JOHN VICKERS SIR,-1 should be grateful if you would allow
me to make it clear that we are continuing the Campaign until capital punishment has been abolished. The Homicide Act only received the Royal Assent on March 21 and it is too early yet to say what (if any) effect it will have on the homicide rate. There was no execution between August, 1955, and the Act. In the eighteen months of executions before August, 1955, the number of murders in the United Kingdom known to the police was 268. In the eighteen months without executions between August, 1955, and the Act the number was 266. Apart from the fact that the Attorney-General, who thought the case of sufficient importance to warrant his personal intervention and appearance at the second hearing of the appeal (the Lord Chief Justice having described it as 'a case of great im- portance'), nevertheless refused to allow an appeal to the House of Lords, the case of John Vickers, who had no intention to kill, in contrast with e.g. the slow poisoner who commits no capital offence, only serves to show that, as we had always said, there is no moral basis for this Act. Its anomalies and absurdities are such that on any view it cannot
National Campaign for the Abolition of Capital Punishment
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