Why didn't our government speak out against the execution of Saddam?
MATTHEW PARRIS Small lapses of taste or principle can be so revealing. Why did it take two days, and why was it left to John Prescott, speaking in what sounded like his personal capacity, for anyone senior in Cabinet to indicate that at least somebody in the British government did not greatly care for the nature of Saddam Hussein's punishment?
Was the Deputy Prime Minister speaking on behalf of Her Majesty's Government? It was unclear. All credit to him, though, for stepping in where two figures who might more appropriately have spoken — the Prime Minister or the Foreign Secretary — seemed to fear to tread. And even then, Mr Prescott seemed to focus his complaint on the manner rather than the fact of the execution.
Was notable courage really called for? Hardly. No angry demarche was required, no Downing Street declaration, no indignant distancing of ourselves from the Americans. It is hardly a secret that Britain is opposed to the death penalty, although — to the extent that I can understand the mental world inhabited by our Prime Minister — I suspect Tony Blair honestly thinks it is possible to be against capital punishment on principle, but in favour of individual cases of it.
But he could have left it to the Foreign Secretary to convey the Cabinet's reaction. This Margaret Beckett could have achieved in a couple of careful sentences that Foreign Office officials would have been happy to supply. How about, for instance, 'Saddam Hussein deserved no pity, but as a matter of principle the British government opposes capital punishment in all circumstances, and was particularly distressed at the manner of this execution. Though we share the anger felt against him we are sad that an opportunity has been missed to treat this tyrant with a dignity and humanity he denied others'?
A temperate response like this would hardly have threatened British relations with Baghdad or Washington. There would have been no row, no repercussions. The affair would have been forgotten within a week. But in a million British households where news bulletins are listened to, a passing, civilising nod in the direction of human decency would have been noted by the people — us — for whom our government speaks.
These things matter. In representing us to foreigners, in framing and voicing a British response, elected government represents us to ourselves, too. It sets an example, recommends to us how we might see ourselves as a nation — the kind of country we might care to be. As Shia Iraqis danced with glee, ghoulish internet viewers watched Saddam's final moments, and right-wing American news stations gloated at the spectacle of a man surrounded by men in masks about to have his neck broken, people in Britain could have gone back to work after the Christmas holidays knowing that our own government had not joined in, but properly registered its distaste.
Instead we saw the Foreign Secretary, apparently afraid to break ranks in the smallest way, declaring that 'justice has been done'. Mrs Beckett could not even muster the courage to acknowledge our country's longstanding opposition to the death penalty.
I would have felt proud if she had. Speaking for myself, I can assemble no sweeping argument of perfect principle against capital punishment. As a younger man I voted both for and against, in different circumstances. I claim no belief that human life is sacred: how can you, unless you are a pacifist? 'Sacred' is a strong word — the strongest — and if you think it can ever be right to kill in a just cause (and in the Commons I have cast my vote for weapons of mass destruction), then how can you call human life 'sacred'? Valuable, certainly; precious, I think; but inviolable?
No, I accept that sometimes we may save lives by taking life. It's just that with the passing years I've developed a sharper sense of the importance of boundaries in our moral landscape. Physical violence and its most extreme resort — the deliberate taking of life — is territory for which we need to reserve and cherish a special horror. Cross frontiers too frequently and too casually and we numb ourselves to the transition. The horror of killing is a precious thing in a people's ethics, and for the state itself to slide over into brutality — even in order to deter brutality — normalises, and by normalising generates, what it seeks to deter.
Margaret Beckett may see the hanging of a brute as a beacon against brutishness, but I suspect that in the context of Iraqi society Saddam's execution feels less like an argument against killing in general, and more like a goal scored by one team against another team. It will invite an equalising score, not a general moratorium on the killing game.
I don't think Shia Iraqis celebrating in the streets or taunting the prisoner moments before his death were celebrating an advance for the rule of law; they were celebrating the wreaking of revenge. One big death — Saddam's — has been secured in payment for tens of thousands of small deaths: the deaths, that is, of the small and unknown people he killed. Saddam's supporters and fellow Sunnis will now seek their own payment for a Sunni leader's death, and find it in the murders of more small people. We British cannot simply transpose our own ideas of justice into this environment.
We might, however, hope to alter it, if only marginally. But only by example. Which brings me to an apparent paradox. In the sentencing of an offender an element of surprise, even shock, may help change public attitudes. If capital punishment is very, very unusual, then the public shock when, once in a blue moon, it does happen, might arguably be salutary. I myself no longer believe in capital punishment but I can see that an argument for very infrequent (and therefore sensational) executions could in extreme cases be advanced. The moment these things become routine, however, the power of the noose to horrify is lost. Murder becomes casual when everybody, including the government, is killing people.
Not to have executed Saddam might, in the context of the Middle East, have gained more notice, and a greater potency to make people stop and think, than yet another death-video in a market already flooded with death-videos. Had we the power to have halted this execution, and instead coolly and calmly deprived Saddam of his liberty for the rest of his life, we might have struck a more telling blow for our European view of civilisation than anything achieved by masked men, a rope, one more death, and one more internet video. Couldn't our Foreign Secretary have said that?
Matthew Parris is a political columnist for the Times.
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