BRITAIN SUSPENDS DEATH PENALTY

Grey River Argus, 16 April 1948, Page 5

BRITAIN SUSPENDS DEATH PENALTY

On Free Vote in Commons

LONDON, April 14

The House of Commons, by 245 votes to 222, amid cheering and the waving of order papers, to-night carried an amending clause to the Criminal Justice Bill, suspending the death penalty for murder. Mr Sidney Silverman (Labour) who is a solicitor, with the support of 200 members of Parliament of all parties, had moved a new clause to the Criminal Justice Bill to suspend the death penalty for murder for five year’s as an experiment. Mr Christopher Hollis (Conservative), seconded the motion. The Government, although it had expressed the view that the abolition of the death penalty was inadvisable at the moment owing to the increased violence since the end of the war and the numerical weakness of the police, had granted a free vote without permission for Ministers to vote against the Government, although they could abstain.

Mr Silverman had emphasised that the clause did not propose to suspend the death penalty for treason or sabotage, but he alleged there had been miscarriages of justice and innocent men had been hanged. Two men affected by the passage of the Bill are Joseph Smith, aged 24, sentenced to death for the murder of a 71-year-old businessman, W. Bissett, and James Camb, aged 34, a ship’s steward, convicted of the murder of an actress, Gay Gibson, on the high seas. Since January 1 last the Home Secretary, Mr Chuter Ede, has granted 10 reprieves to-murderers under sentence of death in Britain. During the war 82 murderers in Britain 'were hanged and 56 were granted reprieves.

(Rec. 5.5). LONDON, April 15. During the House of Commons debate on the amending of the clause to the Criminal Justice Bill suspending the death penalty for murder, a former Home Secretary, Sir John Anderson, said that he thought that the death penalty reinforced the protection for society, and diminished risks to which the police were imposed. Sir John Anderson told Mr M. Silverman that he was sure that no man had been unjustly hanged in Britain in this century. “Where there has been any scintilla of doubt, the Home Secretary has invariably advised commutation”, he said. Sir David Maxwell Fyfe, who was a leading prosecutor at the Nuremberg trials, pointed out that, since 1907, there has been a Court of Criminal Appeal, and said that the chances of injustice had greatly diminished. The Home Secretary, Mr Chuter Ede, replying to the debate, said that the Government believed that the time was not ripe for the repeal of the death penalty, and he did not believe that public opinion favoured it. Mr Chuter Ede said that the fact that three men had been executed for murder in 1948, but that a dozen had been reprieved, showed how carefully these cases were reviewed. Mr Chuter Ede gave it as his oninion that, but for the existence of the death penalty, the total of 134 murders in Britain in 1947 would have been higher. The Times, in an editorial, says: “Most of the more highly civilised States of the world have abolished the death penalty, and no increase in the murders has followed the abolition”. It adds: “If there were the risk of an increase of murders during an experimental period, it would be well worth while if, thereby, a foundation could be established for a lasting decision of the nroblem”.