Vigils and Die-Ins.

I've been to many beautiful and moving vigils over the years. They give people a chance to share their grief, however remotely felt (and our capacity for empathy certainly extends even to people whom we didn't know). I think the first one I went to must have been in 1996, for the beautifully-named Oona Cloud, who was killed outside the (as was) London College of Printing at the Elephant and Castle northern roundabout.

However, the vigil also provided an object lesson in other ways. Vigils largely used to happen through Critical Mass. The mass that evening was very large (by the standards of those days) and, in gathering around the guard railing outside the college, blocked the roundabout completely. Many people who were there were rejoicing at this, saying that they couldn't believe it and how great it was that there were enough people to do it. It was interesting how some saw it as connected to Oona's death--getting some form of 'revenge' for her, a way of asserting the presence of cyclists, of being joyous that for a brief moment only, they were the dominant force. The Elephant and Castle, of course, is still iconic in London of motor traffic dominance, and it was even more so in those days.

The idea behind Critical Mass itself is different--as an 'organised coincidence' generating a large volume of cycle traffic in one place, but despite its necessary slow speed, not setting out to 'block' anything. The boundaries between those ideas are obviously rather permeable, but they revolve around the battle of ideas as to whether 'traffic' is a good thing or a bad. It is a good thing because it is people moving about, doing things, getting out of the house, and it is a bad thing because too much need to travel (especially mundane) can really uproot people and waste time they could spend with their families and friends, and that's before we even get to the role that the motorisation of people-carriages plays in all this and the negative consequences associated with it.

But back to the vigil--I've never forgotten what happened next. The police, who accompanied Masses in those days, were mainly there to chivvy it along and had not yet developed any protocol to facilitate such events for the (usually) brief time that they took, but they were powerless to clear the carriageway and I would assume had already radioed for back-up when word got round that an ambulance was trying to get through.

Needless to say, nobody wanted to block an ambulance and the vigil swiftly dissolved in this way--as lots of cars other than the ambulance started streaming through again, too, the ceremonial atmosphere was over very abruptly and immediately. Oona's family and friends were there and one of her friends had just spoken very passionately and beautifully, and (I think) was about to hand over to her sister, but was then disrupted by the events. I still remember the feeling of not being able to 'complete' the vigil to this day. I do think that these events are emotionally important.

At the same time, I think that the idea of 'die-ins' is a perversion of the simple idea of sharing grief in solidarity. I don't see any sense in demonstrating 'solidarity' by pretending to 'die' in solidarity (an idea that makes absolutely no sense) and I would never attend such an event.

The other important caveat is that there are plenty of other victims of road danger who may not have happened to ride a bicycle when they were killed. In London, it is very notable that we don't hear much about vigils for pedestrians who are killed, who include quite a few vulnerable and mobility-restricted people. Some may even have been in cars at the time of their deaths. Should we not mourn them? And if not, why then mourn people killed while riding bikes?

A concentration on just one mode of transport may be seen as legitimate because the victims using that mode are the ones with whom we feel the greatest solidarity, and we could probably not mourn everybody who gets killed--there are still far too many victims in London alone to do this. However, there's always a problem with making it too mode-specific, as it can reinforce a feeling of 'us vs. them', and that is, essentially, one of the main things that we need to diminish connected with our use of different modes of transportation.