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The world changed on June 1, 1973. On May 31 the world was traditional, then as the final strokes of midnight died away and June began the world was a different place for us motorcyclists. How or why? Well it was the introduction of the compulsory helmet law for those of us who were to ride a powered two wheeler on Her Majesty’s public highway. There had been mutterings about the subject since motorcycles were invented, but for some reason the attempts to introduce such a law to ‘protect’ us from ourselves kept being defeated. Wearing a crash helmet is a sensible thing to do as even pitching off a bike at low speed can result in a serious head injury. Such compulsion had already been in force for military motorcyclists – introduced by a cash strapped army being unwilling to see the costs of training riders only to have them rendered unable to perform their duties. But for us in civvie street – not actually me of course as in the 1973 I was but 13 and had only just taken my first tentative steps into trials riding and it would be another four years before the ‘L’ plates went on my Ossa – there were howls of outrage at the invasion of personal freedom. The law was backed up by a media campaign showing a couple of rockery/greasery types on high performance bikes alongside a chap in suede shoes, sheepskin jacket on a 125 of some description and a lady in ordinary clothes on a moped. The two outlaw types had safety helmets on while Mr and Mrs Commuter were bare headed and the headline was ‘from June 1 the two on the right will be breaking the law’. All heady stuff… Tim.