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Gwynne Evans and Peter Allen were the last people
to be hanged in the UK. Photograph: Peter Lomas |
The deaths of the two convicted murderers, hanged with little ceremony at separate prisons at 8am on 13 August 1964, made only a couple of lines in the national press.
Exactly 50 years later, however, the names Evans and Allen – two criminals who bludgeoned a man to death to steal £10 – are a significant footnote in the annals of abolitionist history.
As the last two people executed in Britain, the macabre anniversary of their deaths at Strangeways prison in Manchester and Walton prison in Liverpool is generating more publicity than their crime and punishment ever did at the time.
Evans, 24, and Allen, 21, were unlucky with their timing. Two months after they were executed Labour came to power, bringing a Commons vote to suspend
capital punishment for five years in the 1965 Murder Act, a move made permanent in 1969.
At the time of their convictions, the 1957 Homicide Act had already removed the automatic death penalty for all murders, though exceptions included any murder committed for theft.
The criminologist Steve Fielding, author of more than 20 books on British hangings, believes the lack of publicity was due to the fact that, by sensationalist standards, the Evans and Allen murder was "quite low key".
The two jobless Preston men travelled to the Cumbria home of John "Jack" West, a 53-year-old laundry van driver known to Evans, in a stolen car with Allen's wife and two children, on 7 April 1964. The two planned to rob the bachelor, but then killed him.
Source: The Guardian, August 13, 2014
50 years since the last execution can the UK help end the death penalty worldwide?
Half a century ago, Peter Allen and Gwynne Evans were hanged for the murder of John West. Nobody knew it at the time, but they were to be the last people to be executed in the UK. The 50th anniversary of this watershed moment gives us a chance to remember why we are better off without the death penalty, and why British efforts to promote the worldwide abolition of capital punishment should be supported.
Calls to reinstate the death penalty in the UK are usually made in the aftermath of horrific crimes, like those of Harold Shipman, Fred and Rosemary West, and more recently Michael Adebolajo for murdering soldier Lee Rigby. A principled argument against capital punishment in these cases is that we should not reduce ourselves to doing the very thing we condemn. Namely, killing somebody in a cold, dispassionate and calculated manner.
For all its admirable efforts in this field, the UK still has a long way to go. Britons still face the death penalty in other countries, such as
Lindsay Sandiford in Indonesia, and
Andargachew Tsegein Ethiopia.
Investigations have also revealed that the UK government provides financial and technical aid to countries like Iran and Pakistan to help with their anti-drug trafficking efforts. This is aid that
ultimately assists these states with the execution of drug traffickers. And, despite Britain’s efforts to promote abolition worldwide,
100 countries still have capital punishment on the books, even if not all of them use it regularly.
Source: The Conversation, Bharat Malkani, August 13, 2014. Mr. Malkani is a Lecturer, Birmingham Law School at University of Birmingham.
