Outlaws

Inside the violent world of biker gangs

Tony Thompson

Tony Thompson is a highly respected crime journalist with a track record of successful books on the UK gangland and crime scene and his writing skills show here.

This book is the biography of ex-Outlaws MC member Daniel ‘Snake Dog’ Boone, but through it Thompson tells the wider story of the development of the UK outlaw biker scene since the eighties and how it has been affected by international biker politics, up to and including the 2007 murder of Gerry Tobin.

Thoroughly recommended and essential reading for anyone interested in the club scene in England.

I’m just glad this wasn’t published until 2011 as if it had come out before Heavy Duty People I don’t think I’d have ever been able to write it.

Bikers

Birth of a modern day outlaw

Up until his death in a motorcycle accident in 2000, Dr Maz Harris was probably one of the best known figures on the British biker scene being both spokesman for the Hells Angels charter in England and a biker magazine columnist focusing on biker rights.

He completed his PhD at Warwick University looking at myths and reality in the motorcycle sub culture and I suspect a fair bit of that work found its way into this.

The book contains a large selection of photographs tracing mainly British biker history from the days of The Wild One, through the sixties rockers, and then on into the outlaw biker club scene. But while the written content is quite slim, it is well worth reading. He manages to describe in a very readable way both the personal, in his own path to involvement in bikes and bike club culture, and his feelings about riding and what it means; as well as the social significance (as I guess you’d expect given his studies) in an insightful view of the development of the biker scene in the light of changing culture elsewhere.

Highly recommended and a bit of a collector’s item these days (hint – you may need to try eBay).

Maz Harris