole thing down, so the business of belonging to a club and having colours, which is your honour and identity, could be put under huge stress. My word to all the groups is that we need to think the bigger picture, or there could be dire consequences for everybody."