Notebook
T hadn't realised until I read the News of 1 the World last Sunday that we still have an official hangman, and a deeply frustrated one at that. Mr Harry Allen, who carried out nearly 100 executions before Parliament inconsiderately abolished the death penalty in 1965, can't wait to get go- ing again. 'I'm still available,' he declared. But if Parliament does decide to restore capital punishment this session, I hope that Mr Allen, who is now 68, will be replaced in the job by somebody else. I don't feel it is comely that the nation's official execu- tioner should publicly express such en- thusiasm for his work. Mr Allen believes that `all murderers should be hanged'. His predecessor Albert Pierrepoint, on the other hand, considers all executions 'bar- baric'. I prefer Mr Pierrepoint's attitude, but at the same time it is strange that anybody should seek the views of either of them. The opinions of hangmen on this question are of particularly little value, for they are likely to be determined to a great extent by whether or not they enjoy the job. However, the popular press has been busy canvassing everybody's opinion on the grounds that hanging is the one political issue guaranteed to arouse popular interest. Both the Daily Mail and the Daily Express have been conducting what they like to call a 'Great Debate' on the subject. Unfor- tunately, the arguments on either side are so few and so familiar that an interesting debate is impossible. The Sunday People organised an opinion poll which showed that 90 per cent of the population would like hanging restored for terrorist murderers and child killers; slightly fewer — about 80 per cent — would like to see it brought back for those who kill policemen or who commit murders during the course of an armed robbery. So there seems to be little room for doubt about what a majority of the people would like. Fortunately hanging remains an issue on which Members of Parliament are expected not to follow public opinion but their individual cons- ciences. According to a survey this week by TV-am, a majority of MPs is still opposed to capital punishment. If a Bill for its restoration is once again defeated, it would be nice to think that the question had been settled once and for all. But such is the strange British obsession with the subject unequalled anywhere else in Europe — that I fear there will be many more 'Great Debates' to come.
Mr Peter Shore, one of the candidates for the leadership of the Labour Party, requested this week that the trade unions should involve all their members in choosing which candidate to support. `There is really no substitute for one person, one vote. That is, as I understand it, democracy,' he said. It could have been Mrs Thatcher talking, and one must be grateful to Mr Shore for giving such timely backing to the Government's plans for democratising the trade unions. He was speaking on the eve of the state opening of Parliament at which the Queen announced that her Government would introduce a Bill to give trade union members greater control over their leaders. The Bill is expected to face stiff Labour Party opposition, but I hope not from Mr Shore, Otherwise he could be suspected of favouring trade union democracy only .when it suits his own per- sonal interest — in this case as a candidate for the party leadership. In the Queen's speech Mrs Thatcher has been true to her promise that her landslide election victory would not result in any lurch towards ex- tremism on the part of the Government. There was nothing new or surprising in it. One disappointment is that it is going to take so long to abolish the Greater London Council and the other metropolitan authorities. The Queen's speech says only that proposals for this are 'to be prepared', though in the meantime the Government will take steps to remove London Transport from Mr Ken Livingstone's control. One of the many difficulties seems to be that the 3,500 employees of the GLC will be expec- ting hefty redundancy payments when their jobs are ended. Meanwhile, Sir William Rees-Mogg is worrying how the arts will be supported without the patronage of County Hall. But these are minor considerations. The GLC is not only unnecessary; it has in recent years become a positive nuisance. County Hall should be evacuated as soon as possible, and turned over for use by MPs who have for years been complaining about their overcrowded conditions on the other side of the river. Apart from the Lord Chancellor, Lord Hailsham, there are now no old Eto- nians in the Cabinet following Mrs That- cher's expulsion of Mr Francis Pym and Mr David Howell. This may explain the extra- ordinary behaviour last week of seven Eton boys who ransacked the town's aban- doned parish church and took part in a fen- cing match with the organ pipes. Some sort of protest was to be predicted. But in the lower ranks of the Government Old Etn- nians still have their part to play. Two of them, Mr Alan Clark and Mr Peter Mor- rison, have been assigned to the Depart- ment of Employment. This is consistent with Mr Norman Tebbit's agreeable policy of teasing the trade unions as much as possible. The appointment of Mr Clark in particular will be seen by them as a deliberate provocation.
The Italians are always lyrical in their admiration of the British democratic system. Thus the Rome newspaper La Repubblica: 'We envy the English who have the joy of impassioned elections and at the end a stable government ... it is not for us. We have the exact opposite: a vote without passion and a result without equilibrium.' It is certainly the case that the Italian election which takes place this Sunday has aroused not a fraction of the interest which sur- rounded the British election campaign. But this is not entirely to the Italians' discredit. While a Thatcher victory in Britain alwaY5 seemed likely, the possibility remained that the electorate might return to power a government far more extreme than any con- ceivable government in Italy. While the Labour Party was finally rejected, it was not excluded as a possible party of govern- ment. In Italy, on the other hand, a party with a far less extreme programme than Labour — the Italian Communist Party — has been consistently kept out of power by the electorate ever since the war. It has never managed to obtain the biggest share of the votes, and it will not do so this time despite the fact that it does not want more nationalisation, it supports the European Common Market and is rather more com- mitted than Labour to NATO. The result will be another weak, unsteady and pro- bably corrupt government led by the Chris- tian Democrats. But Italians are used .to such governments and have learnt to live with them successfully. Weak government in Italy has, indeed, produced some of the effects which Mrs Thatcher hopes to pro- duce with strong government here. Expec- ting nothing from authority, Italians have acquired the habit of coping on their own. Small family businesses proliferate, manY of them outside the tax system. As a result there is much more prosperity than the of- ficial economic statistics would indicate. S0 long as Italian elections remain lacking in passion, we may look to the future of ItalY with reasonable confidence.
Alexander Chancellor
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