ABSTRACT
The National Campaign for the Abolition of the Death Penalty had been established in imminent expectation of success in 1925 as a consortium of groups and individuals by Roy Calvert, a devout Quaker, and a prison visitor, who died soon after, in 1933. This chapter focuses on a short span of time and review in finer detail than before the chronology of events and the cast of people and organisations which resolved that impasse and brought about the effective abolition of capital punishment in 1965. The politics of abolition were thus in obvious suspense during the Conservative Government of the early 1960s. Senior members of the Conservative government were also confident of that fact. A Labour Government had resisted amendments to the 1948 Criminal Justice Act, requiring James Chuter Ede, the Home Secretary, reluctantly to make out a public case for retention.
