They are usually found screaming down the motorway on huge motorcycles wearing intimidating all-leather outfits and the obligatory tattoo of a winged death's head with a pilot's helmet. The Hell's Angels' rivalry with other biker gangs is the stuff of legends, but a potentially violent feud is brewing and British police are fearful that the bitterness could prove fatal.
A possible flashpoint is the annual Bulldog Bash, which takes place in an airfield near Long Marston in Stratford-upon-Avon, and raises nearly £1 million for the Hell's Angels. It is an organised, tight-knit community, and although the Hell's Angels only have about 230 members in Britain, the four-day Bulldog Bash which began yesterday is expected to attract up to 12,000 bikers.
The rivalry between the Hell's Angels and the Outcasts has been rumbling on for more than 10 years, but the escalation of the dispute in the past two years is troubling police in Warwickshire, where the Bash is being held. In response to information that their rivalry has taken on a sinister aspect, possibly involving the use of automatic weapons and explosives, the Deputy Chief Constable of Warwickshire Police, Mr Mick Brewer, has ordered his officers to carry out selective searches of bikers attending the Bash.
The feud is essentially a struggle for supremacy, as the 30-year-old Hell's Angels feel increasingly threatened by the newcomers. In the last six months alone, two Outcasts members have been stabbed to death, for which offence two men are awaiting trial. The National Criminal Intelligence Service recently warned police of the possibility of guns and explosives being used by biker gangs, but the Hell's Angels have consistently denied they are involved in organised crime, pointing out that their members have been the target of bombings.
But Mr Neil Liversidge, the national chairman of the Motorcycle Action Group (MAG) in Britain, says he has personal knowledge of why the Hell's Angels have such a dangerous reputation among bikers and the public. "I have had a great deal of contact with them. One of their members threatened to kill or cripple me."
The history of this personal dispute dates back to 1993 and the motorcycle rally, Storm in the Castle, run by MAG in Tyne and Wear.
"We were made an offer, if that's what you want to call it, for the Hell's Angels to do our security, and that if they didn't then we would have a security problem," he says. His organisation has discouraged its members and other bikers not to attend the Bulldog Bash because they say it is an event which is run by a gang of criminals to fund their crimes.
"The Hell's Angels have a terrible reputation among bikers and the public. I don't see the point in handing money to criminals to buy more guns and knives."
The police believe the feud between the Hell's Angels and the Outcasts has dangerous echoes of a two-year dispute between the Hell's Angels and a biker group called the Bandidos in Scandinavia. Seven bikers were killed and another 39 suffered murder attempts in this recent feud. The expansion of the Outcasts, born in the 1980s and currently with around 200 members, has taken place over the last two years.