A Day at the Lords
N July of last year 238 peers found their way I to the House of Lords to vote against Mr. Silverman's Bill to abolish the death penalty. Last week the Lords, without a division, gave a second reading to a Government Bill which will reduce hangings by two-thirds. The Lords' respect for the Government has seldom been more convinc- ingly demonstrated.
In drawing up its Bill the Government was hindered less by its pledges or by its respect for a free vote of the House of Commons, than by the small room for manoeuvre left to it—between the overwhelming retentionist majority at the Conservative Party Conference and in the House of .Lords on the one hand and the Tory aboli- tionists in the Commons on the other. There was also the difficulty that a fair and logical compro- mise on this matter has long been known to be impossible. In spite of these handicaps the Gov- ernment has not done too badly. However shabby its origins and however unnecessary its chief objective, the Bill is at least an improvement on the 'compromise' Bill which was introduced in similar circumstances in 1948. And quite apart from the question of the death penalty it makes some useful changes in the law of murder.
The two most interesting speeches of the debate were those of the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Lord Chief Justice. Dr. Fisher said he could not support the present position, because its clum- sirms, which was particularly due to 'the fact that 50 per cent. of those condemned to death were in fact reprieved,' robbed 'the death penalty of the kind of solemnity and power in the public life of the community that it ought to have.' Remembering the hole-and-corner way in which hanging is carried out, and the general sordid- ness and obscenity that surround it, it is not entirely clear exactly what 'kind of solemnity and power' the Archbishop had in mind. Being against the present position because 50 per cent. of those condemned are reprieved, the Arch- bishop found himself 'entirely able to support the present Bill,' under which, the Lord Chancellor estimated, 33 per cent. of those condemned will be reprieved.
According to the Archbishop the Bill 'does not attempt to distinguish degrees of murder,' but 'does create certain clearly defined categories of killing which shall carry the death penalty'—a distinction of some refinement. Dr. Fisher thought it was 'important for the public to learn that they ought not to judge what the law shall do by emotional reaction to degrees of horror'—a view which Lord Goddard would hardly share and which seems rather at variance with the Arch- bishop's suggestion in 1948 that murder should be divided into murders 'foul' and murders 'most foul.'
'The whole matter, I suggest;' said Dr. Fisher, 'is not one of deep principle but one of expedi- ency, as one takes into view the general state of the country and popular opinion.' This sort of realpolitik sounds well enough in a jolly speech in the House of Lords, but prison chaplains may not find it a very fruitful approach for bringing condemned men into a suitable frame of mind for their execution. Dr. Fisher seemed to give the impression that his co-Primate agreed with him that moral principles were not involved. Luckily the Archbishop of York was able in a one-sentence intervention later in the debate to make clear that, like the Bishop of Chichester, he thought that the Bill did raise moral considera- tions. It is a pity that Dr. Ramsey was not able to state his views in full, but they are probably similar to those expressed by Dr. Fisher in 1948: 'Christian belief is that human life is to be treated as a sacred thing, as a trust from God, and not, save in the utmost need, to be wittingly ended by man.' In his peroration Dr. Fisher stated that the controversy was 'a damage to the dignity of the country' and appealed to aboli- tionists to keep quiet so that 'this act . . . may enable the nation to respect itself.' As the con- troversy over capital punishment has been going on for 150 years, the country's dignity must have been almost irretrievably damaged; and a Bill which, inter alia, decides that a man who, break- ing into a house for the purpose of theft, com- mits murder, is hanged, while one who, breaking into a house for the purpose of rape commits murder, is not, is likely to have at best a marginal effect on the nation's self-respect.
The Lord Chief Justice welcomed the Bill because it would 'put an end to the perfectly intolerable situation which exists at present . . . and which is causing the judges considerable embarrassment.' The intolerable situation was that all murderers were being reprieved and none were being hanged. For many years about half the death sentences pronounced by judges have not been carried out, so the period of eighteen months during which none has been carried out should not have caused them insup- portable embarrassment. What might have been expected to be a greater embarrassment for Lord Goddard was that he had denounced the 1948 Bill because it gave greater protection to • policemen than to other citizens and because it created anomalies; and that the present Bill does'-: both these things. In the event, however, this did not embarrass the Lord Chief Justice at all. He did not mention the point.
Instead he complained that the Home Secre- tary had been acting unconstitutionally in recom- mending a reprieve to every murderer, since to do so was an infringement of the Bill of Rights of 1688 which had condemned the 'suspending power' and the 'dispensing power as it hath been exercised of late.' As the constitution is con- tinuously evolving, and precedents are being created all the time, a comparison between James II exempting Roman Catholics from the penal laws and the Home Secretary commuting death sentences to ones of life imprisonment, after the House of Commons had voted to abolish capital punishment, is perhaps rather academic. Lord Goddard particularly complained of the Penland murderer' having been reprieved, since under the Government's new Bill it would have been a capital murder; and with the bad luck that seems to dog him in the House of Lords he seriously misquoted the words of the judge in that case.
Lord Salisbury quoted a Gallup poll which showed that 25 per cent. were in favour of keep- ing the law as it is, 13 per cent. were in favour of complete abolition, and 57 per cent. wanted hanging kept for certain cases. He did not quote, presumably for the sake of clarity, the results of a poll taken from the same sample at the same time that if the no-hanging policy were continued 36 per cent. would approve and 47 per cent. dis- approve. Lord Salisbury had said of the 1948 compromise that the Government had tried `to define what cannot in fact be defined,' but it transpired that he had said this merely because the compromise 'was a bad one and an imprac- ticable one.' In 1948 he had also said that the Government's proposal was 'a mere pis aller introduced not because of its intrinsic merits but . . . to get the Government out of a jam.' The present Bill was described by Lord Temple- wood in a weighty speech as 'nothing more than an expedient to extricate the Government out of a diflicult position.' Lord Salisbury thought this 'rather an unworthy comment.'
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