En finir de la peine de mort

Like every good organisation, we (the Foreign and Commonwealth Office) constantly seek to improve.  As part of that effort, we continually compare ourselves to the foreign ministries of other countries.

We tend to focus on the Ministère des Affaires étrangères of France, or the “Quai d’Orsay”, after the street where the ministry is based.  As the foreign ministry of a country with roughly the same population and GDP, and with a lot of shared history, they make very good “comparators”.

We used to be intense competitors with France.  We fought each other regularly until 1815.  After that, we were usually allies, but not always the closest as we continued to compete for trade, influence and leadership abroad.

We have different geographies and histories.  The 33 kilometre channel (at its narrowest) between our countries, the English Channel (or La Manche, “the sleeve”, as the French call it) protected Britain from the worst of mainland European conflicts.

Despite those differences, we are now both democratic states.  Our interests, values and the challenges we face, are very similar.  Both want to sustain their ways of life in an increasingly competitive, globalised world.  Both have ageing populations, and rising immigration from former colonies and elsewhere.

But:  English supplanted French as the language of diplomacy in the early 20th century.  English went on to become the world language for business, air traffic control, the internet and so on.  This must be galling for the French.  I can understand why they continually defend their language, which is still spoken by about 220 million people around the world, and “cultural exceptionalism”, the idea of defending cultural diversity as a non commercial good.

I’ve been musing on our shared past and present, because my French colleague has just left his post here in Belarus.  Apart from working closely with him and other EU ambassadors, I’ve been struck by how similar our outlooks have been.

A current priority of French foreign policy is to end the use of the death penalty around the world.  Although this goal is shared by my government, Laurent Fabius has made this a particular priority after he became French Foreign Minister last year.

This is a particularly sensitive subject in Belarus because recent executions included those convicted of planting a bomb on the Minsk metro in April 2011 that killed 15 people.

Despite this, my former French colleague wrote articles, gave interviews and speeches on this issue, including at a seminar in Minsk on 21 June which I attended.  Some of his comments attracted particularly heavy criticism from Belarusians on-line.

I know for him that the issue was one of personal conscience.  As I hinted in a previous blog, diplomats tend not to allow emotions to affect their work.  But they can have strong personal convictions, which can serve as powerful motivation.

Following conscience is not just for diplomats.  There is a convention in the British Parliament, and other democratic assemblies, that legislators can vote on moral issues according to their personal conscience rather than following an official line of their political party.  We know them as “free votes”.  The death penalty is par excellence such a moral issue.

There is no conclusive evidence that the death penalty deters very serious crimes, even terrorism.  As it is the ultimate sanction, any miscarriages of justice cannot be reversed.  There are other means of punishing serious crimes.

Abolition in Britain was gradual.  Two centuries ago, 220 crimes, including petty theft, could be punishable by death, and juries often found defendants not guilty.  Sir Samuel Romilly, a great legal reformer, introduced Acts of Parliament which reduced the number of offences in the early 19^th century, and by the end of the century, the death penalty only applied to murder and treason.

The last executions were in 1964.  Parliament passed an Act, introduced by a backbench Member of Parliament – in other words, it was not government legislation – to abolish the death penalty for murder in 1965.  This was after a series of controversial cases.

Timothy Evans was hanged in 1950 for murdering his baby daughter, after she and her mother were murdered.  The case rested on his confessions, which he retracted during the trial, and evidence of a neighbour, John Christie, who was subsequently confessed and found guilty of the murder of Evans’ wife and other women.

Derek Bentley, 19, was hanged in 1953 for shooting a policeman dead, despite the fact that it was his 16 year old accomplice who fired the gun.  While both were found guilty of murder, the accomplice was imprisoned because he was a minor (he was under 18, the age of majority in Britain), but Bentley was sentenced to death despite doubts about his mental capacity.

In 1955, Ruth Ellis was the last women to be hanged for the murder of her lover.  She shot him in what was a crime of passion.  She made no attempt to flee the murder scene or deny her guilt.

In every parliament after abolition until 1997, there were free votes in the House of Commons on reintroducing the death penalty.  All failed, despite opinion polls suggesting a majority of the British people were in favour of restoration.  There have been occasional campaigns since to bring it back for specific crimes – terrorist acts, murder of children, murder of policemen.  More recent opinion polls suggest that support amongst the general population for the death penalty has gradually weakened.

Abolition of the death penalty is now Europe-wide.  It is part of the European Convention on Human Rights of the Council of Europe, and the European Union’s Charter of Fundamental Rights.  Russia has put a moratorium on its use.  In 1998, the Orthodox Patriarch of Moscow described the death penalty as premeditated murder and a violation of the biblical commandant not to kill.

As my French colleague stated, terrible crimes such as the Minsk metro bomb cause great anger and hatred amongst ordinary people.  But should anger direct the decisions of politicians?  The death penalty is an extreme measure which is at odds with the sanctity of human life.  It has no place in today’s Europe.