Read Peter Hitchens only in The Mail on Sunday
Unlike most people, I have seen a real execution, conducted by what I suspect is the most disturbing method of all, the electric chair. Asked at the time how it affected me, I said, without having in any way prepared an answer, and to my own surprise, that I felt older for having witnessed it. I expect quite a lot of you will now have some idea of what I meant by this.
I still think quite often about the occasion, and wonder if I did something unforgivable by being there at all. After all, I was not in any way opposed to the execution, of a rather unpleasant and unrepentant murderer who tortured his victims before killing them. In fact I was all in favour of it happening, being a supporter in general of capital punishment, and I welcomed the opportunity to write about it. So I had, in a way, willed it and was, in a way, responsible for it.
I've also researched the whole issue of execution for a chapter on the subject in my book 'A Brief History of Crime', and I know more or less what is involved in a hanging. I've even studied the old Home Office charts, with their instructions on the correct length of rope for hanging men of different weights, and the once-secret accounts of executions that went wrong.
So on Saturday I didn't share my colleagues' shock at the film of Saddam Hussein being led to the noose. Nor am I specially distressed by accounts of the later, more unsparing version in which you can hear the taunts of his executioners, and in which he drops abruptly through the trapdoor. Though I think this has political implications that I'll come to later.
What many people dislike about executions is the ritual. Why is this? I think they are afraid, above all, that they might enjoy watching, and are angry with their civilised selves for wanting to do so. The ceremonial nature of the event makes them think they are watching a human sacrifice, which in some ways they are.
Human sacrifice is one of the things Christianity is supposed to have abolished. People who think that, if we did away with the Christian religion, we would enter into a world of total reasonableness and nice, middle-class behaviour should bear in mind that what they regard as Christian superstition and mumbo-jumbo were in part designed to bring such practices to an end. If Christianity goes, might those old stone gods, with their appetite for human flesh, rise again? Read the Anglican 1662 Communion service to see how it lays it on thick that the sacrifice of Christ on the cross was full, perfect, sufficient, etc, and you'll see what I mean.
Even so, despite centuries of Christianity, ideas of human sacrifice were still very much alive in Britain less than 200 years ago. When gibbets were still common in England, displaying the rotting, chained corpses of the hanged by the wayside, which was the case until the 1830s , many very ancient pre-Christian superstitions surrounded the gallows. People thought that ills could be cured, or wishes granted, by touching the corpse, obtaining a piece of the rope, or hanging tokens from the gallows-tree.
In three of the superb ghost stories of M.R.James - a man who knew his folklore and who obviously talked to country and seafaring people with some care during his Edwardian country rambles - there are accounts of the mystery and superstition which lingered about the gallows. The three, for those who are interested, are 'The Stalls of Barchester Cathedral', 'A View from a Hill' and 'Rats'. Even after public execution was abolished in 1868, there were still rituals outside the prisons where hangings took place. Until 1902 a black flag was hoisted over the prison after each hanging. Until 1901, the prison bell was tolled for 15 minutes before the condemned man was hanged. Right to the end of hanging in 1965, a notice that execution had been carried out was pinned on the prison gates, and in the case of especially notorious killings, crowds would gather to witness this. Many of the people in those crowds were, I should guess, pretty unpleasant, drunks and wife-beaters and that sort.
For in the ritual killing of a murderer we are in a way trying to kill the potential killer that lurks in many of us. I think one of the stupidest and most over-quoted lines in literature is Oscar Wilde's claim that 'Each man kills the thing he loves' in that over-rated man's over-rated poem 'The Ballad of Reading Gaol'. Does each man really do this? Examples please, anyone? I suspect that what people actually want to kill is the opposite. We loathe seeing in other people the things we most dislike in ourselves.
The trouble with this queasiness about ritualised, systematic, cold-blooded death is that ritualised execution is actually preferable by far to the alternative. For all its horror, hanging is preceded by a jury trial with presumption of innocence, and followed by the possibility of appeal and reprieve. It is also a trial held in public, under the scrutiny of a free press. I am against any execution that doesn't have these safeguards, and by jury trial I mean a jury of responsible grown-ups, and a unanimous verdict, not the travesty of jury trial that now exists in England.
