REASONS OF STATE: KENYA SIR,—The reasoning expressed in ' Reasons of
State: Kenya' (Spectator, August 19) is rather difficult to follow.
The author seems to think that the execution of Poole was an act of injustice committed for reasons of race feeling; that, in order to avoid giving the impression that there is a special, lenient code of justice for white men in Kenya, we have hanged a man who would not otherwise have been hanged. But he gives no reason for believing this. In his own words, 'there seems no doubt that he [Poole] was guilty as charged.' If Poole had himself been an African, or if his victim had been white, would the sentence still have been carried out? I am sure it would, and your author makes no attempt to claim that it wouldn't. It is surely irrele- vant to protest, as he does, that Poole's crime is one 'for which no white man has been executed in the entire history of the colony.' This only means that up till now one particular form of murder had always escaped its legal punishment. Now it has been punished as the law provides.
I quite agree that the death penalty itself is wrong. But your author was not making a case against capital punishment as such. He was pro- testing that Poole's colour had contributed to his execution, when' in fact it had only failed to save him from it. If he has a rational defence of this argument, it would he interesting to hear what it is. —Yours faithfully, 40 Hornion Street, W8
CHARLES WRONG
[Mr. Wrong answers his own argument when he says that 'up till now one particular form of murder has always escaped its legal punishment. Now it has been punished as the law provides.' But the only thing that has changed in the interim is the racial attitude of the authorities in Kenya. If a man who would not previously have been executed is now executed it is to that fact we must look for an explanation.-Editor, Spectator.]
Previous page
