Nina Atkinson (she/her)
Understanding a moral system is not the same as excusing it, but in refusing to understand it, we give up any chance of dismantling the systems that allow violence to endure.
Angels are perceived to be innocent, obedient, and pure. They are figures we are taught to revere and whose deaths we are permitted to mourn without question. Yet, the death of Blue Angels Motorcycle Club president Lenny Reynolds unsettles this expectation. When news broke in December 2025 that Reynolds had passed away, public sympathy outside of the biker community was notably absent. This silence raises a quieter but more revealing question: not who deserves to be mourned, but how mourning functions when moral legitimacy is denied.
Founded in Maryhill in 1963 by Allan Morrison and Billy “Stone” Gordon, the Blue Angels Motorcycle Club emerged as part of Glasgow’s gang culture and gradually expanded to form chapters across Scotland, England, Belgium, and Spain. From its inception, the club positioned itself in opposition to external authority and American influence. Reynolds himself took pride in the club’s success in keeping the Hells Angels out of Scotland, a feat that became central to the Angels’ sense of identity and autonomy. There are competing explanations for the club’s name – some say it stands for ‘b*******, undesirables, and eccentrics’, while others understand it to be a reference to the Scottish saltire. No matter which one rings true, both gesture toward how the Angels understand themselves: as marginal, defiant, and self-defined.
The Blue Angels are well known for their violence, much of it resulting in lengthy prison sentences. In 1964, a mass brawl involving hundreds of gang members led to life sentences for several Angels. Reynolds himself was convicted in 1980 as a “left-wing terrorist” for his role in a failed bombing plot linked to the Scottish Republican Socialist League, and later faced weapons charges in the 1990s. More recently, the club has been implicated in violent turf disputes, including the assault of actor Charlie Allan in 2012. The violence committed by the Blue Angels is real, harmful, and not to be excused.
Yet, while public sympathy was largely withheld, Reynolds’ death did not go unmourned. On the 17th of January, hundreds of fellow bikers gathered for his funeral, and tributes from club members circulated on social media. These expressions of loyalty, loss, and reverence existed almost entirely outside of public recognition.
How devotion and violence sit side by side in the Blue Angels becomes clearer once you look at how the club understands morality. Within the club, purity is not measured by obeying the law, or freedom from harm, but through commitment to an ethos of unwavering loyalty, protection of one’s own, and a refusal to submit to external authority. Violence, in this framework, is not interpreted as a moral failure, but instead as a rationalised consequence of unwavering brotherhood. This logic is perhaps most clearly expressed in Reynolds’ oft-cited maxim: ‘If you f*** with one of us, you f*** with all of us’.
For the Blue Angels, purity is not about meeting the moral standards of wider society, but about absolute commitment to the group. Consistency, rather than cruelty, functions as the internal justification for harm. This reframes violence as the outcome of acting purely rather than as a betrayal of principle. This internal logic also produces strong bonds of inclusion and mutual obligation. On the club’s website, brotherhood is described as indifferent to wealth or strength, instead emphasising loyalty and the honouring of past actions.
Blue Angels’ purity is defined as much by what they reject as by what they affirm. A refusal to obey the norms and rules of mainstream society is central to the club’s identity, with compliance with the law or external authority framed as weakness. The club’s insignia references the “1%” in response to the American Motorcycle Association’s claims that 99 per cent of riders are law-abiding – a direct declaration of deliberate nonconformity. Paired with the mantra, ‘Only fools obey. We live the righteous way’, rejection of authority becomes not incidental, but foundational to how purity is imagined and enforced within the group.
However, there are devastating consequences involved when rejecting purity as obedience to authority, expanding beyond those directly involved in rival clubs. In June 2024, ex-Blue Angels member Daniel Laponder planted a pipe bomb under the van of a Blue Angels member’s father as part of an ongoing feud. The target was not the van of a rival but the rival’s family member, illustrating how violence justified through loyalty and refusal spills outward into civilian life. What members and ex-members of the Blue Angels practice here is a kind of moral absolutism, just not one most people recognise. The terms differ, but the black and white structure of “good” versus “bad” is strikingly similar to law-abiding interpretations of purity. Both rely on strict boundaries, clear exclusions, and little tolerance for ambiguity.
This is not about deciding which moral code is superior: it is about recognising the dangers black and white thinking can carry. These binaries have never prevented violence. If anything, they mirror the same absolutist logic that violent groups often rely on, creating a world divided cleanly into insiders and outsiders, and loyalty and betrayal. Understanding a moral system is not the same as excusing it, but in refusing to understand it, we give up any chance of dismantling the systems that allow violence to endure.
Wider society often shows little appetite for this distinction. Violent communities are flattened into a caricature, their internal values dismissed as meaningless or non-existent. Purity is reserved for the law-abiding, while moral compromise is treated as irredeemable. In this worldview, there is no space for complexity, and no space for grief that does not conform.
Reynolds’ death does not invite forgiveness or the justification of violence. Yet, the loyal mourning from his community reveals that purity doesn’t disappear in those written off as wholly corrupt – it is redefined. When we refuse to recognise this, we cling to the same black and white thinking that echoes the logic sustaining violence itself. In a world obsessed with clear angels and villains, perhaps the most dangerous thing is our refusal to look directly at what exists in between.
