Why Brady owes his life to Brussels

Why Brady owes his life to Brussels

Labour’s former deputy leader, Roy Hattersley, says public interest in the Moors Murders is, in part, ‘simple prurience’.

The five children killed by Ian Brady and Myra Hindley, four of whom were buried on Saddleworth Moor, also remind him of the bleak stories and locations of Arthur Conan Doyle and Emily Bronte.

Hattersley hopes that if the body of the Moors Murderers’ final victim, Keith Bennett, is found, and  re-interred in consecrated ground, the story ‘will cease to be a national pre-occupation’.

Not until Ian Brady dies, surely. And is fascination with the case due entirely to ‘simple prurience’ and the enjoyment of gothic crime?

We’ve watched in horror for decades as those responsible for the Moors Murders became the laboratory specimens of prison psychiatrists, criminologists, sociologists and assorted freaks such as the late Lord Longford.

Although they were considered sane at their trial, Hindley and Brady avoided punishment-that-fits-the-crime penalties.

Younger readers may wonder why. In part because Britain wanted to join the Common Market — now the European Union — at the time.  How so?
Convicted in 1966, Brady and Hindley might have been hanged — as were some convicted of single homicides, even in the Sixties. But the Moors killers were saved by the Murder (Abolition of Death Penalty) Act 1965.

This had a so-called ‘sunset’ clause, saying the Act would be repealed unless renewed by Parliament within five years. It was renewed in 1969 and the Act became permanent.

MPs were not following the will of the people but a growing modern sentiment among the ‘thinking classes’ that capital punishment was insupportable.

And was there another, unspoken political motive? Among bien pensant folk seeking abolition were many who wanted us to join the Common Market, as it was then called. But the European Union, as it became, was — and remains — unequivocally committed to ridding the world of capital punishment.

We cleared this Eurohurdle in 1969 with our renewed abolition Act and joined the Common Market in 1973.

The EU, which campaigns for capital punishment abolition worldwide, now boasts: ‘Since the end of the 1960s, all EU member states have absolutely abandoned the death penalty in law.’

Even if Britain returned to the death penalty tomorrow, it’s too late for Ian Brady. Considered sane at his trial for killing five children for kicks, he was re-categorised as insane so he could be studied by experts. What have we learned? Nothing, so far as I know.

Deciding that killers are insane is one way of justifying the removal of the death penalty. Studying them in prison, or a secure mental unit, provides a justification for locking them up for life.
There are good arguments made by decent people against the state taking human life. If there was a vote on the subject tomorrow I am not sure they wouldn’t win. But do some murders — the torture and killing of children among them — demand more than lifetime incarceration?

They tear at the fabric of civilisation. Ignoring this diminishes us. They merit condign punishment —  i.e. fitting, appropriate, deserving, merited retribution. But perhaps we’re not sure enough of ourselves any more to return to such ‘barbaric’ punishment. The Russian novelist Vladimir Nabokov wrote: ‘For a Christian, no Beyond is acceptable or imaginable without the participation of God in our eternal destiny, and this in turn implies a condign punishment for every sin, great and small.’

The Duke of Edinburgh’s incarceration in Aberdeen Royal Infirmary fascinates the BBC. They report a lack of family members visiting him but say they’ve been advised by the palace ‘not to read anything into this’.

They also mention that the Queen was out gallivanting in a car from Balmoral — driving it herself, and confidently, the saints be preserved! — without motoring the 120 miles to Aberdeen and back to see him. Nothing to be read into that, either.

If nothing’s to be read into it, why bother? Leave the old boy alone — and his family — until there’s something to report.

Comedian John Cleese, 72, says he was reluctant to sign a pre-nuptial agreement on the occasion of his fourth wedding, but his bride, 41-year-old Jennifer Wade, insisted, saying: ‘I want a pre-nup so people know I’m not going to take you to the cleaners.’ As if anyone would think such a thing!

Ms Wade is said to have obtained a ‘hefty’ settlement from her previous husband, Harrow-educated businessman Richard Norris. She is described as a ‘jewellery designer’, which always suggests great wealth.
(Wasn’t Jade Jagger a jewellery designer?) Perhaps she’s wise to have a pre-nup.

God willing, they’ll be so happy that they’re buried alongside each other.
But wouldn’t it be a shame if he scarpered with her specially-designed rings, necklaces and tiaras?