Killing With Kindness
In the past couple of days, visitors and readers of ConservativeHome have debated whether the death penalty should be reintroduced in Britain.
Today, in a comment article on ConservativeHome, David T Breaker argued that the death penalty was wrong. In the comments, the Conservative MP for North Warwickshire and Bedworth, Dan Byles, agreed, saying that he believed ‘the power to take the lives of its citizens is too awesome a power to trust to the State’.
This remark on capital punishment is particularly interesting in light of the speech he made back in March, duly recorded by Hansard, in which Mr Byles made the following points:
I believe that the House is broadly united, with the possible exception of Mr Winnick, in believing that in the case of Libya, events had reached a stage where committing our military to enforcing the UN resolution is absolutely the right thing to do.
The spectre of Iraq should not prevent us from doing what we believe is right and is ultimately in our national interests…
It is with some regret that I will be voting for the motion, because committing military forces to action anywhere in the world is regrettable. It will lead to dead soldiers, if not British, then Libyan; we must not forget that whichever side wins, there are casualties on the other side.
What we understand by all this is that Mr Byles is perfectly in favour of the State using the ‘awesome power’ of taking life to kill Libyan soldiers and civilians, which is the logical and real consequence of his support for military action in Libya – but he is against the execution of convicted murderers, tried by a jury of their peers (with unanimous verdicts) under an open legal system, with a right to defence and fair trial.
Dan Byles MP is therefore prepared to protect Libyan civilians by dropping bombs on Gaddafi, but if innocent civilians are killed by mistake (and they have been and will be), it is deemed ‘regrettable’ but, in his eyes, acceptable. But he will not allow the hanging of British murderers for their crimes and to protect us.
Your Comments:
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Hello Chris. This medium is probably not suitable for the complex debate required for this topic, but in quick response to your well researched reply to me.
The key part of my quote is: ‘It is with some regret that I will be voting for the motion, because committing military forces to action anywhere in the world is regrettable.’
That is not the same as saying I am ‘…perfectly in favour of the State using the ‘awesome power’ of taking life by killing Libyan soldiers and civilians…’
Among other things I am a pragmatist and a realist, and in addition to the moral question inherent in any debate such as this (or Libya) there are also the questions of what are the alternatives, and sometimes which is the least worse option or lesser of two evils.
In Libya, I believe the prospect of a slaughter of civilians in Benghazi had Gadaffi’s forces taken that city would have been the greater evil. I also believe the alternatives open to us to prevent that outcome were extremely limited. Hence the reluctance and regret with which I voted in support of military action.
The analogy is therefore not accurate. There are alternatives to the State killing criminals. The prospect of the State unnecessarily killing an innocent man or woman in error is horrific. And the prospect (however unlikely) of ‘mission creep’ once this rubicon is crossed is frightening. You have that much faith in all future British governments?
Like you I am a small state Conservative. I find it remarkable that a true Conservative would wish to give the State this much power over the populace. I am also unconvinced by many of the arguments in favour.
Interestingly, this is actually a topic on which I changed my mind after researching the subject (I wonder how many of those currently taking part in this debate have actually researched it?). When I was younger I was a supporter of capital punishment due to some hazy, lazy and ignorant assumptions about deterrence etc. It wasn’t until I was at university and I researched and wrote an essay entitled “Is it ever justifiable to take a human life’ for a philosophy elective module. Interestingly, given this discussion between you and I, I concentrated on the concept of ‘just war’ and on capital punishment (while acknowledging the equally difficult topics of abortion and euthanasia, but a short essay couldn’t cover everything).
I started from a position of supporting capital punishment, and after researching the impact of abolition in the UK, and of the statistics from the USA and around the world, I changed my mind. I came to the conclusion that there is one valid argument in favour of capital punishment (an argument I did not agree with, but recognised was valid) and that was retribution. An eye for an eye. I don’t believe that, but I can understand the argument. The deterrent argument simply didn’t hold water in the face of the evidence I saw at the time (evidence I cannot quote to you today I’m afraid – this was a long time ago).
If the evidence has changed I would look at it again before voting on this subject. But it would need to be very powerful evidence for me to accept giving the State the power to kill its citizens when there are alternative options open (which there aren’t always in war).
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- Edward Spalton
Methinks the honourable gentleman doth protest too much. What sound information did he have about the relative nastiness or niceness of the rebels in Benghazi and Colonel Gadaffi’s forces to come to the conclusion that one or the other should be zapped?
As any damned fool knows, there is no such thing as a campaign of ‘surgical’ air strikes. However carefully targeted, ‘collateral damage’ is certain, condemning dozens or hundreds of complete innocents to death and maiming without benefit of judge and jury. But because it’s far away and from a great height, he is comfortable with that. With no British interests at stake, who gave Mr Cameron the right to wage a vanity war of this sort? We stopped being the world’s policeman long ago. There are evil governments all over the world doing evil things. Our Dave could be kept very busy spending our blood (which we do have) and treasure (which he is still having to borrow) to zap them all.
Like Mr Byles, I have a conservative outlook. It used to have a capital ‘C’ but not since Mr Major went to Maastricht. A collection of offshore provinces of the EU empire has no moral standing to interfere in other countries in the name of liberty, self government or anything else.
With regard to capital punishment under the criminal law, it is impossible in an EU province, so he could save his breath to blow his porridge. However, Professor Schachtschneider (emeritus Professor of Public Law at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg) claims that the Lisbon treaty gives the power to the institutions of the EU to impose the death penalty “in time of war or imminent threat of war”. So perhaps that is a field for the exercise of his selectively tender conscience.