Societies that don't have a death penalty tend instead to have trigger-happy armed police, who are allowed to shoot suspects pretty freely. By the way, this applies particularly to the USA. There, various states pretend to have the death penalty for political reasons, But they don't really because it is seldom or ever actually carried out, and then after such a long delay that the killer has forgotten what he did to deserve his fate.
Even in supposedly execution-happy Texas (a silly caricature of that interesting state, by the way) , you are more likely to die of old age on death row than actually be executed, and the time-lapse between crime and punishment is about 10 years. Yet there is a much bigger scandal. The USA as a whole has hundreds of cases each year of suspects shot dead by police officers, and the event being written off as 'justifiable homicide'.
In such executions, there is no jury trial, no appeal, no possibility of reprieve, no presumption of innocence. Yet we seem far readier to accept this crude and unjust form of capital punishment than we are to accept a 'ritualised' hanging. This isn't just a difference in attitudes towards domestic law-enforcement. It works on the world stage too. Nobody, for instance, really cared all that much when Saddam's sons Uday and Qusay were killed in a gun-battle in July 2003 (and the death of Qusay's 14-year-old son Mustafa in the shooting has never attracted any serious attention or criticism). There's another reason for the lack of outrage about this which I'll turn to later.
The display of the brothers' corpses, first in all their gory horror, and later cleaned up, in some ways even more macabre as a result, to make them more recognisable, simply didn't create anything like the fuss that the Saddam execution pictures have done. Yet it should have done, at least because of the third, unintended, death. If you carry out an execution ( as was the case with Uday and Qusay) with anti-tank guns, then it's pretty likely there'll be some 'collateral damage', isn't it? Imagine the hoo-ha if the executioners had hanged a 14-year-old boy by mistake before getting round to Saddam, just because he happened to be standing nearby at the time. But even in occupation Iraq, that's not very likely.
In the 40-odd years since we abolished the rope, we have with remarkable speed moved from being a country with an unarmed police force to a country - much more like the USA - where more and more cops carry guns and are prepared to use them. There are remarkably few protests about this, and I don't recall Amnesty International having much to say about it.
Quite often, the police marksmen get the right people. Occasionally, as Jean Charles de Menezes found, they don't. Those who argue that the danger of hanging the wrong man is a total and unanswerable objection to the death penalty ought surely to take the same view of police killings, and insist on the disarming of the police. But, funnily enough, they don't take this view. This is because the risk of killing innocents isn't really their reason for objecting to capital punishment. It's a pretext that avoids the real question.
What they're against, on the surface anyway, is the ritual. Why? Partly because the ritual makes it clear that the killing has official and lawful sanction, and they are personally responsible for it as citizens of a democracy. This feeling of being made responsible is all the greater for left-wing politicians, or any politicians, who feel uncomfortable about signing an actual death warrant. People don't like responsibility, especially that kind.
And in many cases they're rather disgusted with themselves for even being interested in the process, as abolitionists usually are (interested, I mean). Look and see how many watched the Saddam videos, expurgated and unexpurgated, and I'll bet there were a fair few Guardian-reading liberals among them. I didn't notice any special squeamishness or delicacy among the left-wing papers in their coverage of the affair, either. The anti-capital-punishment movie 'the Green Mile' (which I much regret having watched during a long flight, not having any real idea of what was coming) is extraordinarily graphic about what happens if an electrocution is botched. The anti-execution movie (there are lots of these) "Dead Man Walking" also features an absurdly caricatured scene of a lethal injection, in which ethereal music is played as the condemned man is hoisted into something rather like a crucifixion position. This is entirely inaccurate. Nothing of the sort happens. Lethal injection executions are remarkable for their total lack of drama. The recent British anti-hanging film 'Pierrepoint' also dwelt rather lengthily on some of the more intimate aspects of the execution of women.
