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Tag: 1964

  • Queen Elizabeth II – 1964 Christmas Broadcast

    Queen Elizabeth II – 1964 Christmas Broadcast

    The Christmas Broadcast made by HM Queen Elizabeth II on 25 December 1964.

    As I begin my Christmas Broadcast to you, the people of Great Britain and of the other Commonwealth countries, my mind travels far away, and for one moment I seem to be with you in many countries, which are now almost as familiar as my own native land.

    To you all, my family and I send our affectionate greetings and hope that your Christmas is a happy one.

    Let us think for a moment about this great Commonwealth. What is this wealth which we have in common and which is so much more than our collective resources, massive though they are?

    I know that life is hard for many. The problems which face mankind often seem to defy solution. Some of our Commonwealth friends overseas are grappling with difficulties unknown in a complex industrial country such as Great Britain.

    There are difficulties of over-population, there is hunger, and drought and lack of power. There are yearly tens of thousands of young people flocking into schools, seeking education.

    I welcome the chance of hearing more about these problems when individual Ministers from the Commonwealth come to this country, and also on such special occasions as the Prime Ministers’ Meetings.

    At moments like this I have the benefit, not only of getting to know some of my Prime Ministers better, but of welcoming leaders from the new nations of the Commonwealth.

    I value very highly these meetings, which allow me to draw on the wisdom of such a representative gathering. I believe that in God’s good time all the peoples of our Commonwealth, working side by side, will attain prosperity.

    The thread which runs through our Commonwealth is love of freedom, and it is perhaps in this, more than in anything else, that our real wealth lies. Now the word ‘freedom’, like the word ‘democracy’, is a simple one implying a simple idea, and yet freedom, to be effective, must be disciplined.

    Absolute freedom is a state unknown to the historian. The many ancient institutions and traditions which we have inherited, and which are familiar to us all, provide a framework and a dignified background to our way of life. If it is not to degenerate, freedom must be maintained by a thousand invisible forces, self-discipline, the Common Law, the right of citizens to assemble, and to speak and argue.

    We do not wish to impose a particular form of Government on any peoples in the world; we merely say, “This is what we do; we know it’s not perfect, but it is the best system that we have been able to create after many centuries of trial and error.”

    All of us who have been blessed with young families know from long experience that when one’s house is at its noisiest, there is often less cause for anxiety. The creaking of a ship in a heavy sea is music in the ears of the captain on the bridge. In fact little is static and without movement there can be no progress.

    Some speak today as though the age of adventure and initiative is past. On the contrary, never have the challenges been greater or more urgent. The fight against poverty, malnutrition and ignorance is harder than ever, and we must do all in our power to see that science is directed towards solving these problems.

    I would like to say one more word to the young people of the Commonwealth. Upon you rests our hope for the future. You young people are needed; there is a great task ahead of you – the building of a new world.

    You have brains and courage, imagination and humanity; direct them to the things that have to be achieved in this century, if mankind is to live together in happiness and prosperity.

    God bless you and a very, very happy Christmas to you all.

  • Peter Rawlinson – 1964 Speech on the Abolition of the Death Penalty

    Peter Rawlinson – 1964 Speech on the Abolition of the Death Penalty

    The speech made by Peter Rawlinson, the then Conservative MP for Epsom, in the House of Commons on 21 December 1964.

    The hon. Member for Nelson and Colne (Mr. Sydney Silverman) in the first half-hour of his speech, referred to the Amendment and to what he said were various ingenious technicalities. He will forgive me, I hope, if I deal solely with the Bill, which, I understand, is the Murder (Abolition of Death Penalty) Bill—a Bill which I oppose.

    The hon. Member described capital punishment as a grotesque barbarity. I think that there is no one in the House who would not agree that execution by solemn judicial process is a terrible and awful exercise of the authority of the State and of the people. So, also, terrible and awful is the murder of one person by another. It is the most terrible crime that one person can commit against another. Every rational person, when thinking of this serious problem—every rational person inside the House and throughout the country—will always be moved to consider it with mixed feelings of revulsion, of horror and of compassion. Compassion is not the monopoly of any group of people who hold any particular view in this very serious argument.

    This is an argument which crosses the lines of ordinary political controversy and almost of political instinct. It is something which depends on the personal judgment and personal conscience of every Member in the House. It is a matter in which one’s personal experience brings a view, a judgment and eventually a decision which has to be made, and no amount of statistics, of studies and reports affect in most people’s minds their final decision.

    Before the Homicide Act, 1957, in the practise of my profession, I was affected gravely on many occasions by the solemn procedure of the death penalty which I knew in those cases would never be carried out. I believed that it was wholly wrong in a case of that kind and an outrageous penalty prescribed for that act which was then murder under the law, but which in my view was not such thing in reality. So if that had been the price of retention, I think that I would have had grave concern. Therefore, I wholeheartedly welcomed the 1956 proposals and the 1957 Act.

    There is much misconception about the 1957 Act and the motives and ideas of the people who supported it. At that time and now some of us believed that it was an Act which represented the right way of dealing with the problem of capital punishment. It abolished certain technical matters, such as “constructive malice”, it established a new doctrine, of provocation, and it applied the Scottish law of diminished responsibility. It so limited and confined what had been the crime of murder.

    The 1957 Act defined as the crime of capital murder, for which the supreme penalty should apply, murder in the course of theft applying to the gang or robber, and murder by shooting applying to the gangster with a gun, the man who had gone out and acquired a gun or had stolen one, and had bought or stolen the ammunition, who had put the ammunition into the gun, put the gun into his pocket, loaded it and had taken it with him in committing a crime of robbery and then used it.

    The Act retained the death penalty for the killing of a policeman or warder, as well as for the double killing. These things exercised the minds of the most moderate people when we debated this subject in 1956 and 1957. It was the fear—a perfectly honourable fear shared by many people, and shared by the Executive at that time—of the effect of abolition and what the result would be on the practices of the professional criminal if there were total abolition. Would there be an increase of violence or an increase in the use of firearms? It was that which exercised our minds.

    We wondered in 1956 and 1957 whether this country’s crime and criminal activities would develop as they have done overseas; into the use of gangs and gangsters, armed with guns. Would there be an increased danger to the public and would the police have to be armed? All these questions were in our minds during those debates. It was inevitable that our minds should have been exercised in that way.

    Of course it is right for the hon. Member for Nelson and Colne to agree—as he said when replying to an intervention by my hon. Friend the Member for Ilford, North (Mr. Iremonger)—that the 1957 Act adopted what the Royal Commission had stated about the moral heinousness of crime. The Commission said that it could not apply to moral heinousness. One may be able to use that in the exercise of statutory powers where one has power to release, but moral heinousness depends not on any objective characteristic or on a class of offence but on a particular situation, the circumstances of a particular offence and of a particular offender. As my hon. Friend the Member for Ilford, North pointed out, it did not claim to distinguish between different categories of murder on the score of heinousness. That, as I say, no statue can do.

    The 1957 Act was produced against the background of the time of a sharp increase in crimes of violence and it set up a frontier, a line, between capital and non-capital murder and it said, in effect, “Cross it at your peril”. It said, “Death where you kill in the course of committing a crime”, and “Death where it affects law and order”.

    Where one creates a line and frontier, there are bound to be anomalies. This applies to any other crime. Crime can be varied between the commission of the same act, but in a different way. The difference between common assault and manslaughter may depend on the thickness of a skull. In certain sex crimes it depend on the sixteenth birthday of a girl as to what the punishment will be and in other cases, such as drunken driving, it might depend on the capacity of the person to take drink. Of course the law contains anomalies. It always will and the remedy must be in the discretion which is retained as to punishment.

    When we were debating the 1957 Act the phrase “The Queen’s peace” was often used. It is an historical almost literary, phrase. It means that the conditions of life for the public should be such—and that the public is entitled to demand that it should be such—that the Executive, acting through Parliament, should provide the Queen’s peace so that people may go about their affairs and upon their business in peace. It can never be absolute. No one suggests that it can be. However, the public is entitled to demand of the Executive and Parliament that provision be made to ensure that all is done reasonably to maintain that peace and reasonably to ensure that people can live and work in those conditions.

    Mr. Leo Abse (Pontypool)

    Since the right hon. and learned Gentleman is developing his argument in a manner which is too sophisticated for me, will he explain how a rapist or poisoner does not disturb the peace, in the sense he means, as distinct from a robber? That is the point of argument we are considering now.

    Sir P. Rawlinson

    If the hon. Gentleman will have a little patience I will deal with that point. I do not want to take as long as the hon. Member for Nelson and Colne, although I appreciate that he had the task of moving the Second Reading. I should have thought that the answer would be obvious to the hon. Member for Pontypool (Mr. Abse). He knows it only too well. My argument is that one should use this penalty only where one believes that one can deter. I do not believe that one cannot deter a poisoner or a rapist. There is a duty on the Executive to deter where it can and that is given to the law enforcement officers. It is given to the police. It is a dangerous as well as difficult task.

    Much publicity is given to those occasions when the police are criticised. The failure of the police, whenever it occurs, is always heard about. We do not hear so much and so often, both in the House and outside, of the great executions of courage and bravery which the police perform in the carrying out of their duties. It is easy for us, in the safety of Parliament and sitting here, to theorise. We deal in words. They must deal with crime in action.

    Upon the Executive rests the real responsibility for law and order. The Executive have made their attitude towards the Bill perfectly clear. As the hon. Member for Nelson and Colne pointed out, the Measure was referred to in the Gracious Speech, and he has that signal distinction, one of many to fall upon him. The Government have provided Parliamentary time for the Bill and doubtless they have provided draftsmen to draft it. Nevertheless, Parliament and the public are entitled to obtain from the Government certain advice and information.

