LOOKBACK
OF KILLING THE DEATH PENALTY
SIXTY YEARS
POLICE reflects on the final days of the campaign for abolition of the capital punishment and the lasting impact of the historic decision on justice, policing and national values
historically significant by virtue of timing. Both men were convicted under the Homicide Act 1957, which attempted to narrow the scope of capital murder but still retained the death penalty for certain categories of killing. Their executions were carried out with the procedural precision that had long characterised British hangings. Yet even at the time, there was a growing sense that these were the final acts of a system increasingly out of step with public sentiment, political will and evolving understandings of justice.
The movement
to abolish capital punishment had been gathering momentum for decades. The post-
Sixty years have passed since the United Kingdom took the decisive step of abolishing the death penalty for murder, bringing to an end a practice that had shaped the criminal justice system for centuries. This anniversary offers an opportunity not only to revisit the final days of capital punishment, but also to reflect on the campaigners, parliamentarians and police officers
24 | POLICE | APRIL | 2026
whose experiences shaped the debate, and on the legacy abolition has left for modern policing. The last people to be executed in the UK were Peter Allen and Gwynne Evans, hanged simultaneously on 13 August 1964 for the murder of John West, a 53-year-old laundry van driver in Cumbria. Their cases were unremarkable in legal terms, yet they became
war period, in particular, saw a shift in public attitudes, influenced by a series of controversial cases that raised profound questions about the fallibility of the justice system.
Among the most influential figures was
Sydney Silverman, the Labour MP whose tireless campaigning spanned more than twenty years. Silverman, himself once imprisoned as a conscientious objector,
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