Murder (Abolition of Death Penalty) Bill (Committee Stage)

Part of the debate – in the House of Commons at 12:00 am on 18 March 1965.

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Photo of Sir Kenneth Pickthorn Sir Kenneth Pickthorn , Carlton 12:00, 18 March 1965

I hope that I am as little tempted as any man to bandy charges of sharp practice, and so forth, and I am under no such temptation this evening. We are entitled to ask—if I might have the attention of the lion. Member for Nelson and Colne (Mr. Sydney Silverman), who is in charge of the Bill. I listened to 10 interventions from the hon. Gentleman and a speech, and to all the other speeches today except one and a half, and I beg now that I may have the attention of those persons who are most interested in the Bill: I do the hon. Member the honour of supposing that he comes first in that list.

I have always taken it for granted that when we address each other as "honourable Gentlemen", this implies, without prejudice to the definition of the word "sincerity", that each one of us feels himself to be sincere enough to think it proper, at least publicly, to assume the sincerity of others.

There has been a good deal of conscience about the Bill and its predecessors. I have no wish whatever to ques- tion the sovereignty of conscience nor the sincerity of those who have been rather, I will not say ostentatiously, but at least noticeably, aware of it. They must pay us the compliment of making the same assumption and I resent very much the continuous talk today about the artificial nature of the objections either to this Motion or to all or any part of the Government's conduct with regard to the Bill.

I approach the hon. Member for Ebbw Vale (Mr. Michael Foot), whom I seem to have lost—and I am sorry for that—I will not say with timidity, but with shyness and deprecation, because on the last occasion on which he spoke he rebuked me for garrulity. Conscious as I am of the sins of most hon. Members of this House, including myself, I must own that the fact that Jemmy Twitcher should peach me did a little surprise me. I want, if I may, to make some references to the hon. Member even in his absence.

The hon. Member for Nelson and Colne told us that the Bill is not a matter of principle, that the Motion today is still less a matter of principle, that the principle has all been settled and that that has all happened. Today's proceeding, he told us, is a mere consequential Amendment. I almost could wish that the hon. Member were a Minister in charge of a Bill on his side of the House. What fun it would be when he used the expression "a mere consequential Amendment" about something of the importance either of the Bill in question or even of today's Motion.

It is not a mere consequential Amendment. It is a completion meant to be, as near as anything human may, irreversible, of the principle that in this country the State has no duty and no right ever to kill judicially. That is an important matter. It ought not to be completed without full discussion.

The hon. Member for Ebbw Vale had some constitutional learning, I thought partly mistaken, about immigration, but I may be wrong about that. Where, however, I am sure that the hon. Member was wrong was that he argued that because the Commonwealth Immigrants Act was constitutional, although some people thought it was not, therefore, although he did not deny that the present Bill is constitutional, yet he said that having demonstrated that it is difficult to draw a line or make a definition between constitutional and non-constitutional, therefore he wiped that argument away. I am sure that the hon. Member for Nelson and Colne had no patience with that logic.

The poet Housman admitted that he did not know how to define the difference between a small dog and a big dog, but that he seldom found difficulty in knowing which was confronting him. It may be difficult to define so that one is sure that everything on one side of the line will be constitutional and everything on the other side of the line not constitutional.

What is the most constitutional thing there can be about human society? It is whether the governing organ in a trade union, a party whips' office, a nation, an empire, a world government or whatever else has what rights and duties as the governing organ in exercising force, especially in exercising the decisive force of execution; and much the most respectable argument used for this and similar Bills has been that when that last is done, it is irreversible. It is not an unanswerable argument, but, still, that is a fair and good argument. It is an argument which it cannot be denied is constitutional, whatever else can be denied to be constitutional.

Incidentally, I hope that I am not boasting falsely. Earlier in the debate somebody quoted Mr. Herbert Morrison's pledge that the Socialist Government of that time would not send any constitutional Bills upstairs. That was in answer to a challenge from me, and I have always been glad that it was made. I was never sure that it was fully kept, though I am not making any charges of sharp practice there—there were difficulties of definition.

