Edinburgh 31

Edinburgh Vespa Club (VCB Branch No. 31)

The Edinburgh Vespa Club was the first scooter club of any kind in Scotland. It was formed early in 1954 by John Groat and Tom Brown who would later become the VCB Council Member for the ‘Scotland Region’. Ten founder members were enrolled at the inaugural meeting of the Edinburgh club and by the end of 1955 membership had risen to thirty.

By the way, the new club was initially referred to in VCB records as the ‘Scotland (Edinburgh) branch’ - being the only Scottish branch at the time - and with the Vespa Club of Britain divided into regions the Edinburgh club was part of ‘Northern Region’ alongside Newcastle, Teesside, Hull and Northern Ireland (Belfast).

It wasn’t until a second Scottish branch started up (the Glasgow Vespa Club in October of the following year) that the ‘Scotland Region’ of the VCB was established.

Early progress of Branch No. 31 continued with a “varied programme of youth hostelling, weekend runs, quizzes, talks and maintenance nights” but by the summer of 1957 numbers began to dwindle and by the end of the year the club had decided to call it a day - “a lack of support” being cited as the reason.

“It wasn’t that they didn’t have the members,” the club’s president reported in the January ‘58 edition of Vespa News. “There were enough on the books, but the members did not seem to take an interest in the club. They were too busy or could not be bothered to turn up for meetings or runs”.

To be fair the country had just come out of a five month spell of petrol rationing during the Suez crisis so most people will have been restricting the use of transport for commuting to work. Also the availability of spares and servicing at the time - or the lack of it - had become a particular problem for Vespa owners in Scotland.

Anyhow, twelve months later Tom Brown worked on the reformation of the Edinburgh branch and as a result of his efforts the first meeting of the revived club was held in March 1959. By then Vespa Club branches had started up in Ayr, Dunfermline, Aberdeen and Stirling - but only Glasgow and Stirling were still active at the time the Edinburgh club got going again.

And that’s how it all started. The first Scottish branch of the Vespa Club of Britain was back up and running. For how long the Edinburgh club continued to run, I’d like to find out but I believe they were still going strong in the late sixties at least.

So that’s our homework over the winter months. If you’ve got any information or photos of Branch No. 31, or any copies of old Vespa News from the late sixties / seventies that you wouldn’t mind scanning for mention of Edinburgh or any of the other Scottish branches, please feel free to share it this way.

And here, with the VCB reintroducing the club’s ‘regions’ there’s been a lot of interest in reforming dormant clubs. And Aberdeen Vespa Club have recently revived Branch No. 82. All it would take for the Edinburgh club to be reformed, again, is for three VCB members from auld reekie to want to and to get agreement from the VCB committee. If you’re keen, give’s a shout.

Paul Hird