    Is there evidence now of an increase of crime by the professional criminal? Is there, in this sense, an increase—or is there evidence of an increase of crime by highly organised gangs? Can they advise positively or can they forecast whether a Bill such as this will, in their view, and in the view of the enforcement machinery, lead to any greater danger to the public? This is the sort of information which I hope we will receive from the Home Secretary.

    Mr. Sydney Silverman

    I agree that I made an inordinately long speech and that I should not now be interrupting. However, I should like the right hon. and learned Gentleman to tell the House, if he can, whether we should retain the death penalty for such crimes as he is describing on the footing that this would deter people from committing them? Is there, in his opinion, any evidence to show that such crimes for which we have retained the death penalty have reduced in number since 1957?

    Sir P. Rawlinson

    I think there is such evidence, but I am giving an impression.

    Mr. Silverman

    Oh.

    Sir P. Rawlinson

    The hon. Member spoke for well over an hour and he now again intervenes when I am trying to reply to his question. I hope that he will not intervene again. I did not intervene when he was speaking. I can only give an impression. My impression is that there has been an increase in organised crime. I also have the impression that great care is and has been taken by professional criminals to avoid the risk of violence leading to death because of the difference between the penalty which is paid where violence ends in death, which is capital punishment.

    On 7th December, 1964, I put down to the Secretary of State for the Home Department a Question for Written Answer, because of my belief—it is only a personal impression and it may be wrong—that there is this increasing possibility of gang warfare and the use of firearms. I asked whether the right hon. and learned Gentleman would introduce legislation to provide that any one found in unlawful possession of a firearm should receive a sentence of not less than five years’ imprisonment, irrespective of any offence they might have committed. My reason for asking the Question is that the unlawful possession of a firearm is an offence that a person has to go to some trouble to commit. The right hon. and learned Gentleman replied that he was not convinced there were sufficient grounds for taking the exceptional step of fixing a minimum penalty.

    I wonder whether he consulted his right hon. and noble Friend the Lord Chancellor, because I am sure that he will appreciate that my suggestion is certainly not a novel one. It was first suggested by the present Lord Chancellor himself in a letter to The Times on 15th July, 1959. His suggestion was an amnesty for all those who took their firearms to a police station. He also suggested then the introduction of legislation imposing a minimum penalty of five years’ imprisonment on those who were found in unlawful possession of firearms.

    If the situation was difficult in 1959, for that is what the Lord Chancellor then believed, what is the position today? I may be wrong, and I hope that the Home Secretary may be able to reassure the House, but I get the impression that there is this increase in organised gangs perhaps arising from matters we discussed in this House in the last Parliament, when new laws were enacted about gambling and clubs and prostitution. I expressed fears, and I believe that the hon. and learned Member for Northampton (Mr. Paget) expressed fears, during the debate on the Wolfenden proposals as to prostitution which led to the Street Offences Act.

    Has the driving of prostitution underground into the clubs led to the greater organisation of protection rackets? Have the police got evidence—and I have the impression that they may have—of gangs being organised in this particular field? There is the fear, and it is an honest fear that I express to the House, that enactment of this Bill at this time would do much to promote the situation that is growing up within the country at this time.

    Public anxiety over crime must be clear to every hon. Member—it is certainly clear to every member of the public. Public opinion has been expressed, and it is public opinion on a matter on which the public have the particular right, have they not, to express a view? We certainly have the duty to pay more attention to it in this respect than, perhaps, in regard to any other single matter.

    That public anxiety has been expressed in the most recent sentencing policy of the courts. We have the actual facts of the mail robbery—just to answer the question posed by the hon. Member for Nelson and Colne. I remember that just after that operation I was in the United States on a visit to the United States Attorney-General, Mr. Robert Kennedy, and I got the impression in that country of a somewhat rueful admiration for that organised gang. They commented on how skilfully the operation had been worked out, and what little violence was used—although, in that regard, people forget what happened to the guard, and the effect it has had upon him, although the operation was meant to be one with little or no violence.

    Those robbers might, because they were so careful not to use violence, or to have used as little violence as possible, have expected a sentence of 14 years’ imprisonment; had the violence involved a death, they would have expected capital punishment. They got sentences of—what was it?—25 or 30 years. Because of such sentences, the Home Secretary has no power to intervene, except in particular circumstances, where he can release them temporarily because of ill health, for instance. Otherwise, he does not have the statutory power to intervene in that case.

    Those men will have to serve their sentences, except for a one-third reduction for good behaviour, so that any of them with a 30-year sentence will have to serve some 20 years. If the price to be paid for using as little violence as was used then is to be greater than that for using violence involving the risk of death, where is the deterrent for such men as these? Suppose courts were permitted by this Bill to impose a minimum, would it ever be more than an effective 20 years? So we come to the situation in which the price of a live witness to a prisoner’s identity may be the same as that for a dead one.

    These are professional criminals. They weigh up the circumstances and the risks involved. They balance risk against risk, and the booty against the penalty. The prisoner whom one sees in prison is very different from the thug he was before imprisonment. I am sure that most hon. Members will appreciate that there exists a serious assault upon our society. The present situation is that in the next 12 months from now 20,000 people will have suffered some violence of some kind and degree. This is the situation which we now face.

    Would the alternative presented by this Bill be really a life sentence? The Home Secretary possesses powers under Section 57 of the Criminal Justice Act, 1948, to release on licence where a person has been sentenced to life imprisonment. That is a statutory power which is exercised by the Home Secretary. That means that the Home Secretary and his advisers have to carry out a determination as to how much of a life sentence a man shall serve. If this Bill becomes law, does the right hon. and learned Gentleman propose to retain that power? Or does he propose to abandon that statutory power and replace it with some form of parole board, as has been suggested?

    This is a matter for the decision of the House. We have to decide whether we can and whether we should abandon this deterrent for something that is nebulous and uncertain, and can never carry the effectiveness of a sentence of capital punishment——

    Mr. Emlyn Hooson (Montgomery)

    I am sure that the right hon. and learned Gentleman is expressing a genuine fear, and a fear that is widely felt, but would he not agree that the same fear has been expressed by members—and distinguished members—of our mutual profession ever since 1800, when the abolition of capital punishment for various offences was imposed? And does not experience show that in every case the fear has proved to be unfounded?

    Sir P. Rawlinson

    I share some of the hon. and learned Gentleman’s commentary to the extent that I would agree that the crime of murder, as I said at the start of my remarks, seems to have been far too wide. It was certainly wrong to have the death penalty for certain killing offences. I do not believe, and I know that I disagree here with some of my hon. Friends, that we can by capital punishment deter the family murder, the crime of passion. I do not believe we can deter the poisoner or the sexually perverted, but I do believe that we can deter the professional criminal who acquires a pistol and goes out to rob, as an occupation, weighing risk against risk.

    I hope that the Solicitor-General will forgive me for not giving him notice that I intended to refer to what he said in his speech in his constituency. I shall refer to only three points which he made. He said that he had been influenced on the question of men being wrongly convicted for possession of offensive weapons, by the evidence in the Mars-Jones Report and also in the Evans case. This question is not related to that of the gun and the gangster. My argument is addressed to the case of the robber and the public crime in the course of robbery. The right hon. and learned Gentleman said that juries did not, and would not, convict in such cases. I would agree if he were referring to the period prior to 1957. I have seen that myself because then a death penalty could be imposed in the case of a mother or child. It seemed totally improper and completely outrageous to be imposed for such a crime although technically it was then murder.

    Since 1957 I think that general experience is different from that. I have recently known juries bring in a verdict of manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility, because that was what the evidence drove them to, but they would rather have brought in a verdict in those circumstances of murder. He said that the 1957 Act can never be effective, but I say that it is effective because it has retained the deterrent in this particular field. Another of the evils of capital punishment is said to be a morbid interest in murder trials.

    Mrs. Anne Kerr (Rochester and Chatham)

    Hear, hear.

    Sir P. Rawlinson

    The hon. Lady says, “Hear, hear,” but it is not capital punishment which creates the morbid interest. It is not the punishment which attracts a great deal of attention or a great deal of morbid interest. It is the circumstances of any case if they are such as to arouse public interest because, say, of the sex nature or the personality involved. That is what brings these weird, strange people—I could not agree more—to a trial. All trials are trials for life.

    All murder trials, whatever the punishment would be, are concerned with death and with life.

    Many other hon. and right hon. Members wish to speak in this debate, so I shall cut short my comments. But I believe that we are witnessing an increase in professional crime and that there is an extension of operations by organised gangs. I fear that the removal of capital punishment from this field of crime would introduce a risk of greater violence, the wider use of guns and greater danger to the public. I am not prepared to brush aside the opinions of those principally engaged in fighting crime on the ipse dixit—I say this with the greatest respect—of humane, sincere and compassionate men as I believe the abolitionists to be. I believe that there is a great distinction between the execution of a murderer and the killing by a man, in murder, for a victim dies unsuspecting and innocent on his lawful ordinary occasions. The murderer dies after he has deliberately with knowledge of the penalty for his deliberate act, committed the crime of murder.

    If there is a balance of choice between those lives, I certainly come down on the side of the life of the victim. I am not prepared to take the risk which I believe exists. Hon. Members may seriously disagree and of course I accept the seriousness of their argument, but I cannot take the risk, as I believe it is a risk, with the lives of innocent citizens, nor can I ignore the opinion of police officers. Terrible and ugly as we recognise the punishment to be, I believe there is a right and a duty on the State to say, “For this deliberate act you will lose your life.” I believe that such warning can and does deter certain men who should be deterred in this day and age. I for one will vote against this Bill.

