Spectator's Notebook
THERE was rough poetic justice in the defeats 1 the Government suffered last Friday on the procedural motion to bring the Abolition of Capital Punishment Bill into the full glare of public discussion on the floor of the House of Commons. It was natural that the Government should wish to claim that this was a Private Member's Bill, natural, too, that Mr. Sydney Silverman, for so long an advocate of this reform, should take the lead in moving it. But it turned out to be a mistake. The Bill was mentioned in the Queen's Speech, and Government time was ' promised for it. The Leader of the House last Friday made it clear that (because the consump- tion of parliamentary time is a Government matter) the Whips would be on. So the defeat became an official one.
It doeS not matter very much whether the charge of a breach of faith made against the Government for insisting on the Bill being considered , up- stairs in committee is held to be proven or not. Certainly many Tories who take the abolitioniit viewpoint thought that it was. The real point (which I have hammered at before in this column) is that the Government should from the start have accepted this as a Government measure. It is, we know, part of Government policy. On a free vote the principle of abolition would, as in the past, have been sustained. But it is never right to withhold consideration of an important constitutional matter from the people just because one fears their verdict.
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