The Tory minister wrote in 1998 that it was wrong to abolish hanging
Newly appointed justice secretary Michael Gove wrote an article supporting the death penalty in 1998, saying it was wrong to abolish hanging for convicted criminals.
The former Tory education secretary and chief whip’s article for the Times, where he was a journalist, was reported by the Telegraph on Sunday after his new role was revealed.
Mr Gove will be in charge of scrapping the Human Rights Act as well as running Britain’s prisons.
His piece argued a fair trial with the death penalty was more just than prison sentences set by the home office and imposed by judges.
The Times reports:
“Mr Gove wrote in 1998 that Britain was wrong to abolish hanging in the 1960s.
Banning the noose had ‘led to a corruption of our criminal justice system, the erosion of all our freedoms and has made the punishment of the innocent more likely’ as it came with the home secretary being given the power to impose wholesale tariffs, he said.
He has not repeated his stance since.
The Telegraph reports Mr Gove also wrote:
“Hanging may seem barbarous, but the greater barbarity lies in the slow abandonment of our common law traditions. Were I ever alone in the dock I would not want to be arraigned before our flawed tribunals, knowing my freedom could be forfeit as a result of political pressures. I would prefer a fair trial, under the shadow of the noose.”
The incoming Tory government has pledged to replace the Human Rights Act, which enshrined the European Convention on Human Rights into UK law in 2000, which a British bill of rights.
The Act was passed under the Labour government of Tony Blair in the same year Mr Gove wrote his article about hanging.
Mr Gove recently wrote a piece in the Spectator about the importance of Christianity in the UK.
Adam Barnett is a staff writer at Left Foot Forward. Follow MediaWatch on Twitter
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61 Responses to “Michael Gove supported the death penalty. Now he’s minister for justice”
Kryten2k35
Exactly!
damon
I wasn’t sure what point the article was making. I presume he thinks it’s bad that Gove once backed the death penalty. Well just say that then. Some people do and some don’t.
I generally don’t in practice, but I’m not absolute about it. If some states in the US want to do that, that’s their business I think. They do seem to have some pretty dreadful serial killers and the like over there, and killing them is probably for the best.
I don’t support it in the UK, but only really because we are not mature enough as a people to be able to handle it. We can’t even abide a bit of fox hunting without people going mental, so the death penalty would be off the scale.
Leon Wolfeson
Ah, so you think the British are inferior to your Americans.
Sigh.
For me, it’s a trust-in-government issue. I, as someone who actually wants to limit government powers, don’t trust them to hold executions of civilians.
(Military law is a different matter, doesn’t function in the same way, and keeping it for some offences there makes sense)
damon
Some US states execute. They do it, and presumably are able to handle it otherwise they wouldn’t do it. In the UK we couldn’t handle it. We’re too weak as a country.
That’s all I was saying. In theory, executing the most nihilistic of murderers wouldn’t be such a big deal. Bang, they’re history. No need to keep them in prison like some bad dream for the next forty years reminding everyone of their evil crimes.
But we can’t do that in Britain as we’ve been neutered by the PC brigade.
So therefore, I wouldn’t even bother speaking about the subject if I had some kind of platform. Gove probably recognises this too.
Faerieson
But ultimately, it’s not really about maturity, or the extremes of human behaviour, and it’s not even about being PC. It’s got to be about the possibilities of a miscarriage of jusice, and miscarriages do still occur.
With regards to whether or not society should or shouldn’t accept capital punishment, that rather depends upon whether we want to live in a society that aspires to better itself, or one that embraces the more vengeful mentality.