SCENE IN COMMONS

Sun (Auckland), Volume IV, Issue 940, 5 April 1930, Page 9

SCENE IN COMMONS

HEATED DEBATE ON ARMY PENALTIES DEATH FOR COWARDICE LONDON, Friday. Strong passions were aroused when the House of Commons was in Committee on the annual Army Bill, through the Government’s decision to drop the death penalty for cowardice and for inducing others to take part in acts of cowardice, but to retain it for mutiny and sedition. The Secretary of State for Air, Mr. T. Shaw, admitted that in thus further limiting the death penalty he was acting against the advice of members of the Army Cuncil. A Conservative amendment, seeking to reintroduce the capital penalty for inducing cowardice, was rejected by 288 votes to 165, after an acrimonious discussion, in which the Opposition demanded that the Attorney-General, Sir W. Jowitt, should give a legal opinion on the point whether inducing cowardioe amounted to mutiny, and was therefore punishable by death. The Attorney-General refused to do this, but Mr. Shaw expressed the opinion that a man who deliberately incited others to cowardice was guilty of a crime equivalent to mutiny. An amendment, moved by Sir George Courthope, Conservative member for Rye, Sussex, to retain the death penalty for a man leaving his post or attempting to create a false alarm, was declared carried, amidst Ministerial protests that the question was not clearly understood. An amendment moved by Mr. E. Thurtle, Labour member for Shoreditch, to abolish the death penalty for desertion, and to substitute penal servitude, was carried by 219 votes to 135, on a free vote, amid Labour cheers.