On 16 December 1969, the House of Commons voted to permanently abolish the death penalty for murder. The decision, coming shortly before midnight at the end of a seven-and-a-half-hour debate, was greeted with cheers by MPs.

The vote ended a five-year “trial period” that had been established in the Murder (Abolition of Death Penalty) Act 1965. This legislation, introduced as a private member’s bill by the veteran abolitionist Sydney Silverman, had suspended capital punishment until 31 July 1970.

The last executions in the UK had taken place on 13 August 1964, when Peter Allen and Gwynne Evans were hanged simultaneously at Walton and Strangeways prisons for the murder of John West. This followed their conviction for bludgeoning a man to death.

The 1969 vote therefore represented the government’s move to make the abolition absolute before the deadline expired.

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The debate was not a party issue, and was decided on a “free vote”, but Harold Wilson’s Labour government was universally in favour of abolition. The debate pitted parliament against the people, with polls at the time suggesting as many as 80% supported the retention of capital punishment.

Previously, the Homicide Act 1957 categorised murders into two tiers: “capital” (still punishable by death) and “non-capital” offences (life imprisonment). By the early 1960s, the act was universally reviled for the anomalies it created.

The 1957 legislation was an attempt to settle the argument over abolition by introducing a legislative compromise measure between the retentionist and abolitionist positions. Twice before, in 1948 and 1956, the House of Lords had thrown out proposals to abolish the death penalty.

Silverman, introducing his private member’s bill at second reading, pointed to the perceived incoherence of the 1957 legislation. “Those who accept the position of the 1957 act accept that the murderers of children shall not be hanged”, he stated.

“Those who accept the 1957 act accept that if a man waylays his enemy around a dark corner of a back street and stabs him in the back with a knife, that shall not be capital murder, whereas if he waits for him with a revolver and shoots him in the front, that is capital murder.”

Henry Brooke, who served as home secretary from July 1962 to October 1964, told the House that his experience at the Home Office had convinced him that the death penalty was no longer justifiable. As home secretary, Brooke had allowed the death sentences handed to Peter Allen and Gwynne Evans to go ahead.

He said that the home secretary’s office contained a framed list of current death sentences, inscribed with the Latin phrase: Nulla unquam de morte hominis cunctatio longa est (“No pause for thought is too long where the death of a man is concerned”).

He stated: “At the end of my time at the Home Office, I had become convinced that the case for retaining the death penalty was no longer strong enough to justify retention and that we were coming to the time when we ought to make trial of abolition.”

Brooke also noted that the proportion of capital to non-capital murders had barely changed since 1957. He said he could not find figures that support or prove “the argument that the death penalty is a uniquely powerful deterrent”.

Conservative MP Terence Clarke argued in favour of retaining the death penalty. He described supporters of abolition in the Conservative Party as “wet” – a label he also ascribed to “the last three home secretaries”.

He added: “For every child who loses his life by murder between now and the next few years the blame will be put fairly and squarely on the shoulders of [Silverman].”

Clarke said he was ashamed of those Conservative MPs who would “abolish the deterrent and allow my constituents and their own constituents to be robbed, shot, murdered and all the other things which will arise as a result of the bill if we pass it.”

Labour MP R.T. Paget developed a Burkean defence of the role of an MP in legislating when popular and parliamentary opinion are at odds.

He stated: “This English invention, representative democracy, has been the model for the world… This, the world’s model, depends on the integrity of the representative. It depends upon his integrity to follow his judgment, to do what is unpopular when he thinks it right.”

He argued that on great questions such as national security and on “taking the life of human beings, there we betray the whole system which we represent… if we seek for popularity rather than follow our own judgment as to what we believe to be right.”

Labour MP Shirley Summerskill spoke in favour of Silverman’s bill during her maiden speech. She argued that “nobody – not a doctor, nor a judge, nor even a home secretary – should take it upon himself to be God.”

Silverman’s bill passed its second reading by 355 votes to 170.

Addressing the House at the bill’s committee stage, Brooke argued for a sunset clause that would mean the death penalty would automatically revive after five years under the pre-1965 legal framework “unless parliament by affirmative resolutions of both Houses otherwise determines”.

Brooke argued that his proposal was a “fulfilling amendment”, not a wrecking one. He referred to his speech at second reading and his belief that “the death penalty is not that uniquely, powerful deterrent that it is commonly thought to be.”

He added: “But no one can prove it either way… Only experience can prove it, and here and now we do not have that experience…

“Surely, we ought not to seem to be legislating now for all time on the basis of what must be a priori arguments which only experience can test.”

Conservative MPs largely rallied behind Brooke’s amendment.

The home secretary, Frank Soskice, spoke in opposition to the amendment. He said that simply going back to the 1957 Homicide Act would be “the worst of all worlds”.

Despite the government’s opposition, the clause was approved by 176 votes to 128.

Speaking during the bill’s third reading debate, Silverman characterised the five-year sunset clause added by Brooke as “odd and eccentric”. But he was nonetheless triumphant.

Silverman stated: “The thing which we are doing and which we hope to complete is to rid at last this green and pleasant land of the shadow of the gallows.”

The amended bill received its commons third reading on 13 July 1965 by 200 votes to 98.

