The Gallows Must Go

Only on rare occasions do members of the House of Commons get to vote freely on matters of personal conviction, instead of on instruction of party whips. Last week was such an occasion, and the question was one that weighed heavily on many a member's conscience: capital punishment. By a vote of 293 to 262 (four dozen Tories rejecting the stand of Anthony Eden's Cabinet), the House voted to abolish the death penalty for murder.

Hanging is an old Anglo-Saxon custom. In the 13th century, punishment by death, in forms varying from the headsman's ax to the witch's pyre, was imposed as a deterrent for virtually every crime on the books. More than five centuries later, there were still some 200 crimes (including poaching) punishable by death in England. Children as young as seven were hanged. The first sweeping move toward clemency was not made until 1835, when these 200 mortal crimes were cut to four --high treason, murder, piracy, and setting fire to the royal dockyards and arsenals. In practice, since 1861 the death penalty in peacetime has been invoked only for murder. But not until 1868 did Britain outlaw public executions.

In 1866 five members of a royal commission recommended abolition of the death penalty, but no government was willing to take the responsibility for introducing such a law. In 1948, the House of Commons voted to suspend the death penalty for a trial period of five years; but the House of Lords in effect nullified this vote, proposed instead another royal commission "to consider and report" on the question.

Hearts & Heads. While this commission, under the chairmanship of Sir Ernest Gowers, pondered the problem, traveling to many corners of the world in its search for facts, convicted killers went to the gallows, and one such case became a celebrated indictment of capital punishment. A young truck driver named Timothy Evans was hanged in 1950 for the murder of his 14-month-old daughter, largely on the testimony of one John Christie, who, Evans swore, was the real killer. Three years later Christie himself was hanged for another murder, and new evidence made it almost certain that he, and not Evans, had killed the Evans baby.

As Laborite Home Secretary at the time, Chuter Ede had refused to save Evans' life. Convinced later of his mistake, Chuter Ede made a moving confession of error to the House; the Evans case did more than anything else to agitate debate. Sir Ernest Cowers, during the four years his royal commission studied the problem, himself underwent a complete about-face from his original conviction that those who wanted to abolish the death penalty were merely "people whose hearts were bigger than their heads."

"This Dark Stain." For almost seven straight hours last week, a packed House of Commons debated the subject. There were moments of personal drama: a speech by a young Tory confessing how he himself had once been tempted to kill, and had restrained himself only by the thought of the gallows; a description of the horror of a hanging by an old member from Glasgow.

For the most part, the debate was solemn and deeply thoughtful. The most eloquent of the abolitionists was yellow-haired Bevanite Sydney Silverman, whose sarcastic, extreme left-wing speeches usually irritate the House; in this debate he heard a rare cheer as he urged "free men, free women, free Members of Parliament in a free society to wipe this dark stain from our statute books."

Against him, nervous and unhappy in his role, was Home Secretary Gwilym Lloyd-George (son of the late great World War I Prime Minister), whose position under the Queen gives him the final say in matters of criminal life or death. Himself once an ardent abolitionist, Lloyd-George lowered his eyes like a man condemned, as he outlined the government's position. "In taking life," he said, "the state performs its most solemn function . . . There can be no Home Secretary who would not be thankful to be relieved of this terrible burden. [But] if there is reason to think that without capital punishment there might be more murder, then capital punishment should be retained." In this negative way was the government's case made.

There were cheers in the House as the vote was announced. Sir Anthony Eden, looking glumly shaken by the defeat, promised to "give full weight at once" to the House's decision.

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