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I would just summarise, very shortly, the qualities and aspects of this penalty which make it to all of us a revolting and barbaric thing. It is hot … - Sydney Silverman
" "I would just summarise, very shortly, the qualities and aspects of this penalty which make it to all of us a revolting and barbaric thing. It is hot only the melodrama and sensationalism with which these proceedings are surrounded; it is not only the sordid squalor, every detail of which spreads into the newspapers in every one of these crimes, and whose effect on juvenile delinquency has never been measured but must be very considerable; it is not only the relentless finality of this penalty, the relentless finality which makes this result that once it has been inflicted there is no room for rectification if there were error or miscarriage of justice. No one who knows the records can doubt that there have been cases of error, that there have been miscarriages of justice, and that innocent men have in fact been executed.
Above all these things, there is the sense which we all have that this penalty, of itself, denies the very principle on which we claim the right to inflict it—namely, the sanctity of human life.
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About Sydney Silverman
Samuel Sydney Silverman (8 October 1895 – 9 February 1968) was a British Labour Party politician. An opponent of capital punishment, he proposed multiple Private Members' Bills against the Death penalty in the UK. The last of these, which became the Murder (Abolition of Death Penalty) Act 1965, eventually achieved his objective.
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Samuel Sydney Silverman
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Additional quotes by Sydney Silverman
It seems to me that this problem of the distressed areas cannot be dealt with as though it were a problem existing by itself and divorced from the whole of the economic and social complex of affairs out of which it arises. I have heard during this Debate and during the Debates that have preceded it in the past week many gibes at this party because, as was alleged, it has refrained from endeavouring to apply its Socialistic faith to the problems that we were discussing. Therefore, I hope the House will not think me too doctrinaire or dogmatic if I endeavour to say how, in my view, those Socialistic ideas and principles, for which I and my friends stand and work, are the only principles which have any relevance to the problems which the House is discussing on this Motion.
I am bound to say that, listening to the jibes during the past week and coming here for the first time straight from the open air and light which seem to come so rarely in this Chamber, either physically or otherwise, I felt a sense of deepening gloom as speaker after speaker from the Government Benches, beginning with the Prime Minister, made speech after speech the burden of which was, so far as I could see, purely a confession of impotence—they could not do anything, this course will not do, that measure will not do, no grand schemes will be of any effect and no particular schemes are worth pressing very hard.
It is possible that the war might go on for many years before we got peace. You could create a European desert and call it peace, and give it the permanence of the grave. The objects that we regard as essential for the maintenance of civilisation may require a long war. If so, we should not be afraid of it. But neither should we assume that that is going to be necessary. Now, while people are in the mood to talk, talk to them. It is not necessary to talk on their terms; but if you tell them what are your terms and invite them to talk on your basis, you take the initiative out of their hands, you take the leadership, and perhaps you do something to acquire a long-wanted diplomatic success for ourselves.
It may be that you hold the view that no kind of peace is possible unless the Nazi regime in Germany is removed. If that is one of the things you regard as essential, say so by all means; but do not stop there. You have to say what you would do then. Suppose that the Nazi regime went, suppose that the abnoxious individual went, what then would you propose?
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