The Last Rites of Imperial Executions

Chapter 7 presents the first analysis of the abolition of the death penalty in Britain’s Caribbean Dependent Territories in 1991 based on recently declassified government records. The decision to impose abolition reflected the broad changes in crime and governance in the Caribbean over the preceding decade and the new diplomatic significance of British death penalty policy, but in the short term it was entangled with a scheduled execution in Anguilla and a dozen more capital cases that were pending in other Caribbean Dependent Territories and Bermuda. Britain was forced to abolish the death penalty in part because the likelihood of an execution seemed higher than in many years. The appointment of Douglas Hurd, an abolitionist, as Foreign Secretary was also important, but even so the change of policy was motivated by politics rather than principle. Abolition had been forced on the government as the only sure way to prevent executions that – it had become clear – posed intolerable risks to British interests, but Britain was still far from adopting a consistent abolitionist foreign policy.