Motor-Cycle Crash Helmets Religious Exemption Act 1976

Who: Sydney Bidwell, MP for Ealing-Southall, who took the Bill through the House of Commons; Lord Avebury, who moved it in the House of Lords; and the Sikhs of Southall and Ealing. In Bidwell's account, G. B. Singh, chairman of the Northcote Ward Labour Party, brought delegations from Siri Guru Singh Sabha (Southall), the Akali Dals and the Sikh Missionary Society to Bidwell's surgery at Hanwell Library, Ealing.

What: The Road Traffic Act 1972 made crash helmets compulsory for motorcyclists and had no religious exemption. Bidwell writes that Sikhs saw the rule as offending the religious requirement to wear the turban. Wikipedia's article on Gyani Sundar Singh Sagar, whose passage on the campaign cites no source, says a National Turban Action Committee was formed after police stopped two Sikh men at Gravesend for riding in turbans, and credits Sagar with helping to win the law.

• 28 January 1975: Bidwell presented a Ten-Minute Rule Bill, which had an unopposed first reading. The Transport Minister, Fred Mulley, had stayed unconvinced when Bidwell met him in 1974, and a motion backing the Bill, signed by 150 MPs, won no debating time.
• 27 February 1976: the Bill was read a second time without debate and sent to a committee.
• 23 June 1976: the committee, chaired by Joyce Butler, agreed the wording. A Government under-secretary, Kenneth Marks, expressed "great sympathy" but raised road safety, and said a turban that had been tested gave no measurable protection, according to Bidwell.
• 16 July 1976: third reading, passed by 40 votes to 11. On 19 July Ivor Stanbrook MP complained that so important a measure had passed without debate, and the Speaker ruled that it was not a point of order.
• 4 October 1976: second reading in the Lords. Lord Avebury argued that the turban is essential to the Sikh religion and that Singapore, Malaysia, Western Australia and Saskatchewan already had exemptions. For the Government, Lord Wells-Pestell said it was neutral, that helmets materially reduce deaths and serious injuries, and that a turban cannot match a tested helmet. The Bill was read a second time without a recorded division.
• 15 November 1976: Royal Assent.

The Act adds a subsection (2A) to section 32 of the Road Traffic Act 1972: a requirement imposed by regulations "shall not apply to any follower of the Sikh religion while he is wearing a turban".

Where: The Parliament of the United Kingdom at Westminster, in the House of Commons and the House of Lords; the campaign was organised in Southall and Ealing, west London.

Why it mattered: It gave turban-wearing Sikhs a legal right to ride a motorcycle without a helmet. On 21 April 1980 the Home Office minister, Mr Brittan, refused a request for a circular to chief constables, saying "Police forces are well aware of these provisions." On 24 March 1983 the House of Lords ruled in Mandla v Dowell Lee that Sikhs are an ethnic group protected by the Race Relations Act 1976 and that a school's ban on a Sikh boy's turban was unlawful, as Gurmit Singh's first volume reports.