Well, perhaps liberals should be embarrassed about their fascination with the matter. I'm sure Freud and the others would have much to say about the pornography of the execution shed. But these are deep waters, Watson. Let us get back to the political implications of Saddam's execution.
Lord Macaulay, in his sizzling account of the English Civil War, rightly points out that the execution of King Charles the First was not just a crime, but an error on the part of Cromwell. Charles was a duplicitous cheat and a would-be autocrat, who had come close to ruining his country through irresponsibility and greed for power. He had sacrificed his closest allies and friends to save his own skin. He had turned brother against brother and divided a formerly happy country against itself. He was utterly discredited.
Yet, subjected to a kangaroo court, without true legal authority, he became a kind of hero, arguing with total truth and much dignity that the trial was unlawful. And his execution, during which he bore himself with legendary calm and courage, turned him into a martyr, so much so that an immortal poem was written about the event, and a small band of eccentrics still annually marks his death with solemn commemorations. Accounts of the beheading mention the great uncontrollable groan of horror that spread through the crowd when they realised that the thing had actually happened - the Lord's Anointed had been killed before their eyes. By executing Charles, Cromwell ensured that there would one day be a Restoration.
I know, I know, Saddam Hussein was not Charles Stuart. For all his political faults, the judicially-murdered King of England was a true nobleman, a loving husband and father and a kindly, educated and intelligent man of some grace and culture. Saddam was a near-feral street child and gunman, who rose to power in a violent country through ruthlessness and a willingness to kill.
But 21st-century Iraq is also not 17th- century England (which even by then was an incredibly advanced and lucky country, with a long history of limited government and the rule of law). And Saddam, who has been turned into a fabled monster by Western leaders trying to frighten their voters, was in truth not much more than a three-star ogre by the standards of Stalin, Hitler, Mao or Pol Pot. That is why, when he came to the dock in his trial, he was able to show himself to advantage. He couldn't possibly be as bad as they had said he was.
The same thing happened to Serbia's Slobodan Milosevic, another cut-rate villain turned into a gigantic monster by people who needed a bogeyman to justify their actions and to make themselves seem more important than they really are. If you go out on a wolf-hunt, with much blowing of trumpets, it is pretty shaming to come home with nothing more than a few rats and a rabbit slung over your saddle-bow. So you have to pretend your rat is a wolf. In which case it is surely wiser not to display your inadequate trophies on TV?
Men just as bad as Saddam, and far worse than Milosevic, have been welcome guests at the White House and Downing Street, or will be. That is the nature of things, always has been, always will be.
The trial itself may have been all right by Iraqi standards, but so what? Our whole war was based on the belief that Iraq needed to become more like us, not the sort of country where the judge had to be replaced mid-trial under political pressure, witnesses were anonymous and the defence team kept being killed off.
And why no jury? Jury trial is guaranteed, and viewed as essential for justice by the American Bill of Rights (sadly our Bill of Rights doesn't offer the same guarantee. But we still have juries by custom and practice, and presumably think others should too). Poor Iraq, despite being liberated, wasn't deemed civilised enough to have juries. Without them, there's no real presumption of innocence, just a lot of state-appointed officials arguing among themselves about a foregone conclusion. But then George W.Bush had already said that Saddam was guilty, which under English law was such a whopping contempt of court that the trial would have had to be called off. No such rules operate in Baghdad, obviously.
Many of Saddam's known crimes, especially against the Kurds, were not even brought up. The suspicion lingers - and will grow with time - that this is because Saddam would then have had the chance to explain that he had the support of the USA, and other Western countries, in many of his worst actions. Why, the USA's peculiar role in the Kuwait crisis - where the American ambassador in Baghdad said Washington didn't much care about Arab border disputes- might have come up.
