FROM Mark Cavendish dramatically crashing out of the opening stage of the Tour de France in Yorkshire, to the teenagers on the local estate bunny-hopping kerbs on old mountain bikes — wherever you look, the bicycle is in the ascendancy.

With the surging popularity of cycling, readers might be forgiven for thinking that the Morning Star Heroes of Pain are a rag-tag bunch of Johnny-come-latelies, hitching a ride on the back of the peloton.

In fact, cycling can trace its radical roots back to 1895 and the formation of the Clarion Cycling Club — its members would pedal to neighbouring towns and villages to distribute socialist leaflets and election propaganda.

For some the bicycle meant the freedom to explore. For others it was something to be feared.

According to British Cycling, the bicycle was seen as a “machine of the working classes.”

The wealthy ruling class “railed against the incursions into their beloved countryside,” and there was even talk of an outright ban on cycling.

Today Britain is rightly proud of its Yellow Jersey winners — Wiggins and Froome. But there was a time when the socialist countries provided the backdrop for the heroes of this most beautiful and painful of sports.

From 1948 until 2006 Czechoslovakia, the GDR and Poland hosted the Peace Race, a multiple-stage tour open to amateur riders from around the world. The dramas and stories were once read by millions in the columns of Rude Pravo, Neues Deutschland and Trybuna Ludu.

Dubbed the “Tour de France of the East,” the Peace Race showcased the best cycling talent the socialist system could produce — legends such as two-times winner Gustav-Adolf “Tave” Schur, a man of integrity who once sacrificed his own Road World Championship chances by letting a teammate pass and win.

Voted East Germany’s greatest-ever athlete, Tave remained an unrepentant champion of socialism who also won election to the Bundestag after the fall of the Berlin Wall.

In just 17 days, the best cycling talent the Morning Star can produce will be cycling 270 miles from the paper’s headquarters in east London to the Fete de l’Humanite in Paris. “Socialism,” the Chilean politician Jose Antonio Viera Gallo once said, “can only arrive by bicycle.”

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