The example set by Fred Hill in defying the compulsory helmet law throughout the nineteen seventies and eighties was extraordinary.
Nowhere in the world has anyone made such exceptional sacrifices in the name of bikers’ freedoms.
A former army dispatch rider fighting for freedom in WW2, Fred was incensed by the compulsory helmet law.
He rode everywhere in an old beret, collecting hundreds of tickets.
Fred’s refusal to pay the fines for helmet-less riding led to 31 jail sentences.
Once in the dock of a magistrate’s court where a lady magistrate berated his lawlessness, Fred took the opportunity to remind her that if it hadn’t been for women breaking the law some years ago, she wouldn’t be sitting where she was.
Fred was seventy four years old when, in 1984, half way through a barbaric 60 day sentence, he died from a heart attack inĀ London’s gruesome Pentonville Prison.
Whether the helmet issue is important to you or not, we all owe it, not only to Fred but to ourselves, to sustain a ceaseless call for the reform of this outrageous legislation MAG is not and never has been anti-helmet.
We just think it is wrong to criminalise peope who wish to exercise choice over what they ride and what they wear.
The helmet law made naff all difference to fatality rates, it’s a complete red herring.
In a country where violent yobs walk free from courts, laughing at the law, is it right or proportionate to criminalise and imprison those who just want to have choice over what they wear?
Be it dayglo, be it body armour, be it a helmet. It’s all about the same thing – choice.
Is that really too much to expect?
Details of Fred Hill RunsĀ Click Here