Please join us for a special lecture by Professor Sean O'Connell, Professor of Modern British and Irish Social History at Queen's University, Belfast. This event will take place on 5th May at 5pm in the Pichette Auditorium, Pembroke College.

This event is free and open to all. Please register for a place via Eventbrite.

Prof. O'Connell will deliver a paper titled, From dreaming spires to Screeching Tyres: Exploring Oxford’s Place in the History of “Joyriding". He will address the national and international attention Oxford recieved in the 1990s due to 'joyriding'. Making use of oral history interviews, Prof. O'Connell situates the city in a longer history of 'joyriding', traceable to the early 20th century. 

For more information please contact elizabeth.oladunni@pmb.ox.ac.uk.

Paper Abstract

In the summer of 1991 Oxford achieved national and international media attention due to ‘joyriding’. On estates such as Blackbird Leys, young car thieves put on displays of ‘hotting’ in high-performance stolen cars for appreciative audiences that gathered to watch the spectacle. The Thames Valley Police eventually moved in to put a stop to this, prompting several nights of serious disturbances on the estate. These events were part of a national phenomenon of rising car crime in the early 1990s.  With up to 500,000 cars stolen each year, car crime made up around a third of all reported offences and a moral panic surfaced around joyriders.  

Oxford stands out for a number of reasons. It had the dubious distinction of being second in a European league table of car crime (behind Northumbria). Moreover, the fact that Oxford’s ‘joyriders’ attracted so much media attention has left a trail of historical evidence in their wake, which this paper will explore. It will also make use of oral history interviews conducted in Oxford (in the two weeks prior to this presentation) with residents of Blackbird Leys, former police officers, former journalists and (it is hoped) former joyriders, in order to situate Oxford in a much longer history of ‘joyriding’ that can be traced back to the very early twentieth century.  This Oxford case study forms part of a larger project that will chart the history of joyriding in the UK from its emergence in the Edwardian period through to its peak in the 1990s and, thereafter, its gradual decline.