  • Sydney Silverman – 1964 Speech on the Abolition of the Death Penalty

    Sydney Silverman – 1964 Speech on the Abolition of the Death Penalty

    The speech made by Sydney Silverman, the then Labour MP for Nelson and Colne, in the House of Commons on 21 December 1964.

    I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time.

    My first word must be one of appreciation and gratitude to the Government for having provided the House and those of us who wish to see a final end of the last remnant of a grotesque barbarity with the opportunity of seeing the end of it at last.

    If I may say one personal word, I suppose that I may claim a unique, if modest, distinction in that I believe I am the only private Member whose Private Member’s Bill has been accorded the distinction of a mention in the Queen’s Speech, and I take this as a good omen. This is a Private Member’s Bill. The Government are officially neutral about it. The vote will be, as it has always been with the notable exception of that on the Homicide Act, 1957, a free vote of the House, but I hope that on this occasion we may count on the neutrality of the Government being a benevolent neutrality.

    The Title of the Bill states that it is a Bill to abolish the death penalty, but I think it useful to say at the outset of the remarks which I hope to make to the House that the Title goes substantially beyond the amendment to the present law proposed by the Bill. I am not proposing to invite the House, on this occasion, to debate all the pros and cons of the preservation or abolition of the death penalty for murder. That battle—a long, grim, sometimes dreary, sometimes exciting battle—was won in 1957 in the Homicide Act.

    We are not concerned today with whether we ought to abolish or preserve the death penalty for murder. That we have already decided. The question before the House today—the only question remaining for Parliament to decide—is whether we shall abolish or retain not the abolition of the death penalty for murder, but the exceptions to that abolition which were made in the Homicide Act, 1957, and since there is scarcely anybody who has a good word to say for these exceptions, the answer to the question which is presently before Parliament ought not to be difficult.

    I thought it was worth while to say this at the outset because some newspapers and cognoscenti of public opinion are still talking as though the battle was to run again, as though we were at the beginning of this long and difficult road instead of, as the truth is, virtually at the end of it.

    Clause 1 of my Bill says: No person shall suffer death for murder, and a person guilty of murder shall, subject to subsection (4) below”— That deals with children— be sentenced to imprisonment for life. This is very like the Homicide Act, 1957, Section 7 of which reads: No person shall be liable to suffer death for murder in any case not falling within section five or six of this Act. Sections 5 and 6 of that Act deal with the exceptions, and I shall be dealing with them later. For the moment I draw the attention of the House to the fact that Section 7 of the Act, with those exceptions, is the same as Clause 1 of the Bill.

    Section 9 of that Act provides that those who are not sentenced to death under that Act shall suffer imprisonment for life. It is important to remember this, because this abolition in principle, subject to the exceptions, of the death penalty for murder did, in fact, abolish the death penalty for murder over about five-sixths of the field. It was done by an official act of policy of the Government of the day.

    No one said “You have no mandate to do it.” No one voted against it on the ground that it ran too far ahead of public opinion. Nobody said that there ought to be a referendum or a Gallup poll or any other method of seeing whether the Government of the day were entitled to call upon their supporters in this House and in another place to vote for the abolition of the death penalty for murder.

    In this, in my view, they were right. We do not govern ourselves in this country by a referendum. We do not govern ourselves by a Gallup poll. We do not, in matters of life and death, think that it is right to decide what is just or unjust by a spot, unconsidered reaction taken on the street corner or in a club or in a “pub”. Indeed, no part of our criminal law has ever been so determined. A good deal of it has not been enacted by Statute at all. It was the long, slow development of the common law.

    Where the law has resulted from Acts of Parliament, from Statute, the Government of the day have taken their responsibility as a Government, knowing that in a Parliamentary democracy it is for Parliament to decide what Parliament thinks right, knowing that in the background there is the public, the electorate, and that we shall all of us have to answer in due course to those who sent us here for what we have done.

    For my part, in this business of Parliamentary responsibility in a Parliamentary democracy, in this business of what it is right or wrong for a Member of Parliament to do, especially when he is acting in accordance with his own judgment and his own conscience and not in accordance with directions from a Whip or out of loyalty to a Government, I am content to confine my eloquence to saying “ditto” to Mr. Burke. It was Edmund Burke who stated this position once for and all in his famous letter to the electors of Bristol.

    To those who are a little, in my opinion, over-sensitive to what is, I think, quite mistakenly thought to be public opinion—I say this, maybe, a little boldly, but with no intention of giving offence to anybody—I should like hon. Members to imagine what their duty would be if they had the responsibility of deciding, if there were a man whom they knew it would be wrong to kill, if, in respect of that man, there were violent public pressure, nevertheless to kill him. Would it be right for a responsible legislator or member of the Government to kill that man, whom he thought he ought not to kill, because of some popular immediate pressure which might change its mind the next morning? Surely, anyone who did that would be repeating the mistake that Pontius Pilate made 2,000 years ago.

    Parliament must take its own responsibility. In exercising that responsibility, we in Parliament must be very conscious that we are responsible to those who send us here and must answer to them for what we do here. This is what we are not merely ready but anxious to do. But that does not mean that we must subordinate our judgment, still less that we must distort our consciences, in order to do something we believe to be wrong because if we do not we might lose a vote or even an election. So I say that the Government of the day were perfectly right to decide, as they did decide, in principle and subject to the exceptions that are left, to abolish the death penalty for murder.

    The result, the Homicide Act, 1957, was not easily reached. It had a history which many of us remember. But today, in spite of the fierce and passionate battles on the Death Penalty (Abolition) Bill, 1956, following which the Homicide Act was passed, and although the Act has been law for seven or eight years, there is no one in the House today who is prepared to advise right hon. and hon. Gentlemen to go back to the old law. [HON. MEMBERS: “No.”] I see nothing to that effect on the Order Paper.

    Mr. Speaker has said that the Amendment he will call is that in the names of the hon. and gallant Member for Portsmouth, West (Brigadier Clarke) and a number of other hon. Members. That Amendment states: On Second Reading of Murder (Abolition of Death Penalty) Bill, to move, That the Bill be read a second time upon this day six months. That, of course, is the formula for rejection of the Bill. Supposing that the hon. and gallant Gentleman has his way and the Bill is defeated. What will then be the law? Why, Sir, the law then will continue to be what it is now. It will continue to be the law as set out in the Homicide Act, 1957, and the death penalty will still not apply to five out of six murders. That principle will continue to be the law of the land.

    Brigadier Terence Clarke (Portsmouth, West)

    By gradual process, the hon. Member for Nelson and Colne (Mr. Sydney Silverman) has eliminated hanging to the present state it has reached. I want to stop this where it is today. I would like to have a Private Member’s Bill washing out everything which the hon. Gentleman has done in the past.

    Mr. Silverman

    I do not quite understand that. The only exception I would take to what the hon. and gallant Gentleman has said is that I really cannot accept his compliment that the law, as his Amendment proposes to leave it, was achieved by me. The law as it stands was not enacted by the hon. Member for Nelson and Colne. It was enacted by a Government of which the hon. and gallant Member was a loyal supporter. He did not oppose it. He did not vote against it. He accepted it.

    As for wishing to introduce a Private Member’s Bill to repeal that law, I hope that the hon. and gallant Gentleman will take his opportunity when it comes up, as I took mine when mine came up. I am only wondering why, if he feels so passionately that the Homicide Act, 1957, was wrong, he has been so dilatory in attempting to repeal it. But what we are concerned with today is not what the hon. and gallant Gentleman would like to do on some other occasion, but with what he proposes to do on this occasion—and what he proposes to do now expressly is to leave the law on the death penalty as it was left by the Homicide Act.

    But the argument does not stop there. The right hon. and learned Member for Warwick and Leamington (Sir J. Hobson) was Attorney-General in the Government responsible for the Homicide Act, 1957.

    Sir John Hobson (Warwick and Leamington)

    I was not even in the House at the time the Act was discussed. I entered the House a day or two before it received the Royal Assent.

    Mr. Silverman

    I apologise to the right hon. and learned Gentleman. He was not Attorney-General then. He was only Attorney-General shortly afterwards.

    Sir J. Hobson

    No.

    Mr. Silverman

    Therefore, the right hon. and learned Gentleman has no personal responsibility, since he was not a Member of the House, for the Act. But he has accepted it ever since, just like the hon. and gallant Member for Portsmouth, West.

    The reason I brought the right hon. and learned Gentleman into this was not so much for the mistake in thinking that he was Attorney-General at the time, but for what he has been doing in recent weeks. He has taken a leading part in the campaign against the Bill in the country. He has written very impressive and weighty letters in the correspondence columns of The Times. I do not accept the figures that he quoted in The Times. I think that they were all wrong. As he has never quoted us what is the authority for at any rate one of the two columns of figures, his argument has not impressed me.

    Sir J. Hobson rose——

    Mr. Silverman

    I will give way in a moment. Suppose the right hon. and learned Gentleman’s figures are right—they may well be for anything I know to the contrary. [HON. MEMBERS: “Oh.”] All I have said is that I would not support them myself and I would not accept them. This does not in any way mean that the figures are necessarily wrong. They may well be right. I am inviting the House, for the sake of argument, to assume that they are.

    Sir J. Hobson

    We should clear this matter up now. The figures I quoted were the result of Answers from my right hon. Friend the Member for Hampstead (Mr. Brooke), the former Secretary of State for the Home Department, and his successor, the right hon. and learned Member for Newport (Sir F. Soskice). They were published in Hansard.

    Mr. Silverman

    One of the two columns the right hon. and learned Gentleman embodied in one of his letters consisted of figures for murder. The other was of figures for executions. The one for murder was in the hundreds. There has never been, so far as I know—and I do not claim any infallibility or to know any more about this matter than any other hon. Member—a time in the history of this country when convictions for murder have reached hundreds a year. I had to say that in answer to the right hon. and learned Gentleman’s interruption, but I come back to inviting the House to assume that the right hon. and learned Gentleman has the right figures and has drawn the right inference from them.

