Ed's note: Bob Scripps of the Thames Valley Motoring Club has kindly contributed this article giving a potted history of the club and the reasons for its demise. If any of you have more to contribute to this tale, please write either directly to Bob (address at the bottom of the page) or to Catherine Phillipson.

From 1965 it started...

For some members' interest and to complete a story that began a number of years ago, perhaps even before many members were born, I refer back to July 1965 when the new "White Paper" on rallying was published. This paper was supposed to control all forms of Motor Sport that took place on the Public Highway and it was though that many local clubs would not be able to continue as they were.

This was an era of motor sport when you turned up to an event in your normal "shopping car" and competed. If the event was a rally (stage rallying was only used on the RAC or similar events) then you started after the pubs closed, approx 11.00pm, then did 200-300 miles on yellows with one or two petrol halts and finished in time for breakfast at about 7.30am. Then after a chat you went home or onto another event like a Driving Test, which are now known as Autotests, and which were considered great team spirit events, but I wander from the point.

Several clubs were concerned about these regulations and how they would change or alter the sport. One of the rules meant that clubs could only invite a further 5 clubs to their local events. This led to groups of clubs forming a central club so that many events could be offered and be entered into by members. Each event could still then invite a further four clubs. The individual clubs would not lose their identity as the large club would be known as an umbrella club - it just acted on the administration of the events offered and entered, and the day to day running of individual clubs would still be down to the clubs themselves.

So TVMC was first formed consisting of:
APOC: Anglia & Prefects Owners Club
BVMC: Brent Vale Motor Club
EMIMC: Electric Music Industries Motor Club
H&DMC: Hampton & District Motor Club
MTCC: Mid-Thames Car Club

With the six-club rule applying, the organisers limited themselves to five initial clubs to keep one space free. The huge volume of events being organised by these clubs meant that often up to five events were available to members each weekend.

Over time the APOC and EMIMC disbanded, and TVMC started looking around for other clubs to join. Bearing in mind that it wanted to offer the most variety to club members, it selected Harrow (who specialised in races and sprints) and Southern (who were running events in Wales).

TVMC fulfilled all it set out to do and did receive many invites to all types of events. It ran championships in all categories and provided entrants to all types of events, so why at the beginning of 1998 is TVMC ceasing and not re-registering as an RACMSA club?

Many reasons, one being the fact that of the original clubs only one remains, other Clubs have come into the group and have played their part to the full. Another is that when the RACMSA banned umbrella clubs TVMC had to change. This I believe was the beginning of the end, as each individual member had to become a member of TVMC and lost interest in taking part in the club. Also the smaller closed-to-club or co-promoted events became rarer and there were fewer invites for TVMC to accept, so it could not fulfil the original intended role of promoting the lesser status events for member clubs.

So after 32 years as an RACMSA registered club TVMC will cease to exist and just drift into memories of a few who originally created the club. But then, they have all moved on to other interests which just leaves me as the founder member when I accepted the Secretary post all those years ago. I trust that TVMC could be considered a successful enterprise.