Murder (Abolition of Death Penalty) Act 1965

Published date01 March 1966
DOIhttp://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2230.1966.tb01115.x
Date01 March 1966
184
THE
MODERN
LAW
REVIEW
VOL.
29
the
roll-over
provisions. The last category enables the con-
sideration derived from the disposal of business assets used for trade
purposes (other than dealing in land
or
land development) to be
used to replace those assets, postponing any charge to
tax
to the
final disposal, but only with regard to land
or
buildings, fixed plant
or
machinery, ships, aircraft and goodwill. These provisions apply
to the destruction of
an
asset within the latter categories.
The real complications of the new tax exist
in
the computation
of chargeable gains.
For
instance, the cost of acquisition including
the various costs of permanent enhancement, interim expenditure
and ultimate disposal have to
be
ascertained; the pool provisions
relating to the purchase and sale
of
blocks
of
quoted securities
and
unquoted shares whose market value must be arrived at, are
dificult to interpret. The basic rule is that only the gain which
has accrued since April
7,
1985, is charged as at the disposal. The
problems involved affect the accountant rather than the taxpayer’s
lawyer. The task of giving specsc advice to a client with capital
assets is likely to be onerous.
LEONARD
LAZAR.
MURDER
(ABOLITION
OF
DEATH PENALTY) ACT 1985
THE
successful campaign to abolish the death penalty for murder
in
Britain has been achieved in
a
comparatively short period of time
by
no
more than
a
handful of ardent penal reformers, pytinncious
in their lobbying and propaganda,
in
the face of majority
opinion
favouring retention
of
an
admittedly barbaric but,
to
that majority,
necessary penal instrument.
If
the final debates were protracted-
Mr.
Silverman’s private members’ Bill (with invaluable legislative
time given by the Government) was introduced
on
December
4,
1904, and reached the Statute Book only
on
November 2,1985-the
history of the campaign is
a
remarkable testament to British demo-
cracy svhich can convert convinced minority opinion into progressive
legislative action. The lcgislature which caters
for
such minority
views deserves some commendation in the face of almost.continuous
opprobrium for the clogging
it
generally undergoes nowadays from
the political machine.
While the degrading influence of the trappings
of
the gallows
met with fierce crusading from the nineteenth-century penal
reformers, none countenanced abandoning the ultimate sanction for
the ultimate crime. Not until a young Quaker,
E.
Roy Calvert,
wrote the first really dispassionate and scientiftc argument for total
abolition in 1925
(Capital Punishment in the
20th
Century)
was the
modern campaign brought
on
to the stage of public discussion.
And even then the debate rarely touched the grass-roots of public
opinion. The debate in fact was conducted
in
the rarefied atmo-
sphere of parliamentary corridors, over coffee cups in the clubs and
in the public halls before largely converted audiences. At
no

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