    Again, that seems to me to be very doubtful. What inference did he draw? He said—and I will willingly give way if I misinterpret him in any way—that non-capital murders, since 1957, have increased and that capital murders have also increased. But, he said, capital murders had increased at a slower rate than non-capital murders. He drew the inference, which could be correct, that, therefore, the removal of the death penalty for non-capital murders had increased the number of non-capital murders. Is that right? Is that what the right hon. and learned Gentleman says?

    I hope to have it right, because, if that is so, then I ask why the right hon. and learned Gentleman is not proposing to restore the death penalty for non-capital murders. [HON. MEMBERS: “It is the hon. Member’s Bill.”] I am not talking about Bills now. I am referring to the right hon. and learned Gentleman’s contributions to the public discussion outside the House, when he has said distinctly and repeatedly that he is not proposing to go back to the old law. He would not be in favour of restoring the death penalty for non-capital murders. He would not be in favour of restoring the death penalty for any murder for which, under the present law, it is not inflicted.

    If the right hon. and learned Gentleman believes that I am misquoting him, he is here and I am ready to give way. He knows that I am not misquoting him. This is the right hon. and learned Gentleman who has been an Attorney-General and who may be again. How does he invite the House of Commons to believe that we have removed an effective deterrent to non-capital murder but not to restore it? He does not.

    I therefore return to the point which I have been making, that there is not before the House today, and is not, any serious proposal to go back on what was done in 1957, to restore the death penalty for all those murders for which it is not now inflicted, that being five-sixths of all of them, that it is not now proposed to reverse what we did in 1957, namely, in principle to abolish the death penalty for murder. It therefore seems clear that the only question with which the House is concerned is whether to abolish the exceptions which the 1957 Act made to that principle.

    Sir Harry Legge-Bourke (Isle of Ely)

    I know that the hon. Gentleman does not wish to be unfair, but would he not agree that the Long Title of his Bill forbids any Amendment which would have the effect of repealing the Homicide Act, 1957, that the Bill is obviously concerned with abolition and that, therefore, even if we wished, we could not put down an Amendment which would have the effect of restoring the death penalty to non-capital murder?

    Mr. Silverman

    I concede at once that it would not be possible in Committee to put down an Amendment which was outside the Long Title of the Bill. It is not for me to express any view as to what would or would not be within the Long Title. That is Mr. Speaker’s responsibility or, in Committee, the responsibility of the Chairman. However, there was nothing to prevent anyone inclined to that view from putting down a reasoned Amendment to the Second Reading of the Bill, not merely objecting to the Bill, not merely advising its rejection, but advising its rejection because it would have been better to restore the death penalty abolished in 1957.

    May I point out that there is a reasoned Amendment which is not being called and which, like the unreasoned Amendment which has been selected, does not call for any repeal of the 1957 Act? That reasoned Amendment says: That this House declines to give a Second Reading to a Bill”— the next words should be noted— which, while removing the deterrent of the 1957 Act to certain types of killer who might reasonably be supposed to be deterred from killing by the prospect of being hanged … It does not apply to all types of killer. It makes a distinction between those who might be deterred and those who might not and it assumes that the exceptions introduced in the Homicide Act were the exceptions of those who might be deterred, whereas all the others could not reasonably be expected to be deterred.

    In other words, it concedes that there is no deterrent, no unique deterrent, no exclusively effective, deterrent, in the death penalty to most murders, but claims that there is a uniquely deterrent effect is respect of some murders.

    I concede that that is the argument with which I have to deal and I propose to deal with it as shortly as I can very soon. All I am concerned to establish now, and all I have been concerned to establish so far, is that nobody thinks that substantially there is any other question to be decided.

    I now come to the subject of these exceptions and whether to retain them. I am sorry to be a little longer than I had intended, but this is the crux of the matter and I am sure that the House will have a little patience with me while I examine it. This question has a history which goes back a long way. It is 100 years, almost to the day, since a Royal Commission appointed by the House first made an attempt to distinguish between murders which ought to be capital and murders which ought not to be. In 1864, that Royal Commission was appointed. It was in favour of abolishing the death penalty altogether, but it recommended, because it thought that public opinion was not ready for that, precisely the suggestion that murders should be categorised so that some should be capital and some not.

    I confess that to all penal reformers this has always been a very attractive idea. If only we could have found a just and rational way of distinguishing between murders which could rightly and justly and rationally be regarded as capital and murders which could not, we would have seen an end to this controversy many years ago. Many attempts have been made over those 100 years and I will not weary the House by detailing or recounting any of them.

    However, the exceptions introduced into the Homicide Act, 1957, were not intended to distinguish between the more and the less heinous crimes. If they were intended to do any such thing, they lamentably failed any such objective. No one could think that the exceptions in the 1957 Act were the worst murders. Those who accept the position of the 1957 Act accept that the murderers of children shall not be hanged. Those who accept the 1957 Act accept that cold, calculated, premeditated murders shall not be capital.

    Those who accept the 1957 Act accept that foul sexual crimes shall not be capital. Those who accept the 1957 Act accept that if a man waylays his enemy around a dark corner of a back street and stabs him in the back with a knife, that shall not be capital murder, whereas if he waits for him with a revolver and shoots him in the front, that is capital murder.

    Anyone who tried to justify the exceptions in the 1957 Act on the ground that it was a successful attempt to distinguish between the gravest kinds of murder and crimes which were not so grave would have an impossible task. Let the House remember that Ruth Ellis would still have committed a capital crime under the Homicide Act because she used a revolver instead of a knife.

    We know what the exceptions in the 1957 Act are, but we know something else about them. Every single one of them had been defeated by the House of Commons by a substantial majority on a free vote. There is not one of the exceptions included in the 1957 Act that was not proposed in Committee or on Report during the passage through the House of Commons of the Death Penalty (Abolition) Bill of 1956.

    Perhaps I might add a word to the modest distinction which I claimed for myself at the opening of my speech, because on the Death Penalty (Abolition) Bill I suppose that I was the only back bencher who led a coalition of both sides of the House against the Government of the day and won at every stage. It was only when we reached the House of Lords that we were rejected and the right hon. Gentleman who was then Home Secretary or Leader of the House found himself in an inescapable dilemma. He had promised the House of Commons that if it decided to abolish the death penalty on a free vote, the Government would accept its decision. Having done that, he proceeded to give exactly the same pledge to another place, well knowing that the other place was most likely, as indeed it did, to come to the opposite conclusion.

    Therefore, the right hon. Gentleman found himself pledged to the House of Commons to abolish the death penalty and pledged to the House of Lords to retain it. As he could not possibly fulfil both pledges, what he did was, reasonably enough—no one can blame him for it—to attempt a compromise, and the exceptions in the Homicide Act, 1957, were never offered to the House, never offered to Parliament on their merits as penal reform or as criminal law. They were offered to the House of Commons as a political compromise to get the Government of the day out of a serious and awkward dilemma.

    I remind the House that all those exceptions had been rejected one by one, every one of them, when Members of the House of Commons—and I remind the House that it was a House of Commons with a Tory majority—were left to their individual judgment. When they were asked to obey their personal consciences, they had voted against every one of the exceptions introduced in the Homicide Act. It is true that they humbly and tamely accepted them at a later stage, but they accepted them for quite respectable reasons. I do not complain of any of them.

    The Government had put the Whips on and the question then was not whether the exceptions were right or wrong in principle. The question was whether hon. Members would support the Government of which they were supporters, which they wished to support, which they did not wish to embarrass and certainly which they did not wish to defeat. They accepted it on the authority of the Government, the Government taking responsibility for it and they taking only responsibility for not dissenting from the Government view. Their own individual conscientious judgment had already been exercised against it.

    An equally, or even more, curious thing happened in another place, because the Homicide Act, 1957, abolishing in principle the death penalty for murder, was accepted by another place. There were no objections to it at all, although it had just defeated the very same proposition without exceptions a month or two before.

    That is part of the history. There is another part of it. In 1948, I moved a Clause to the Criminal Justice Bill, a consolidating Measure——

    Mr. Iremonger

    I do not want to disturb the train of the hon. Member’s argument, but if he is now leaving the part of his argument which deals with the 1957 Act, may I ask whether he feels it right to do justice to those who supported the 1957 Act in this House by recalling the argument that the Government put forward? It was not that the Government purported to draw a line between those kinds of murder which were most heinous and those which were less heinous. They attempted to differentiate between types of murder as to the degree to which they contributed to the disturbance of public order. If I remember correctly, that was what influenced me and many of my hon. Friends to support my right hon. Friend in his Bill.

    Mr. Silverman

    That is very largely true. It is entirely true with one exception, which I shall take half a minute to deal with presently. I did not want to extend the length of my speech by dealing with all the exceptions separately. The argument about deterability was part of the argument in the Committee stage of the Death Penalty (Abolition) Bill and it had been rejected on their own conscientious judgment by a majority of Members of the House of Commons at that stage.

    The exception is the question of second murders, because nobody, surely, has ever thought that if a man was not deterred by the death penalty from committing the first murder, he would be deterred from committing, not having been found out so far, a second one. In the case of second murders, the idea was not deterability, but that this was a much graver crime and should be punished.

    As to the other point, the hon. Member is perfectly right. All I am saying is that this was accepted by the House of Commons on the authority of the Government and against hon. Members’ own private conscientious judgment.

    In 1948, when I moved a Clause to suspend the death penalty for five years, it was rejected in another place because, it was said, it was too far in advance of public opinion. If it were done, it could only be done with exceptions, so the other place threw it out. Acting under that inspiration and incitement, my right hon. Friends in the Government of that day proposed a Clause to meet the objections in another place in order to provide exceptions. The exceptions included one or two others, but they also included all those in the Homicide Act, 1957.