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Our heart-on-the-sleeve representatives in that place where once a Government resided, Westminster, have no compunction condemning innocent people to death. Not only in wars where they interfere with no information whatsoever, (see the Balkans where the RAF was in the air alongside the Luftwaffe bombing our anti-fascist Allies, the brave Serbs against whom Hitler sent 5 battalions) and as described above in Libya as examples. But they have not the courage even to keep convicted murderers in goal, releasing them to murder again at will in the community. About time these so called MPs were held to account for their inhumanity.
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Thank you to Dan Byles MP for his reply. He says that saying ‘It is with some regret that I will be voting for the motion, because committing military forces to action anywhere in the world is regrettable’ is not the same as being ‘perfectly in favour of the State using the ‘awesome power’ of taking life by killing Libyan soldiers and civilians’. Unfortunately, I am afraid, it is.
Mr Byles had a decision over whether to vote for or against the motion on Libya – a black or white choice. It doesn’t matter much whether it was done with regret – he voted in favour of the motion and also advised others to do the same to create a ‘united front’. He knew, as he admitted, that this would ‘lead to dead soldiers, if not British, then Libyan; we must not forget that whichever side wins, there are casualties on the other side’. Those are the consequences of his actions, the deaths of innocent Libya civilians at our hands. It has already happened and will continue to happen for as long as we remain in Libya.
The alternative, of course, was to vote against the motion and not give legitimacy to Cameron’s foray into yet another foreign misadventure. What business do we have meddling in Libya, who last year we were quite happy to deal with on an amicable basis? On what principle of law or morality do we fight or overthrow other governments? The whole doctrine of ‘Just War’ was developed to deal with this, and its principal difficulty is that War is Hell, and needs very strong justification. As a former soldier, Mr Byles should know innocent lives are horribly ruined by war, even war in a good cause; and that wars are easy to start and hard to end. In this Machiavelli was largely correct when he observed that ‘Wars begin where you will but they do not end when you please’.
What if the no-fly zone, for which he and so many others voted, does not work? What then? When will the decision be taken to arm the rebels? Mr Byles says, with reference to the death penalty, ‘the prospect (however unlikely) of ‘mission creep’ once this rubicon is crossed is frightening. You have that much faith in all future British governments?’ Much the same could be said in return to our foray into Libya. If the ‘prospect of a slaughter of civilians in Benghazi’ is so pressing, then how about similar happenings in Bahrain, Yemen, Syria, Iran, Zimbabwe, China and anywhere else where the Government doesn’t reach Mr Cameron’s alleged high ethical standards? No doubt our intervention has prolonged a civil war, one that we don’t really understand and will likely lead to more deaths and greater suffering than it will prevent. When will it end and how far will we go?
Returning to the death penalty, if Mr Byles is claiming that there was somehow no alternative to intervention in Libya, but there are alternatives to the death penalty, then that is very worrying indeed. Of course, the alternative to having the death penalty is not having it, and all that brings with it. He cannot say that he is prepared to intervene in Libya, knowing full well that innocents will die, saying it is the lesser evil, and then tell us he is completely against the death penalty because the idea of an innocent person being executed is ‘horrific’.
While the idea of executing an innocent person may be ‘horrific’, it is not an argument against the death penalty so much as an argument in favour of making huge efforts to ensure that it does not happen. Inclusive of this should be the abolition of majority verdicts by juries and the return of unanimous decisions. Likewise, jury duty should be limited to those with sufficient educational or property qualifications. The system must be as fair and as open as possible. Still, nothing is perfect – not war, not justice – but we live in an imperfect world and we must do the best that we can with the resources available to us.
As for the figures or statistics, then I would be happy to provide more here if it would help. In brief, since 1956/7 (rather than 1965) when in reality the death penalty was really abolished, convictions for homicides (in England and Wales) have dramatically increased from 94 in 1956 to 648 in 2004. As I mentioned in another comment here, one of the reasons the homicide rate is not even higher (and thus perhaps not so easily comparable) is the dramatic improvement in trauma surgery which has pulled many people back from the edge of the grave. Further, this has been reflected in the figures for attempted murder and of ‘wounding to endanger life’ which quadrupled from 155 in 1976 to 634 in 1996. Perhaps Mr Byles could enlighten us to what would constitute ‘powerful’ enough evidence for him to change his mind again?
In conclusion, we elected our MPs to hold the Government to account; to question and watch over them and to protect us from wrongful authority. In the case of Libya, our MPs voted overwhelmingly in favour of intervention, despite huge misgivings by the country at large. Did we learn nothing from experience of Saddam Hussein? Likewise, by removing the death penalty (and refusing to restore it) they have armed the criminals and armed the police, making murder and unlawful killing even more likely. If Mr Byles and our MPs care so much about the fate of Libyans in Benghazi, enough to spend billions of our money on attempting to supposedly protect them, why can’t they do the same for the British people? It is often said that charity begins at home. How about justice too?
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If you think that the decision to vote in favour of the Libya motion was a black or white choice, then you and I differ too much in our view of the world to come to any agreement. It was anything but black or white.
And yes, as you point out, I speak as a former soldier who has spent many years studying war studies, the history and evolution of warfare the theories of warfare, and international affairs in various forms. I also speak as someone who has had to grapple with the moral issue of whether I would take the life of another if (as was quite possible) I was required to do so. Had I felt I could not, I would not have joined the Army. I was fortunate that during my military career I was never required to kill. But I might have been.
And no, Mr Palmer, these issues are never black or white.
Finally, I simply do not agree with your continued attempts to link the issue of intervention in Libya with the issue of capital punishment. Your thinking and analysis of these two highly complex (in both practical and moral terms) and quite different issues is far too simplistic for me I’m afraid.
Thank you for the discussion. If I don’t reply again this evening it is because I am signing off to spend some time with my wife. Good night.
