Check your answers.
INDIVIDUAL FREEDOM
The death of Fred Hill was recorded by a (01) leading article in the Times newspaper. Fred was 74 years old and died in prison. He was in prison for the 32nd time. Why?. (02) Not for any great crime, but for a reason you may find difficult to understand. You see, Fred was a motorcyclist who (03) refused to wear a crash helmet.
He believed that he was a safer motorcyclist (04) without a crash helmet. More importantly, he believed that, right or wrong, the decision to wear a crash helmet was his to (05) take. It was not for the State to tell him (06) what to do. So Fred went out on his old motorbike with no helmet, over and over again.
The police (07) knew him. They (08) turned a blind eye when they could. But often they had no choice. And in the court they had no choice (09) but to send him to prison because he refused to pay the fines. They usually (10) gave him 30 days. But the last time, they gave the old man two months. Some way through the sentence, Fred suffered a heart attack and died.
Was he heroic? If he was, he was a most unlikely hero. But perhaps we do need someone to (11) look out for the little liberties, the sort of (12) thing which the greater boring mass of "public opinion" considers too silly, too undignified, not worth (13) bothering about. The sort of thing there are no votes in for (14) anyone Fred Hill stood for an individual freedom, which is a freedom to do things that the (15) public generally considers to be silly, harmful, immoral or unnecessary.
