Polling shows that 50% of Brits support the reintroduction of capital punishment and 42% of the public say it should be typical sentence when it comes to murder
Sir Keir Starmer was forced to rule out bringing back the death penalty in parliament on Wednesday after right-wing MP Rupert Lowe asked for a referendum about bringing back capital punishment.
Independent MP Lowe asked the PM if he agreed “the reintroduction of the death penalty for both foreign and domestic criminals should be put to the British people in a legally binding referendum?”
The last executions in the UK took place in 1964, and capital punishment was suspended the following year. It was then abolished in Great Britain in 1969 before being outlawed in Northern Ireland four years later.
Peter Allen, 21, and Gwynne Evans, 24, were hanged at the same time in separate prisons in Manchester and Liverpool. The pair were led to the gallows at 8am and were dead within seconds as their necks were snapped by the hangman’s noose.
The pair were convicted of the murder of John Alan West, a 53-year-old laundry company driver who was bludgeoned and stabbed to death at his home in Seaton, Cumbria, on April 7, 1964.
Evans and Allen had travelled to Mr West’s home in a car stolen from Preston, Lancs. Evans, from Maryport, knew the victim, who was a bachelor who lived alone after the death of his mother. He and Allen wanted money to pay a court debt.
Shortly after 3am, neighbours heard several thuds, a scream and the screech of a car being driven away. Mr West’s semi-naked body was found moments later.
He had suffered 13 head injuries and a single stab wound to the heart. The knife was ditched near Windermere as the attackers fled. Also in the getaway car were Allen’s wife and the couple’s two young children.
The murderers escaped with a watch which had been presented to Mr West in 1955 to mark 25 years at Lakeland Laundry and two bank books from which they withdrew a total of £10. Police found Evans’ jacket hanging on Mr West’s banister.
Each blamed the other for striking the fatal blows, but a jury found them both guilty under the joint enterprise law and they were sentenced to death.
They both launched appeals hoping to commute the sentence to life in prison, and some historians believe that had there been a delay of a few more weeks, they may have had a reprieve, as the public’s attitude was turning against the practice.
In 1965, Labour MP Sydney Silverman introduced a Private Member’s Bill to suspend the death penalty for murder, which passed on a free vote in the House of Commons by 200 votes to 98.
Silverman was opposed in the General Election 1966 in the Nelson and Colne constituency by Patrick Downey, the uncle of Moors murder victim Lesley Anne Downey, who stood on an explicitly pro-hanging platform and got 13.7%, of the vote.
A recent YouGov poll found more Brits support reintroducing capital punishment (50%) than oppose (45%). Eight in ten Reform voters support bringing back the death penalty, as do two-thirds of Conservative voters.
Support falls to 35% among Labour voters and 30% for Lib Dems, with Green voters the least likely to support capital punishment at 26%.
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