Observer’s call to ‘bring back rope’

Under a heading ‘Bring back the rope’ , the Observer in August 1966, said the abolition a year earlier of capital punishment for murder had left police across the country at the mercy of violent criminals.

The paper’s comment came just days after three London policemen were murdered by gunmen.

In an editorial the paper said in the year before the start of World War Two, when birching could still be used by the courts as a punishment, there were 2000 cases of robbery. By 1964, 16 years after birching was abolished as a judicial penalty, there were 19,000 cases of robbery.

`The do-gooders have hoaxed the country long enough,” said the Observer. `Tough methods will solve the crime problem, turning prisons into hydropathics never will.’

The paper quoted Police Federation secretary Arthur Evans as saying the force was weak in numbers and fighting crime with `one arm behind their backs’. London and other major cities were in danger of being dominated by gangs or organised criminals, he added.

Mr Evans called for the restoration of capital punishment for the murder of a policeman..

The Observer believed there was a case for arming the police as the criminals they faced already had guns.

`A wooden baton and a whistle is a poor match for a sawn-off shotgun or a heavy calibre revolver,’ said the Observer. `Police must be given the weapons to enable them to do the job.’

Mr Evans wanted police engaged in special inquiries into serious and violent crime to be armed. Up until then police required special permission to carry a gun. One police expert thought the time had come for police cars to carry `at least one gun’. For the Observer, the logic of that suggestion was `inescapable’ and the paper suggested that in future confrontations with gangsters, the police had to be armed as effectively as their enemies.

`We want no more widows of murdered law enforcement officers,’ said the paper.

A national `bring back the rope’ campaign had been organised and the

Observer urged readers to give it their support.

`There was no public mandate for abolishing hanging,’ said the paper. `The public want an end to all this coddling of the criminal, old and young.

`Bring back hanging, bring back the cat, bring back the birch. That is what the man in the street says and MPS will be expressing his point of view if they vote towards its end.’

However, MPS fail to heed the words of the paper and in 1969 reaffirmed their decision that capital punishment for murder should be permanently abolished.