FEATURE
RIPPING YARNS
Harry Lawson and his wife at the start in London .
The Emancipation Run of 1896 celebrated motorists being given the freedom of the road . David Burgess-Wise looks back at that historic milestone .
There ’ s 125 years of history behind the annual Veteran Car Run , the world ’ s oldest motoring event by a Brighton Road mile , but where does the ceremony of tearing a red flag in two before the start come from ? That seeming act of vandalism is a direct link with the very first Brighton Run when , before a motley assortment of primitive motor vehicles set off for the Sussex coast on 14 November 1896 , Murray Finch-Hatton , 12th Earl of Winchilsea , a director of the Great Horseless Carriage Company , ripped a red flag in half to symbolise the end of a foolish law that compelled early motor vehicles to travel no faster than 4mph , preceded by a man on foot . That law had been introduced in 1863 to curb the road-destroying properties of steam traction engines weighing many tons , but when the first motor cars appeared on the roads of Britain in the mid-1890s , it was indiscriminately applied to them , too . The 1863 law had required the man on foot to carry a red flag , but an 1873 amendment had been intended to do away with the flag , which was thought to spook horses . However , the new regulations clumsily failed to mention the abolition of the flag , so the man in front kept on carrying it ...
It took a change of government to do away with those foolish restrictions on the use of motor cars on the roads of Britain , and when the Locomotives on Highways Act came into force on 14 November 1896 and raised the speed limit to 14 mph , a diminutive entrepreneur named Harry Lawson organised a special run from London to Brighton to celebrate “ Emancipation Day ”.
Lawson , who had made his fortune promoting bicycle companies , founded Britain ’ s first motor manufacturer , the Daimler Motor Company of Coventry , on 14 January 1896 ( though it didn ’ t actually build its first car until the spring of 1897 ). He was attempting to monopolise the infant motor industry by spending some £ 400,000 – £ 55 million today – to acquire all the “ master patents ” relating to car design before demand was stimulated by the abolition of the
44 The London to Brighton Veteran Car Run