Where will these gallows end up?
The gallows are exported to dictators Robert Mugabe and Colonel Gadaffi, among others, by David Lucas, who also builds chairs and tables.
It seems that gallows building is a thriving business, though totally macabre and distasteful in my view. After all, many innocent people could be murdered on these gallows in countries where life is cheap, at least we still place a value on a human life.
He is profiting from their deaths. The gallows cost £12,000 to make and “multi hanging execution systems” mounted on lorry trailers fetch £100,000.
It also makes a mockery of the UK’s effort to oppose the death penalty around the world if, right under its nose, a British company is sending hanging equipment abroad.
But for some people, victims of crime who feel they have been cheated of justice, the farmer from Mildenhall has become a heroic figure who will stand up and speak in favour of capital punishment. Others feel the rise of violent crime since the abolition of the death penalty in 1965 means we should now have a referendum for the return of capital punishment, and this would be supported by an overwhelming 60-70%.
The bearded, unsmiling farmer believes that putting gallows on display in public and reintroducing cpital punishment would be a powerful deterrent against crime. He explained the reason.
“You are safer walking down the street in Libya and African countries than you are here and that’s because of capital punishment.
“Third world countries are laughing at us because we’ve got no deterrent against crime. They’re the only ones where law and order is under control.
“I have had visits from several high ranking police officers who can’t speak in favour of capital punishment because they’re hands are tied by the government.
“Other people have come to me after their children have been murdered of wives raped. These people feel there is no one to talk for them, so I now speak for them.”
Would you like to see some gallows erected in the centre of your town, even if they were just a deterrent? How safe would that make you feel?
Great article. We could really get going for months on the death penalty. I’ll nail my colours to the mast and say I would absolutely not feel safer with gallows in my local high street. For one thing I would be worried about the local neds decided to progress from happy slapping to happy hanging. I might feel a bit safer if high ranking police officers spent more time catching criminals rather than gawking at gallows.
As for sending them to corrupt regimes….
Well, if we’re going to illegally invade countries with the intention of removing evil dictators and making life better for the citizens of that country, we could do a lot worse than moving onto Mugabe next. Not allowing him to buy his murder weapons from our country.
Hey – I thought bloggers were supposed to be up-to-date with breaking new stories, but your article about the farmer who exports gallows is surely old noose? 😉
Arguably, the most powerful objection against reintroducing hanging now comes from recapping on a few of the many miscarriages of justice in British trials which lead to convictions for murder in the period since 1965 when Parliament voted for abolition of capital punishment:
1989: The Guildford Four are released by the Court of Appeal. The detectives at the centre of the case are later cleared of fabricating evidence.
1991: The Birmingham Six are freed. Prosecutions against officers accused of tampering with evidence are halted because of “adverse publicity”.
1997: The Bridgwater Four – minus Patrick Molloy, who died in jail – are released after 17 years in prison.
2000: The M25 Three are freed by three Court of Appeal judges who say there had been a “conspiracy” to give perjured evidence.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/static/in_depth/uk/2001/life_of_crime/miscarriages.stm
Two hundred years ago, hanging was a frequent judicial sentence for a wide range of crimes and watching hangings was a popular spectacle – from the publisher’s blurb for the critically acclaimed book: The Hanging Tree, by VAC Gatrell, published by Oxford University Press (1996):
“Some thirty-five thousand people were condemned to death in England and Wales between 1770 and 1830, and seven thousand were ultimately executed, the majority convicted of crimes such as burglary, horse theft, or forgery. Mostly poor trades people, these terrified men and women would suffer excruciating death before large and excited crowds.”
http://www.us.oup.com/us/catalog/general/subject/HistoryWorld/British/19thC/?ci=0192853325&view=usa
“The contemporary reformers latched onto the increase in pardons, and agitated for such metered modification of the capital code. By utilizing the politically effective (if misleading) methods of determining public opinion, the reformers of the 1820s were able to drastically increase the number of pardons conferred on criminals for capital offenses throughout the decade. By the end of the decade, the number of convictions in capital cases had waned; juries ‘often refused to convict a man . . . if he was to be hanged for it’ (Trevelyan 508). So it came to pass that falsified public opinion helped shape the general view of the capital code within the United Kingdom in the 1820s. The ‘bloody code’ soon began to collapse under its own weight and the weight of widespread disapproval for those portions considered unreasonably harsh. It was ultimately the pressure applied by reluctant jurors that effected the repeal of many of the more offensive portions of the capital code in the early 1830s. During this time, many lesser property crimes were removed from the enormous list of capital offenses.”
http://users.ox.ac.uk/~chri2057/z1999englcappun.htm
As for whether reintroducing capital punishment now would make us feel safer, a prior issue surely is the low and falling rate of convictions for serious offences:
“An investigation shows that conviction rates for many of the most violent crimes have been in freefall since Labour came to power in 1997 and are now well below 10 per cent. The chronically low figures for convictions come at the same time as reports that violent crime is increasing. An analysis of Home Office figures reveals that only 9.7 per cent of all ‘serious woundings’, including stabbings, that are reported to the police result in a conviction. For robberies the figure falls to 8.9 per cent and for rape, it is 5.5 per cent.”
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,,1784623,00.html
Graham, I highlighted this today because it is a local story and was a page lead in today’s Daily Mail, inviting online comments from readers. It is naturally always going to be controversial and the fact that police chiefs are supporting this farmer’s about reinstating capital punishment is quite worrying.
Bob B has outlined many reasons why hanging will never be reintroduced in this country.
The regimes purchasing this equipment are probably paying for the equipment with British taxpayers money. There’s plenty of aid for Africa, but when women in this country need Herceptin they have to go to court for it. It’s the same with Macugen, a drug that can prevent blindness, which is also being denied on the grounds of cost. We live in strange times.
Our forbears were wiser than is often supposed. When hanging was a punishment for a wide range of crimes, they came to appreciate that this created a system of perverse incentives – hence the traditional adage: Might as well be hanged for a sheep as a lamb.
There was also the practical question of a suitably harsh deterrent for truly heinous crimes such as threatening the life of the sovereign or treason. An alternative was devised: Hanging, drawing and quartering.
As a concession to public decency when executions were regarded as public entertainment, women were to be burned at the stake instead. Sensibilities inhibit me from posting further details:
http://www.richard.clark32.btinternet.co.uk/hdq.html
From the long history of public executions in Britain, my favourite story comes from the engaging entry for: Tyburn – a principal site for London executions located close to where Marble Arch now stands – in that truly wonderful resource: Weinreb and Hibbert (eds): The London Encyclopaedia (1993):
In 1447 five men had already been hanged, cut down while still alive and stripped ready for quartering when their pardon arrived but the hangman refused to return their clothes – a legitimate perk of his job – so they were obliged to walk home naked.