    When we sent that back to another place, it was rejected also for the perfectly justifiable ground, which I am inviting the House of Commons today to say is still true, that it was unworkable, that it was irrational, that it was unjust and that public conscience would not stand for it and Parliament had no right to enact it. Therefore, the exceptions were rejected then by both Houses.

    Sir Alexander Spearman (Scarborough and Whitby)

    The hon. Member says that hanging is not a deterrent. He has said in the past that hanging is not a deterrent and, presumably, he bases his Bill upon that. I should like to know whether he will consider, at a later stage, a new Clause incorporating a trial period. If, indeed, hanging is not a deterrent, that would do his cause no harm but it would give some assurance to those, rightly or wrongly, who still have doubts about whether it is a deterrent.

    Mr. Silverman

    I have never said that hanging was not a deterrent.

    Sir A. Spearman

    An effective deterrent.

    Mr. Silverman

    That is the difference. The only point about deterrents, and, I think, the only rational ground on which a death penalty could ever be defended, is that there are fewer murders if we have the death penalty than if we do not have the death penalty. That is the criterion and test. What I have denied, and what I have not denied alone, is that the death penalty is a deterrent to murder in any sense that is more effective than other existing or imaginable deterrents. The Royal Commission has established that proposition beyond further controversy to the satisfaction of all those who wish to know the truth.

    The hon. Gentleman asks about a trial period. This is where I began 16 years ago. We have had already seven or eight years’ experience of the deterrent effect of the exceptions in the 1957 Act. Another five years will not alter the picture one way or the other. I think that this controversy has gone on long enough. The arguments both ways are clear, and I think that everybody knows what they are. I think that everybody has made up his mind about where the balance between the two arguments lies. I do not believe that any useful purpose would be served by prolonging the debate, or by keeping the matter in issue, for another five years with the prospect of having to do it all over again five years’ hence.

    If it should turn out that this is all wrong, and if the abolition of this remnant of the death penalty proves to be a mistake, we do not need a five years’ Clause in the Bill to put it right. Parliament will remain sovereign. It will be able to repeal whatever we do. There is no need to keep the pot boiling, to keep the argument going, when it has been reduced to such a small, narrow limit and has had so much of a trial period.

    Sir Richard Glyn (Dorset, North)

    Would the hon. Gentleman help me about the question of deterrence? The Bill abolishes capital punishment for the offence of murder, whether it be heard and determined in an ordinary criminal court or by court-martial under Section 70 of the Army Act. But under the same section of the Army Act and equivalent sections of the Air Force and Naval Discipline Acts the death penalty can be passed for treason; and for mutiny under Section 31 of the Army Act; and for other specified acts under Section 24(1) of the Army Act.

    As I understand, the death penalty will remain for treason, mutiny and these other acts if the Bill becomes law. If the hon. Gentleman has left capital punishment for these numerous Service offences as a deterrent, will he say why he does not think it should be left as a deterrent for murder?

    Mr. Silverman

    Like, I think, all abolitionists and, though I am not so certain about this, the overwhelming majority of the House of Commons, I am in favour of abolishing the death penalty for any crime, whether it be treason, cowardice, desertion, sabotage in a dockyard, piracy, or anything else, because I do not believe—and this is the gravamen of the whole argument—That we have any right to pursue and carry out this callous, brutal, coldhearted ritual unless we are satisfied that a useful social purpose is thereby attained. I do not believe that it is attained.

    The hon. Member for Dorset, North (Sir Richard Glyn) may well ask why abolition of the death penalty for these offences is not included in the Bill. He must remember that the arguments about treason are very different from the arguments about murder. In peace time, we have not carried out the death penalty on anybody for any crime other than murder for 100 years. Even in war time, or just after war time for offences committed in war, we have executed only three people in the last 100 years. It would have been very bad tactics on our part if we had complicated the simple issue of being for or against the death penalty for murder by introducing a complicated argument for or against the abolition of the death penalty for other crimes when it has not been inflicted for 100 years and is virtually obsolete. We shall take a further opportunity some day of bringing that part of the law into line with the rest of our civilised law, but I do not think that we can do it on this occasion.

    Sir Richard Glyn

    Has the hon. Gentleman the figures for executions for mutiny?

    Mr. Silverman

    I hope that the figures which I have quoted are right; but I am not quoting them on my own responsibility. They have been supplied to me by the Home Office for the purpose of meeting such an objection as the hon. Gentleman has made. I therefore hope that he will accept them and will regard them as a sufficient answer to his question.

    In summing up this question of trying to find a remedy, all I need do is to invite attention to the Royal Commission’s Report. I recommend those who have not read it, and those who have forgotten it and still have doubts about this subject, to re-read the Report of the Royal Commission which examined the whole question and where all the arguments are to be found. It is very lucid and authoritative and is a massive argument against the death penalty.

    On the question of finding degrees or categories of murder, all that I need do is to read paragraph 534: Our examination of the law and procedure of other countries lends no support to the view that the objections to degrees of murder, which we discussed above, are only theoretical and academic and may be disproved by the practical experience of those countries where such a system is in force. We began our inquiry with the determination to make every effort to see whether we could succeed where so many have failed, and discover some effective method of classifying murders so as to confine the death penalty to the more heinous. Where degrees of murder have been introduced, they have undoubtedly resulted in limiting the application of capital punishment and for this reason they have commended themselves to public opinion, but in our view their advantages are far outweighed by the theoretical and practical objections which we have described. We conclude with regret that the object of our quest is chimerical and that it must be abandoned. It is true that the Royal Commission was talking about classifying murders according to whether they were bad or not so bad. But the same argument must inevitably apply to any other way of distinguishing between them unless the figures lead to any different conclusion.

    Mr. Edward Gardner (Billericay)

    The hon. Gentleman has just said that the Royal Commission’s Report on Capital Punishment is an argument in favour of abolition. Is he not aware that the Royal Commission was precluded expressly by its terms of reference, given by the Labour Government, from considering the question that the House today is debating?

    Mr. Silverman

    Of course I am aware of that. I assumed that every Member of the House was so aware of it that it did not need me to say it. The hon. and learned Gentleman knows this subject very well. It is a great mistake to offer cheap debating points about it. He knows that they are nothing more, because he knows perfectly well that the Royal Commission said in so many words that it could not find any way of ameliorating or modifying the death penalty, and that if Parliament wanted to do anything about the death penalty it was faced with the stark alternatives of retaining the death penalty as it was, or abolishing it altogether. The hon. and learned Gentleman knows that very well and I think that he might have remembered it before prolonging my speech more than I have, unfortunately, had to do.

    There is one point with which I feel I ought to deal, and that is the question of the alternative. Of course, this question was equally relevant in 1957. Nobody raised it. There cannot be any question of having a different alternative in the case of the exceptions from the alternative which we enact when the death penalty is abolished over most of the field.

    I think that it is necessary to indicate to the House what the present position is. Nobody is ever released from a life sentence. It is true that the Home Secretary, from time to time, at different times and in different cases, lets a man out, but when he does so he lets him out on licence. The licence can be ended; the man can be recalled to prison, and sometimes he is.

    It is sometimes said, “But the average is too short”. But nobody serves an average. If one man is sentenced to life imprisonment and serves 20 years, and another is sentenced for a mercy killing and is let out in two years, the average of the two is 11 years. But that makes no difference to either of them. One serves his 20 years and the other serves his two. The Royal Commission collected all the figures between 1900 and 1949—the figures for half a century—and it found that the largest group were released after 15 years, that the next largest group were released after 10 years. A number of other periods were listed, some of them one year, one as high as 22 years. Thereafter, hon. Members of the House should not be misled by averages.

    I quote again from the Royal Commission’s conclusions about what are the criteria to be considered when the question under review is whether the man should be released or not. My quotation is from paragraph 657 of the Report. I hope that hon. Members will look at it, if they have not got it now, between now and Committee stage—if we ever get a Committee stage. These conclusions are on Section 2 of the Report. The Report says: Our conclusions, then, on this part of our terms of reference are that persons not mentally abnormal who would otherwise have been liable to suffer capital punishment could suitably be detained in the conditions now found in long-term prisons in England and Scotland, though we think that these admit of some improvements; that the principles now followed by the Secretaries of State in determining the actual length of detention in each case are in general appropriate for the purposes of punishment, deterrence and the protection of the public, without undue risk of causing moral and physical deterioration in the prisoner; and that if, in exceptional cases an exceptionally long period of detention is called for, the additional risk of such consequences ought not to be held to rule it out. The proposal is being made that that system should be altered and that the length of actual detention, even though a nominal life sentence is inflicted, should be determined by the trial judge at the time of trial and should be part of the sentence.

    Mr. Norman Cole (Bedfordshire, South) rose——

    Mr. Silverman

    I am trying to deal with the proposal. If, when I have set it out, the hon. Member would still like to ask anything about it, I would be happy to give way. Perhaps I had better state the point first.

    The proposal is that the judge at trial shall be given authority to fix the minimum period of detention appropriate to the particular criminal whom he is sentencing. I invite the House to consider that that would be to disregard one of the two essential criteria. One undoubtedly is the gravity of the offence. I have no doubt that the judges are a better tribunal, though not perfect, than any other conceivable tribunal of what length of detention is appropriate, having regard to the character of the crime which they have been trying.

    I do not doubt that for a moment. But although judges may be the best, though not an infallible, tribunal to judge that, they do not claim for themselves any divine omniscience about the future, and in determining in a life sentence when a man may be appropriately and safely released it may be important to know what he was like when he was sentenced; it must be at least equally important to know what he has become. This, I will say, is true, not merely of life sentences, but of all inordinately long sentences.