These matters are difficult to define, but this tonight is a constitutional matter. It is a constitutional matter, the primary one, and the ultimate one, and many of the most important in between. It involves an action irreversible in a unique sense, and the whole case against capital punishment has been put on those assumptions.

I would not dare to accuse any hon. Gentleman opposite of insincerity or sharp practice; but, that being so, to turn round at this stage and tell us that this is a mere consequential Amendment and then—I do not grumble at this; no doubt enough of me is enough—pop out of the Chamber, seems to me to be if not sharp practice, at any rate rather slight toying with a great subject. I hope that nobody on this side again, and certainly not I, will be accused of not being serious about this, or of not meaning what we say about it.

Incidentally, I do not want to attack the Leader of the House. If it is not patronising or treacherous to say so, I think that of a rotten lot he is about the best. He seems to be pretty competent, and almost always to have polite language even if his intentions are wicked. It is all very well for his hon. Friend the Member for Nelson and Colne to leap chivalrously to his defence when "sharp practice" dropped from some indiscreet lips, but one or other, or both of them, he and the right hon. Gentleman must have been conscious, before the fifty-ninth minute of the eleventh hour, that it was at least arguable that this was a matter of high constitutional importance, and that the normal practice of the House, and the invariable claim on the Opposition side, is that where a Bill is beyond question, constitutional, it is taken for granted that it will be left on the Floor of the House; and I for one took it for granted.

When I asked one or two of my hon. Friends and was told that that was so, I went off to bed, All that perhaps is of no great importance, but it may perhaps have cleared some memories—[Laughter.] Hon. Gentlemen opposite may laugh at my saying that I am not very important, but I am not less skilled in derision than most of them, and I am prepared to laugh at them on similar ground tomorrow.

That is the first thing that ought to be said in commenting on some of the earlier speeches. The second thing is this: we have been accused that what we are really doing and meaning is killing the Bill. I am against the Bill. If the Bill is killed, I shall be pleased, but that is not what I am after, and it is not what I have been after throughout the discussion since that Division. Hon and right hon. Gentlemen have got ulterior motives, but to do the Lord President of the Council justice once more, if I may do him justice twice in an evening, he in his speech, only rather cautiously and slightly, admitted—but he did admit, and he can read it tomorrow in HANSARD, and he will surely agree with me that he did admit—that there was one silver lining to the cloud of this small imbroglio, and that was that it formed—mixing my metaphors a bit—a kind of snow plough or ballon d'essai, for something which he had always wanted, to turn the House into a highly paid set of professionals spending all their time here and therefore under the Chief Whip.

Every other speaker on the other side—the Lord President of the Council did it only by indirection, I admit, by innuendo, but I would undertake to show in any court of law that it was in his words—every other speaker who spoke on the other side, I think I am right in saying, but I did not hear one—certainly practically every other Member on the other side—said the same thing but plainer and louder.

But the hon. Member for Nelson and Colne just said, "Pouf! What a misuse of the word 'principle'. It does not matter in the least whether we have a vote at 2.30 or 3.30 or 11.30. It is not important. It is a matter of the convenience of a timetable." Right ho. He warns about the thick other end of this wedge. Why cannot any Government who can rely on a majority of two—the present Government so far have had a majority rather greater, but cannot rely on more than two—why should not any Government who can really rely on a majority of two, say, "We will not have Divisions any more ever, except that the Clerk will register the end of each debate and what propositions are then under discussion, and all the Divisions on all such debates so registered shall all happen at 3 o'clock in the morning 10 days later"? That is a slight absurdity, but it is no more an absurdity than the talk of hon. Members opposite would have seemed to their grandfathers, and than consequentially have been thought an absurdity.

It is a gross absurdity. That is the second thing I thought ought to be said at this stage.