But the filmed execution - allegedly to make sure people knew Saddam was dead - will come to be seen as a far graver mistake than the bungled trial. Saddam did not become supreme dictator of Iraq by being a total fool, or by lacking nerve, or by lacking a sense of theatre. He knew his best revenge would be to conduct himself with calm dignity. What's more, he had the guts to do so. Which of us can say for sure that, confronted in cold pre-dawn darkness with the scene of his own approaching death, we would not weep and howl for mercy? Having been present in a real execution shed, I'm not confident.
As for the taunts and jibes of those at the scene, my heart goes out to the nameless voice of the wise, merciful man who repeatedly begged his colleagues to behave with decorum. It's easy to taunt a pinioned and shackled man with a rope round his neck, seconds before he dies. It's not so easy, when your mouth is dry with terror and your bowels are melting from the knowledge that your extinction is almost upon you, to answer back. Who wins this contest?
It is creepy to wonder what sort of restoration will eventually result from this event, or what sort of revenge may result from what still seems to me to be an abuse of power, now tainted with sectarianism. For the shouts of mockery and derision directed against Saddam on the threshold of death were Shia Muslim ones, and the government which swiftly executed him was a Shia one, whereas Saddam was a Sunni. Heaven knows this rift is bad enough already. Now it will be worse. I blush to remember conversations with Baghdadis three years ago, in which I sought - and failed to find - any evidence of Sunni-Shia hostility in that city. In those three years it has been created, and will now perhaps last for centuries.
All men of power do some evil things - some more than others. That is what power involves, and those who want to keep their hands clean should avoid politics altogether. There's an interesting argument about the difference between Saddam's tortures and murders, and the deaths and maimings inflicted on Iraqis and others by the coalition's bombs and missiles. There obviously is a difference, but how big is it, and should the Western leaders be exempt from any kind of accounting for the misery and loss dealt out on their orders? And is the distinction mainly a legal one, a moral one or just a matter of who won? Perhaps more significant in the age of 'extraordinary rendition' the Abu Ghraib abuses and the use of White Phosphorus in Fallujah, is, what would a - for example - Chinese-backed War Crimes Tribunal make of the behaviour of western leaders over the past five years?
Once you have introduced the idea into the world that political leaders, who fall into the hands of their enemies, can be put on trial for the bad things they have done, there's no end to it. I think it vain and silly myself. You'd get rid of far more dictators if you assured them that, by leaving now, they could go into wealthy exile and be forgotten, than by threatening them with trials at the Hague or elsewhere, followed by life in some smoke-free UN jail, or hanging. If every deposed tyrant faces the fate of Saddam or Slobodan, then they will all struggle to stay in power till they die.
If we are already at war with them (and if the war is legal in the first place) It would be much less hypocritical to shoot them out of hand when we find them, and not make too much of a moral fuss about it. This is one of the reasons why the Uday and Qusay killings passed without too much criticism. There was no humbug about justice. It was an act of reasonable revenge under the rough laws of war. Only the 14-year-old complicates matters, so we will forget about that.
I am told that one of the books Kingsley Amis never got round to writing was apparently to have been called 'Judgement at Winchester' . It was to have been a satirical account of a joint Nazi-Soviet tribunal (resulting from a sudden decision by Hitler and Stalin to renew their 1939-41 alliance and turn jointly against Britain), arraigning the Churchill cabinet for war crimes including the bombing of German civilians. You can see why he never wrote it. The satire would have gone much too near the bone. All wars are full of crimes. I've mentioned on this blog before the horrors that resulted from our deliberate bombing of working-class districts of German cities. There is precious little justice in war. And the winner decides what is, and is not, just. So be sure to win.
What's equally interesting is this. Why are politicians such as Mr Blair willing to kill people on principle in foreign wars against distant tyrants who don't threaten us - yet unwilling on principle to kill murderers who really do threaten, and kill, British people at home? And why is bombing all right, when hanging is wrong? Is high explosive more moral than rope? I think the simple answer is probably the right one - that showy triumphs abroad are usually simple and easy. Whereas trying to do anything serious at home is complicated and hard. No wonder he needs a holiday.
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