    The argument about averages has been a little distorted by comparison with a number of very long sentences passed for the first time in our history in the last three or four years. This is not the place, nor perhaps am I the person, to express any view about the appropriateness or propriety of 30 years for non-fatal robbery, still less to express a view about whether it was right or wrong to lump three maximum sentences together in order to make a maximum statutory sentence of 14 years into a period of 42 years.

    All I am inviting the House of Commons to remember at the moment is that these are exceptional crimes and exceptional sentences. They afford no useful or helpful guide to normal periods of imprisonment or to the normal penalties of our criminal law. If, indeed, the State were to insist at any time, for any purpose, on inflicting the gravest penalty in its power on criminals in respect of crimes which it declares not to be the gravest crime, then it inevitably places itself in a very great difficulty when it comes to determine what is appropriate for the gravest crime.

    All I am saying is that in this question of how long a life prisoner should be detained we must consider three elements: one, the gravity of the offence; two, the safety of the public; and, three, the danger of destroying by degrees over long, long years a life which we have refrained from destroying at the beginning. All these factors have to be taken into consideration, and the Home Secretary has the right, has the duty, has the responsibility and has the means, if we keep the life sentence, of taking them all into consideration.

    I am not saying that the responsibility need necessarily be left solely with him. I imagine that most Home Secretaries would welcome the advice and the assistance of a parole board. I am sure that if we had a parole board it would have a judicial element as well as a number of other elements. But what we must not sacrifice is the Home Secretary’s discretion, the prerogative of mercy to be applied according to his discretion, according to the rights and wrongs of particular cases at particular times. I hope that the House of Commons will accept that view. In any case, it is clearly not an argument which affects the giving or refusing of a Second Reading of the Bill. It is a Committee point, and I expect that many hon. Members will wish to raise it in Committee when it can be considered in much greater detail than it can be considered here.

    I have finished but for one closing remark which I should like to make. It may be said, it may be in many people’s minds, what does it matter? This question of the death penalty, be it right or wrong, is reduced to a very small compass. In 1964 we executed only two people, and those two were executed for one and the same murder. Last year, I think, it was also two. The year before it was either two or three—I am not quite sure which. It is a very small matter, and I can well understand Members on either side of the House saying, “In the face of all our anxieties and preoccupations, what can it matter whether we execute or do not execute two wretched murderers every year?”.

    For my part, I think that it matters. Men and women in my generation have lived through two world wars. They may have cost between them about 80 million human lives. When I was a very young man, in my boyhood in the earlier years of the twentieth century we regarded the twentieth century as synonymous with the ultimate achievement of civilisation, and when we wanted to say that a thing was wrong we said that it was not worthy of the twentieth century.

    Sir Winston Churchill once described this twentieth century, which we began with so much hope, as “this terrible twentieth century”. We have seen in it not merely those two wars, this destruction, this bloodshed. We have seen whole cities of non-combatant men, women and children wiped out without notice at one blow. We have seen a nation collecting from the ends of the earth 6 million human beings not for any military purpose, but for annihilation on grounds of race or creed.

    We are living today in a world under the threat of human extinction. We may be beginning to make our way out of it. But who knows? It is impossible to argue that the execution or non-execution of two people in England every year can make a very great contribution to the improvement of a dark and menacing world. But in this darkness and gloom into which the twentieth century civilisation has so far led us, we can at least light this small candle and see how far its tiny beams can penetrate the gloom.

  • Peter Griffiths – 1964 Maiden Speech in the House of Commons

    Below is the text of the maiden speech made by Peter Griffiths, the then Conservative MP for Smethwick, in the House of Commons on 6 November 1964.

    At this moment I feel much in need of the indulgence which this House normally so kindly grants to those who address it for the first time. The comments of the two right hon. Gentleman on the question of training and retraining of workers in changing industries is of very particular application to my own constituency of Smethwick, in that its industries date back to Boulton and Watt, back to the dawn of the Industrial Revolution.

    If we are to maintain our industrial prosperity there must be continuous change, and in such continuous change difficulties are created for workpeople in industry. The younger workers in the prosperous West Midlands area do not find it very difficult to obtain new employment. There are many opportunities for them. But the older workers, particularly those over the age of 50, find it extremely difficult to adapt themselves, to develop new skills which are needed in a completely new field of operation.

    The older worker is often less mobile and less adaptable. Therefore, I would respectfully suggest that very special attention should be paid to this question of the suitable retraining of older workers so that they can find not only openings in industry but openings suitable to their skills, suitable to their status and also openings in new industries which give suitable security to a man who has a family and wide responsibilities.

    The town of Smethwick is densely built up and many of the younger citizens have been forced, because of lack of modern housing, to move out of the town. Therefore, the national problem of the ageing population is highlighted in Smethwick. I would respectfully suggest that, here again, there is a need for a very thorough investigation of the living conditions of the elderly and, more particularly, of the living conditions of widows in ageing communities. It is ​ essential for us to have all the facts and information fully available so that the House may at a suitable time ensure that help is both timely and effective.

    If I might proceed from the question of ageing industries to ageing houses, I would point out that Smethwick is the second most densely built-up county borough in Britain. There is no room in Smethwick to build a single new house. Unless there is clearance and development there can be no building. For this reason I welcome the suggestion which has been made that special aid should be made available to those areas which have particular problems. Certainly, if any proposals can be made for speeding up the relief of the housing problem in towns like Smethwick, I would welcome them.

    In Smethwick there are 4,000 families waiting to be rehoused despite the fact that there has been an accelerated housing programme in the town. It is no wonder, then, that in Smethwick the No. 1 social problem is that of housing. One cannot force a quart into a pint pot.

    Housing and social problems exist in many of our great cities. Those problems in Smethwick have been aggravated over the past few years by the inflow of large numbers of people from overseas, many of whom have social standards different from those of our own people. However, I want to make it quite clear to the House that there is no resentment at all in Smethwick on the grounds of race or colour. I can assure hon. Members that the people in my constituency are as warm and as welcoming towards strangers as are those of any other community in the British Isles. At the same time, I must make it clear that the people of Smethwick are vitally concerned about the length of the wait for housing. They are concerned about overcrowding and insanitary conditions. They are concerned about the pressure of already overlarge classes and, dare I of all Members say this, they are also concerned about questions of health.

    It would be hypocritical of anyone to ignore these problems or to try to pretend that they do not exist. It is essential that all those who seek to represent people or to speak for them should be honest and face up to these problems and discuss them rationally. I make the ​ appeal that they should be discussed without undue emotion. I can assure hon. Members that the local council in Smethwick is courageously and positively facing up to the problems of the town. It is seeking to solve these problems, and I have, on every occasion, called for the most active co-operation between the members of all races in the town.

    May I crave the indulgence of the House to say that the Smethwick Conservative Party and the electors of Smethwick have shown, I am sure, that they are convinced that the control of immigration is vital to racial harmony. I ask this House to judge the people of Smethwick and their Member on first-hand knowledge of the Member and the town, rather than on second-hand reporting which is often exaggerated. I know of no cause for shame arising from the Smethwick election. There was a democratic choice, a free election. There was every opportunity, with no fewer than four candidates, for full discussion and full expression. The electors of Smethwick made up their minds on all these issues, just as did the electors in every other constituency. They have the right to choose and they exercised that right. No doubt in the not-too-distant future they will have the opportunity to confirm that choice or to make a change. Until then, may I respectfully suggest that we in this honourable House address ourselves, without personal rancour and without animosity, to the real tasks which face us.

  • Teddy Taylor – 1964 Maiden Speech in the House of Commons

    Below is the text of the maiden speech made by Teddy Taylor in the House of Commons on 10 November 1964.

    This is my first attempt to speak in the House, and I ask the pardon of hon. Members for making my maiden contribution at such an early stage in the Session. Some senior Members may consider that the abundance of maiden speeches we have heard during the debate shows a lack of humility on the part of the younger generation, but I feel that the cause is not over-confidence but simply a fear, strengthened by the weekend Press, that circumstances might require us to present ourselves to the electorate again before we have had the chance properly to present ourselves to the House. I think that some other hon. Members elected for the first time may have experienced the same difficulty as I did when completing a form which asked whether my new employment was likely to be of a permanent nature.

    May I further crave the indulgence of the House for making my speech with the handicap of a cold—which will ensure that even if hon. Members opposite do not hear pearls of wisdom they will, at least, receive plenty of germs. I say this in the full knowledge that with the narrower balance between the parties germs in this Session might well play a more effective political rôle than anything I may say today.

    No new Member can attend or take part in the initial proceedings of a new Session without being fully conscious of the enormous responsibility which is placed on each one of us. For we do not come here to start anew—the basis of our British democracy has been established for us by our forefathers and by hon. Members past and present. Even to maintain the high standards and achievements of the past is no easy task, and yet the problems facing the world and this country require that we must seek to aim even higher.

    I would refer to my predecessor, Sir John Henderson, who, I know, was well liked in the House. He served as a Member for 18 years after giving over 20 years of continuous service in local government. The conscientious manner in which he applied himself to his duties and the faithful and attentive service which he gave to the electors of the constituency have established a very high standard which I will do my best to emulate in my membership of the House.

    The constituency which I represent is the Cathcart Division of Glasgow. Glasgow, as hon. Members know, has 15 constituencies, and Cathcart is one of the only two which have returned a Unionist Member. It is a matter for the individual judgment of hon. Members as to whether this situation reflects the general wisdom of the people of Glasgow or the particular political sense of the electors of Cathcart and Hillhead.