Now I come to the third thing I want to say about it. This is the primary, fun- damental constitutional question: on what authority who may be killed for having done what? I do not apologise for repeating that. How do we expect, in a mature Parliamentary country, this question to be settled? How do we expect it to be settled? Do we expect it to be settled by a Private Member's Bill? That seems to me grossly improper.

I am bound to say that, to me, it seems grossly improper also it should be settled without Whips. I have never ceased from blaming the Government, that of my own party, for taking the Whips off on the first hanging Bill, because it seems to me that if there is one thing the Government are entitled to know about, and if there is one thing everybody else is entitled to refuse to admit except on the advice of the Government, it is this question: what is the necessary amount of human execution, without which the odds are government would be even worse carried on than it is at present? For that question I think the Whips should always be on all the time. That may leave people with consciences, like the hon. Member for Nelson and Colne, like me, for that matter, in some difficulty, since because of our consciences we might be compelled to vote against the Whips, and be damned to them. In my judgment the Whips should have been on from the first.

Should it have been done by way of a Private Member's Bill? No. That is grossly and sillily unconstitutional. If it should not be done by a Private Member's Bill, should it have been done by a Government Bill? That is not what the Government are doing. They put a note in the Queen's Speech—I do not know whether it is unprecedented, but it was quite odd, if not quite unique—saying, "There will be an unpredictable Bill on this topic, and we shall give time for it." But when the occasion came they did not give time for it; they gave time for the Second Reading, and beyond that they said, "This is now a matter of Government time, and since Government time is what Government omnipotence depends on, we must have our own way about this. We must not listen to you."

Should it have been done with the Whips on or off? It was done neither way. It was done with the Whips sometimes on and sometimes off. Should it have been done by a Private Member's Bill or by a Government Bill? I am sure that if it should have been done by either it should have been done by a Government Bill—but it was not; it was done half by one and half by the other, and with the Whips off and on.

Now it is being done avowedly and with boastings from the other side in the hope and with the intention that it will go a considerable way towards altering the effective composition and the normal habits of the House of Commons. That is grossly unconstitutional. If such a thing should be done it should be done after the most careful discussion between parties, and individuals of any party or no party, and especially between poor little beasts like me who are faithful Members of their party but who seldom agree with it. The last thing that it should ever be is a by-product of an impropriety—a bastard of a bastard—of this silly muddle which the Government have got into and which they do not like being called sharp practice.

I warn hon. and right hon. Members opposite that this is a matter of the utmost importance. It is not a funny matter at all. Perhaps rightly, perhaps wrongly, largely by accident, the British constitution as it existed not so long ago—and as it could still be thought to exist when I was a boy—has gradually been whittled away. There is nothing of it left now except, perhaps, the law of evidence and certainly the procedure and custom of this House. All the other checks and balances are gone. "We are the masters now", "How many Ministers there are depends on what the Prime Minister thinks will be convenient"—and all that. These things have gone beyond all checking and balancing. They are matters of one-time "Yes" or "No".

I warn hon. and right hon. Members opposite of another thing: the world is divided. We are now fighting as our ancestors did from 1791 to 1815—[Laughter.]that was not funny either. I do not know which hon. Members opposite took part—[HON. MEMBERS:"1815?"]—yes, 1815. I know quite well what I said. If any of them did take part, either directly or ancestrally, they will know very well that 16 years —25 years nearly—is far more than five times five. We did it in five years and know how far more that was than four. It was a very long time. This war against an armed doctrine now is not, as is generally assumed in the House, a war for and against democracy. It is a war for and against constitutionalism, which is an older and deeper thing, without which democracy will be, in a short time, a fraud and then a corpse. It is a war against an armed doctrine, for nearly six years in the last war and which, if we are not fighting, we are at any rate enduring now. In this war, that this House should, with whatever noble motives and in whatever consciousness of superior sincerity, permit itself to legislate in this matter by a series of unconsitutional tricks, is a great defeat in this war which we are now enduring.