A punishment in search of a crime: Murder and the death penalty in postwar Britain, 1945--1970

This dissertation chronicles the movement to abolish capital punishment in postwar Britain. It also looks closely at the nature and legal status of murder, the only crime to which the twentieth-century British state continued to apply the death penalty during peacetime. Its primary focus is to explore why some nations relinquish their power to deprive individuals of life, and why in the case of Britain, lawmakers eventually chose to abolish capital punishment in 1965 against the wishes of a majority of the British people.; A Punishment in Search of a Crime: Murder and the Death Penalty in Postwar Britain, 1945--1970 consists of eight chronologically arranged chapters. They tell the story of how and why the British state became disillusioned with hanging the odd murderer by his or her neck until dead. Beginning in the immediate aftermath of World War II, the dissertation examines the sequence of events that led inexorably to abolition. It looks at the way these events eroded the moral underpinnings that had always helped justify capital punishment and how, as a result, lawmakers and other elites in Britain were prompted to withdraw their previous endorsement of the ultimate sanction. The author has sought, where applicable, to draw comparisons between the movement against the death penalty and other areas of legal and social reform and believes that the 1965 legislation that abolished capital punishment for murder was representative of other liberalizing legislation that came to characterize Britain during the "permissive" 1960s.