    Apart from politics, Cathcart is rather a unique constituency. It contains some of Glasgow’s most beautiful public parks—Linn, Queen’s Park and Cathkin Braes—the finest football stadium in the country, Hampden Park, perhaps the biggest municipal housing scheme in Western Europe, Castlemilk, and one of the world’s outstanding engineering works, that of Messrs. G. and J. Weir. It is a historic place, because in the heart of the constituency lies the site of the battle of Langside, which decided the fate of Mary Queen of Scots.

    Cathcart, although merged with Glasgow geographically and socially, retained its municipal independence until early in the century when it was “taken in” by the City of Glasgow, in perhaps more ways than one. I know that the electors of Cathcart and of Glasgow are vitally interested in the contents of the Gracious Speech and I would like to comment briefly on the section which states that the Government intend to promote reforms in taxation and, in particular, to bring about better arrangements for the modernisation of local government finance.

    I think that most hon. Members would agree that the rating system is, in principle and in practice, unsatisfactory in many respects. And the dissatisfaction of the system has been aggravated by the ever-increasing burden of local rates. For example, in Glasgow the average man, woman and child has to pay well over £25 per head a year in local rates, and this means an annual burden for the average family of £100 which must be paid directly or indirectly.

    The principal objection to the rating system is that it is not levied either according to ability to pay or to the use which people make of local government services. There appears to be no justification for a system which imposes the same burden on a widow living on a small fixed income as on a neighbouring family which may have three or four wage earners.

    Apart from that, the unequal incidence of rates throughout the country produces serious problems. Some areas have a high burden per head of population which is about double the burden elsewhere, and the tragedy is that areas with high unemployment are often the ones that have a relatively high rating burden and enormous municipal problems. Thus, those areas which need to attract industry are often hampered in their efforts by the disincentive of a high rates burden. This is considered by some to be a small problem, but for most industrialists it is becoming a more and more important one. Some Clyde shipyards, for example, pay £30,000 or £40,000 a year in rates, and an increase of 2s. in the rate poundage can mean an extra £1,000 on the cost of each ship.

    A third factor which the Government will be bearing in mind is the ever-increasing volume of local government responsibility and expenditure, and, of course, this means that a large section of public spending is outwith the timely or effective control of national economic policy.

    It is true that capital spending by local authorities can be influenced sharply, although not immediately, by Government policy; but revenue spending, which must now be over £2,000 million a year, cannot be restrained or boosted in a timely or effective manner by the present economic weapons.

    For these and other obvious reasons, my constituents and many others trust that the reorganisation of local government finance will include a complete and comprehensive review of the rating system. I would like to say something about the possible alternative systems of collecting revenue, but I have no wish to burden the House unduly and would merely say that I hope to have the opportunity of speaking further on this subject at an early date.

    The promise in the Gracious Speech to promote economic development and modernisation in the under-employed areas leads me to the final point I wish to make. The hon. Members who have so ably represented our city in recent years have rightly stressed the urgency of our housing problems and the need to attract lighter and more flexible industries. These representations were vitally necessary because Glasgow’s housing problem is immense and acute and our economic problem of overdependence on heavy industry is one which will require strong, speedy and effective action.

    The emphasis on our problems has, however, created the impression in some quarters that Glasgow is a dull, derelict and depressed city with backward industries and an unenterprising population. This is certainly not the case. Our traditional industries, in particular our great shipyards, have spent many millions from their own resources in modernising their establishments. There has also been rationalisation, made necessary by surplus world shipbuilding capacity, but the yards which remain are vital, progressive and among the most modern in the world.

    Orders are being obtained in face of international competition, and if British shipyards, which face the full blast of foreign competition unprotected by tariffs or quotas, are given assistance comparable to that given by competitor nations, they will face the future with even more confidence, particularly in view of the Clyde’s good and improving labour relations.

    The west of Scotland needs new and lighter industries, but we must never forget that just as vital is the prosperity of the Clyde shipyards on which around 80,000 families depend, directly or indirectly, for their livelihood. In these circumstances, an extension of the Shipbuilding Credit Scheme and the security and stability stemming from it would be welcomed as much as an entirely new industrial project.

    Glasgow, like its industries, is often unfairly maligned. It is one of the few cities which support five major theatres and one great orchestra. Its public parks, libraries and museums are world famous, and every district within its boundaries is within, at most, half an hour’s journey of the beautiful surrounding countryside. Firms, administrative offices and even Government Departments need have no fears about moving to Glasgow, and they can be assured that every assistance in location, planning and essential services will be given by our unique Industrial Inquiries Centre which is situated appropriately beside the two basic pillars of any great city—the main line station and the Conservative Club.

    I thank hon. Members for listening so patiently and apologise for taking so long.

  • Queen Elizabeth II – 1964 Queen’s Speech (II)

    queenelizabethii

    Below is the text of the speech made by HM Queen Elizabeth II in the House of Lords on 3 November 1964.

    My Lords and Members of the House of Commons

    “My Husband and I look forward with pleasure to cur forthcoming visits to Ethiopia and the Sudan and to the Federal Republic of Germany. We were glad to be in Canada last month to attend the centennial celebrations commemorating the conferences held at Charlottetown and Quebec City in 1864 and to pay a further visit to Ottawa.

    “In international affairs it will be the principal purpose of My Ministers to seek to reduce East-West tension. To this end they will give renewed and more vigorous support to the United Nations in its vital rôle of freeing the world from the threat of war; and they will consider how this country can make a more effective contribution to the Organisation’s peace-keeping capability. They will seek to encourage further progress towards disarmament and to contribute to other steps which will permit the East-West conflict to be replaced by international co-operation in promoting peace and security throughout the world.

    “My Government reaffirm their support for the defence of the free world—the basic concept of the Atlantic Alliance; and they will continue to play their full part in the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation and in other organisations for collective defence. They will review defence policy to ensure, by relating our commitments and our resources, that My Armed Forces are able to discharge their many tasks overseas with the greatest effectiveness and economy. In particular, they will make constructive proposals for renewing the interdependence of the Atlantic Alliance in relation to nuclear weapons, in an endeavour to prevent duplication of effort and the dissemination of weapons of mass destruction.

    “New arrangements have been made to aid and encourage the economic and social advance of the developing nations, including the remaining dependent territories. My Ministers will also endeavour to promote the expansion of trade to this end, and they will seek, in co-operation with other countries and the United Nations and its agencies, to stimulate fresh action to reduce the growing disparities of wealth and opportunity between the peoples of the world.

    “My Ministers will have a special regard to the unique rôle of the Commonwealth, which itself reflects so many of the challenges and opportunities of the world. They will foster the Commonwealth connection on a basis of racial equality and close consultation between Member Governments and will promote Commonwealth collaboration in trade, economic development, educational, scientific and cultural contacts and in other ways.

    “My Government will continue to play a full part in the European organisations of which this country is a member and will seek to promote closer European co-operation.

    “A Bill will be introduced to provide for the independence of the Gambia.

    “Members of the House of Commons

    “Estimates for the public services will be laid before you.

    “My Lords and Members of the House of Commons

    “At home My Government’s first concern will be to maintain the strength of sterling by dealing with the short-term balance of payments difficulties and by initiating the longer-term structural changes in our economy which will ensure purposeful expansion, rising exports and a healthy balance of payments.

    Our industries will be helped to gain the full benefits of advances in scientific research and applied technology.

    Central and regional plans to promote economic development, with special reference to the needs of the under-employed areas of the country, are being prepared. New arrangements will ensure proper attention to the needs of Wales. Legislation will be introduced to provide for the appointment of a Highland Development Board.

    “My Government will initiate early action to re-establish the necessary public ownership and control of the iron and steel industry.

    “To foster the health and prosperity of agriculture, they will continue the system of guarantees under the existing Acts and will promote measures to secure better marketing arrangements for farm produce. They will encourage the development of the fishing industry and the steady expansion of forestry.

    “My Government will call on trade unions and employers’ organisations to co-operate in eliminating those restrictive practices, on both sides of industry, which impair our competitive power and the development of the full potential of the economy. They will take steps to improve industrial efficiency by dealing more effectively with monopolies and with problems arising from mergers. They will also take action to improve the arrangements for industrial training and for the retraining of workers changing their employment. A Bill will be introduced to give workers and their representatives the protection necessary for freedom of industrial negotiation.

    To the end that all may share the benefits of rising productivity, My Ministers will work for more stable prices and a closer relationship between the increase in productivity and the growth of incomes in all their forms and they will promote reforms in taxation and better arrangements for local government finance. They will pay special attention to protecting the interests of consumers.

    “Action will be taken to require companies to disclose political contributions in their accounts.

    “My Government will have particular regard for those on whom age, sickness and personal misfortune impose special disabilities. They believe that radical changes in the national schemes of social security are essential to bring them into line with modern needs. They will therefore embark at once upon a major review of these schemes. Meanwhile, they will immediately introduce legislation to increase existing rates of National Insurance and associated benefits.

    “Action will be proposed to modernise and develop the health and welfare services. Steps will be taken to increase the number of doctors and other trained staff in the National Health Service. Prescription charges for medicines will be abolished.

    “My Ministers will enlarge educational opportunities and give particular priority to increasing the supply of teachers. Bills will be introduced to establish new machinery for determining teachers’ pay in England and Wales and for the governance of the teaching profession in Scotland.

    “My Government will pursue a vigorous housing policy directed to producing more houses of better quality, and will promote the modernisation of the construction industry. They will restore control of rents, they will establish as rapidly as possible a Crown Lands Commission with wide powers to acquire land for the community and they will provide for leasehold enfranchisement. In conjunction with a progressive transport policy and a system of comprehensive regional planning, these measures will be directed to providing a fresh social environment in keeping with the needs and aspirations of the time.