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Some five years later in December 1969, the government resolved to make abolition permanent, moving two affirmative resolutions in the House of Commons and House of Lords.

In the commons, James Callaghan, the home secretary since November 1967, opened the debate for the government.

Callaghan argued that the murder rate had remained “remarkably stable” during the five-year suspension period, varying between a low of 114 and a peak of 154 in the years between 1957 and 1968.

Callaghan pointed out that before the experimental suspension of hanging in 1965, the actual number of executions of criminals in Britain had averaged only two a year. He warned that failing to pass the motion would revive a “grotesque” situation “where capital punishment was still part of the panopoly of the law but came to be as little used as it was in those latter years of the Homicide Act.”

The home secretary added: “It is simply not credible that the structure of law and order should depend upon the execution of two criminals a year.”

He addressed the fact that public opinion was not aligned with the majority in the House of Commons, as expressed in 1965, which favoured abolition of the death penalty as a punishment for murder.

Callaghan concluded: “There are times when parliament has to act in advance of public opinion and give a lead. On penal questions it is not uncommonly the case: parliament has done it before and parliament was not wrong.

“Let us give a lead again today.”

Quintin Hogg, the shadow home secretary, argued in favour of retaining the death penalty.

He declared: “I cannot prove this statistically but I believe that there are people dead today in that category who might be alive if the law had been different. I believe that there are people who are alive today but who, if the law is kept as it is, will be dead at some time in the next ten years.”

Conservative MP Duncan Sandys, the de facto leader of the campaign to restore capital punishment, had presented a series of petitions which supported his stance. Sandys argued that parliament had a duty to heed the “clearly expressed wishes” of the public.

He maintained: “We have no right to assume that the firmly held views of the overwhelming majority of the British people are unworthy and misguided.”

He produced a letter from a serving prisoner stating: “All the talk about hanging not being a deterrent is foolish… hanging is the one deterrent most criminals respect and fear.”

Willie Ross, the secretary of state for Scotland, wound up the debate for the government. He said that the taking of a life, “whether by murder or judicial murder, it is barbarous”.

Ross asked MPs how people would react if, “instead of the act of judicial killing taking place behind high walls, they were taken inside and there saw the whole effect – as could easily be done now by television”.

MPs voted with 343 in favour and 185 against – a majority of 158 – to permanently end hanging in Britain

The leaders of the three main parties, Wilson (Labour prime minister), Edward Heath (Conservative leader), and Jeremy Thorpe (Liberal leader), all walked through the same lobby to vote for abolition.

Heath was not able to carry his party with him en masse, however. The Conservative Party was divided over the measure; Hogg and former prime minister Alec Douglas-Home were among those who voted to retain the death penalty for murder.

As abolition or retention of capital punishment was deemed to be an issue of conscience, the vote was not whipped by any of the party leaderships. In total, three Labour backbenchers voted against the motion.

Two days later, on 18 December, the House of Lords sided with the commons, voting to abolish the death penalty. An amendment to extend the trial period until 1973, proposed by Viscount Dilhorne, was defeated by a majority of 46 (220 votes to 174).

Henry Brooke, now Baron Brooke of Cumnor, addressed the House as the architect of the original sunset clause. He tabled an amendment to delay the decision until “all available relevant statistics covering the full year 1969” were published.

He stated: “It would be a strange and an un-British court that reached a decision in a contentious case before all the evidence relevant to the case had been tendered.”

Brooke later deferred to Dilhorne’s amendment. He voted for the motion to delay, but described permanent abolition as “second best” – to prevent the return of the 1957 act.

Labour peer the Earl of Longford, the former leader of the House of Lords, argued that hanging was not a unique deterrent but “a unique atrocity.”

The Bishop of Durham condemned the death penalty as “negative, incoherent and entirely devoid of creative possibilities”.

He added: “In one sense it is all too easy a punishment to carry out and, even more importantly, it has a built-in tendency to disvalue personality and to encourage insensitivity.”

Baroness Birk argued that those endorsing further delay could be called a “mañana abolitionist: someone unwilling to commit himself; believing he believes in it, but not wanting it today, always wanting it tomorrow.”

She added: “We have to make up our minds to get this out of the way.”

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Parliament’s endorsement of abolition was not absolute. The death penalty remained on the statute book for high treason, “piracy with violence”, arson in royal dockyards (an offence dating from 1772) and espionage. As a result, the gallows at Wandsworth prison were tested up until January 1993.

Sydney Silverman’s Murder (Abolition of Death Penalty) Act did not extend to Northern Ireland, where the death penalty for murder survived until 1973. It was abolished under the Northern Ireland (Emergency Provisions) Act.

The Criminal Damage Act 1971 abolished the death penalty for arson in royal dockyards.

The Crime and Disorder Act 1998 abolished the death penalty for treason and piracy.

The last person to be executed for treason was William Joyce – Lord Haw-Haw – in 1946.

The Human Rights Act 1998 incorporated the rights of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) into British law. Protocol 6 of the ECHR requires parties to the convention to restrict the application of the death penalty except for “acts committed in time of war” or of “imminent threat of war”.

In January 1999, Jack Straw, the home secretary, signed Protocol 6 of the ECHR in Strasbourg.

This move meant future governments would be unable to reopen the debate on capital punishment without overturning or leaving the convention.