For the moment, they are quiet. The price at the pump is down, road pricing has been junked, and even the London congestion charge was suspended because of snow. But Britain's army of motor maniacs is only resting. The slightest infringement of their right to drive whenever, however and wherever they like and they will soon be protesting, blockading or even emulating the notorious “Captain Gatso” in smashing up speed cameras.

Behind this drivers' lobby lurks a powerful media machine. The sleek TV adverts, motoring supplements, car magazines and, of course, the extraordinary cultural phenomenon that is Top Gear - all determined to defend the car owner as an embattled British minority.

But who is the sinister godfather inspiring the motorists' rights movement? Jeremy Clarkson? Richard Hammond? Not a bit of it. Step forward the former Fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford, and pioneer TV historian, A.J.P. Taylor. It was Taylor - the self-consciously tweedy, bow-tied don - who first provided the intellectual rationale for today's angry activists of the road.

In 1957 Taylor was the history man of the moment. His beguiling TV lectures drew huge audiences - a sweep of the curtain, a shuffle into the spotlight, a quick “ladies and gentleman” before he was off on a tour d'horizon of the Russian Revolution. Small wonder Lord Beaverbrook signed him up as a columnist for the Sunday Express.

It was an odd appointment. Beaverbrook was an imperialist of the old school, while Taylor styled himself a man of the Left whose political odyssey took him from old-fashioned liberalism via Marxism to the Labour party and CND.

But from that perch, Taylor laid the framework for today's petrol protagonists. Again and again, he championed the individual motorist versus the overweening State. In the 1960s car ownership rose towards 12million, six times as many cars as there had been only 20 years before. With pile-ups and death rates mounting, the Government needed to act on speed and safety. Seatbelts, speed limits and other limitations were enacted and the Sunday Express became a redoubt of opposition.

Taylor's huge oeuvre defies easy analysis, but has one recurring theme: the pathologically nefarious nature of Germany in European history. Heavily influenced by his intellectual mentor, the Jewish émigré Lewis Namier, Taylor's vehemently anti-Teutonic prejudice culminated in his infamous work The Course of German History with its focus on the problem of “the German character”.

In his Sunday journalism there is a clear readover from hostility toward the German State to concerns over Whitehall infringements on motoring. For Taylor, the growth of safety legislation was to see a new Prussian menace suffocating the citizen. He made the rights of the motorist the battleground for a struggle between traditional British freedom and continental statism.

At the top of his hate list was the Breathalyser. In an article entitled “Why pick on the private motorist?”, he railed against anti-drink-driving measures. The motorist, he complained, will “be asked questions which neither the police nor anyone else has the right to ask him. When did he last drink? How much did he drink last week?” “Yet no one has the slightest idea how much alcohol affects a driver,” the boozy don declared. “The slightly tired driver, for instance, may actually be improved by a glass of sherry.”

All this meant that, as in wartime Germany, “British citizens will cease to be treated as human beings and will become slaves of the machine”.

Taylor ranted about the evils of caravan drivers (“lumbering along at 25mph”), drunken pedestrians falling in the way of cars, and the piracy of fining motorists “£10 for failing to stop at halt signs”, but his real bête noire was Barbara Castle, the Transport Minister, and her extension of the speed limit. Taylor advocated minimum speeds on motorways. “The man who drives too fast can have his licence taken away from him,” he opined. “Why not the same punishment for the man who persistently drives too slowly?” “I have been driving a car for 45 years,” he concluded. “I have consistently ignored all the various speed limits. Never once have I encountered the slightest risk as a result.” For one recent biographer, Taylor's articles “read oddly, especially for those who know he was a notably reckless driver, revelling in speed and, like so many others of the time, driving after drinking alcohol.”

But his Sunday Express articles provide a road map for the modern motorists' lobby. As they moan about cameras, bus lanes, congestion charges, parking meters, fuel tax and speed bumps, the sentiment is pure Taylor. His historical fears about a looming State interfering with an Englishman's rights is all there in their website tirades against busybody bureaucrats and officious police using “'elf and safety” to undermine ancient freedoms.

Of course, Clarkson and Hammond do it all with a great deal more aplomb. But behind their TV banter, anarchic races and “Star in a Reasonably Priced Car”, the same libertarian sentiments linger. Weekly the BBC Two presenters battle against speed limits and safety precautions, demanding the right to use the (subsidised) road as they see fit free of police and politicians. Theirs is a seductive and populist credo, but whether they appreciate its historical lineage is unclear. For his part, A.J.P. Taylor would have been only too delighted to join the Top Gear team. It was, after all, his idea.

Tristram Hunt's The Joy of Motoring is on BBC Four on Wednesday at 9pm

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