    “My Government will be actively concerned to build up the strength and efficiency of the police, to improve the penal system and the after-care of offenders, and to make more effective the means of sustaining the family and of preventing and treating delinquency. Facilities will be provided for a free decision by Parliament on the issue of capital punishment.

    “My Government are studying the report, which they have recently received, of the Committee appointed last year on the Remuneration of Ministers and Members of Parliament.

    “Other measures will be laid before you.

    “In all their policies My Government will be concerned to safeguard the liberties of My subjects. They will take action against racial discrimination and promote full integration into the community of immigrants who have come here from the Commonwealth. They will propose the appointment of Law Commissioners to advance reform of the law, and will propose new measures for the impartial investigation of individual grievances. In so doing they will be acting in the spirit which has always animated Parliament, whose seven hundredth anniversary will be recorded in this Session. In that same spirit I pray that the blessing of Almighty God may rest upon your counsels.”

     

  • Robert Maxwell – 1964 Maiden Speech in the House of Commons

    Below is the text of the maiden speech made by Robert Maxwell in the House of Commons on 3 November 1964.

    It is with a great sense of humility that I rise to speak here for the first time. I am the representative for Buckingham, one of the nicest constituencies in the Home Counties. Our people are known for their warm-heartedness, hospitality and responsibility.
    It would be fitting for me to pay tribute to my predecessor, Sir Frank Markham, who championed well the cause of Buckingham over the past thirteen years. He is a courageous man. During the recent battles on the Resale Prices Bill, he did not hesitate to vote against his Government in the cause of social justice.

    My constituency, like the rest of southern England, by and large, is prosperous. It contains five towns, Bletchley, Wolverton Urban District, Newport Pagnall, Linslade and Buckingham, as well as over 100 of the loveliest villages of England, which, as a result of the recent railway closures, suffer from a severe lack of adequate bus services, a situation which is causing great hardship to many private individuals as well as to farmers and to businesses.

    Many of our villages lack ordinary amenities such as sewerage and lighting systems. Most of our roads are not capable of handling modern traffic. There are hardly any amenities for our young people, and a great deal remains to be done to make the lives of our retired citizens more in keeping with life today in a highly civilised and prosperous industrial society.

    In my constituency, the two major industries, in addition to the railways and railway workshops, are brick and cement manufacture. These industries are daily discharging into the atmosphere millions of cubic feet of harmful gases and dust, polluting the air in a way dangerous to health and often making life quite intolerable for many thousands of my constituents.

    Working conditions in the brick industry leave a tremendous amount to be desired. In many respects, brick manufacturers, as the House knows, have failed the nation time after time by not providing sufficient capacity to produce the bricks we require and, more particularly, by their failing to explore and introduce quickly new scientific techniques of manufacture. Working conditions in the brick industry are shocking, with the consequence that manufacturers cannot attract sufficient labour from home and have to import large numbers of people from abroad to man their works. This brings serious social and housing problems on all the people and communities living around brick and cement works.

    I earnestly hope that the new Government, jointly with the brick industry, will take urgent steps to increase brick output and improve working conditions, as well as to tackle on a multidisciplinary scientific basis the grave problem of air pollution. It is not enough for the inspectorate of the Ministry of Housing and Local Government to say that the industry is doing all that it can to abate the nuisance. The time has more than arrived for it to be tackled in a really serious way through the new scientific disciplines which are available, if there is the will in the industry and in the Government to do so.

    I hope that the Minister of Transport will confirm soon that he will refuse to sanction the closure of the Oxford Bletchley-Cambridge line. People in my constituency have already suffered grievously from Beeching closures, and, because of the considerable expansion of population in this part of Buckinghamshire, it would be social as well as economic madness to close this important line. An example of the last Government’s mistaken economics, which, I hope, the present Minister of Transport will re-examine, was the recent closing of Castlethorpe railway station in my constituency. The Government are paying a subsidy of about £3,000 per annum to a private bus company to provide an unsatisfactory bus service to the village, whereas Castlethorpe station could be kept open at a cost of only £1,300 per annum. My constituents and I do not understand why this valuable modern station, on which many tens of thousands of pounds of taxpayers’ money were recently spent, was closed down, particularly as it is on the main line along which trains continue to run.

    I look forward to the Government lifting the restrictions on the railway carriage workshops which in the past have prohibited them from accepting contracts from private industry or from abroad. I hope and expect also that the Minister of Transport will use his good offices with the Railways Board to have its workshops division substantially improved working conditions in railway workshops.

    I very much welcome the Government’s proposals to help our industries to gain the full benefit of advances in scientific research and technology. At this point, I wish to refer to the strictures which the Leader of the Opposition seemed to think it right to cast on the creation of the Ministry of Technology and on the Government’s examination of the Concord project. The House may wonder what authority I have to deal with these matters. I was chairman of one of the working parties appointed by my right hon. Friend the Member for Coventry, East (Mr. Crossman) in his previous capacity as Opposition Front Bench spokesman on science and education, and I had the responsibility and privilege of chairing the committee on science, Government and industry. Also, I am a publisher of scientific magazines and books, and I earn my living by being in the closest touch with scientists from all over the world. I can say without any doubt that many leading American scientists have advised the American Government not to enter into a project such as Concord because of grave scientific doubts about its real feasibility and its cost, and I very much support the Government in their determination to review this costly project for which there does not appear to be any real social or economic demand.

    I hope to be able to prove to the House that the new Ministry of Technology is certainly one of the answers that the Government needed in order to get British industry to apply the results of research faster and better than it has done in the past. It is now well understood that the growth of our economy, the welfare of our citizens, our national security and the aid that we can afford to give to under-developed countries all depend to a growing extent upon the effective use that our industries make of new technology.

    In recent years the rate of increase in our gross national product per worker and per capita has slowed down and has been substantially less than the increase of almost all highly industrialised nations. It is apparently not fully realised that scientific discovery followed by technological research and development produces nothing, other than knowledge, for society. They must be followed by their applications through the combined use of capital, and equipment and human resources—labour and management—to produce an economic good.

    It is commonly accepted that management in British industry, both private and nationalised, by and large has failed badly to make use of science and technology as an aid to increased productivity and profitability. For example, of the first fifty ethical drugs prescribed by doctors under the National Health Service, in order of sales value used in this country, only three were discovered and developed in this country—ordinary penicillin and the new Beecham penicillins, Broxil and Penbritin.

    It is generally agreed that one of the major obstacles preventing the wider application and use of science and technology in British industry is that there does not seem to be, at present, an effective organisation or method to convey to individual companies, their management and foremen, the new technology in a form which points the way to its practical applications.

    The other major problem is the great gulf, and lack of communication that exists between the pure scientists and the applied scientists, the universities, the technical colleges, the trade research associations, industry and government, and, finally, the gap that exists between management and scientists in individual firms.

    The whole issue may, therefore, be summed up as being a problem in communication of information and the need to change attitudes of mind. I submit that the creation of the Ministry of Technology is a massive and positive step in bringing about the necessary alteration and to obtain the needed change of attitude.

    The Government should provide something which has been lacking in our country for a long time—a sharp and independent means for recognising when the mission of a Government research and development establishment has lost its validity, and the practical means for re-directing the establishment into more productive channels either within or outside the Government Department that originally sponsored it. When the independent nuclear deterrent is abolished, the problem of what to do with the Aldermaston Weapons Research Establishment is a good example of the kind of problem that I have in mind.

    The present system of awarding development contracts tempts private companies to talk their way into a development programme with promises of results which wise technical judgment would deem unattainable. Blue Streak and various other failed home-produced missiles and weapons come to mind. The present arrangement does not provide for adequate penalties for failure to achieve promised results, nor does it give sufficient incentives for a high level of technical performance. It also offers incentives to contractors to make systems complex and expensive or to prolong the development work. All this is most wasteful of our vital scientific and engineering manpower as well as of the taxpayer’s money.

    Finally, the present defence research contract arrangement with its built-in competitive incentives and inadequate penalties for poor technical performance leads to the proliferation of many research and development groups in private industry of sub-critical size or quality. This is another important example of where the new Government’s changes in the organisation of science and engineering may prove to be most helpful and valuable both in saving taxpayers’ money and in making better use of our scarce national resources in science and engineering.

    The Government and our scientific and engineering community should make it one of their major joint tasks to employ our new-found ability to combine the great diversity of scientific and engineering skills and disciplines to make a massive assault on very large-scale national problems. The effectiveness of employing this new Government tool has been demonstrated during the last war and in the massive U.S.A. and Russian space programmes. The social innovation of use in peacetime of this new Government tool is of even greater consequence in the long run than the scientific and technical innovations on which most of our attention is presently focussed. This is the spill-over from defence of the greatest national and social consequence, and we as a country have so far failed to use this instrument in peacetime. There can be no doubt that the development of this new capability has endowed us as a nation with great new powers. I am sure that the new Government will use this social invention for peaceful purposes and not just confine it to the defence sector.

    The Government should show the way how to use research and development in the modern inter-disciplinary way through industry to improve and raise the quality and excellence of the environment in which we work and live. Familiar examples of the material waste and erosion of the aesthetic environment which are very complex and which can only be solved on a multidisciplinary basis are traffic congestion and air and water pollution.

    The strength of British science depends on the initiative, imagination and intelligence of individual working scientists and engineers. The best possible programme formulated at the top can be made entirely ineffective by the people who are carrying it out. The purposes of organisation for science and engineering in the Government must be to ensure quicker identification and support of new ideas and maintain support for basic research and development to guarantee that the most important national technological jobs are tackled by the most able people. I am convinced that the Government’s arrangements for the organisation of science and technology will do that.

    In conclusion, I wish to thank you, Mr. Deputy-Speaker, and hon. Members for tolerance shown to me this day.