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In 1965, the BBC's Wednesday Play (1964-70) was fearlessly dramatising the
burning issues of the day in a conscious attempt to intervene in public debate.
Abortion, homosexuality, class and apartheid all became material for drama over
the course of the year, and it was perhaps inevitable that capital punishment -
then subject of a newly introduced moratorium and the cause of much debate -
would be added to the list.
There could perhaps be no more appropriate author for a play about hanging
than James O'Connor, who himself had been condemned to hang in 1942 and was only
reprieved at the eleventh hour. His experiences as a career criminal,
long-serving convict and condemned man inform '3 Clear Sundays' and lend it
a disturbing verisimilitude. Yet, it is not O'Connor's own story on screen as
one might expect it to be. Danny Lee is a hot-tempered but essentially honest
man and makes for a more sympathetic protagonist than one suspects a version of
O'Connor himself would have done. The history of minor character Mickey Carney
does reflect that of O'Connor exactly, but he provides only colour, appearing
very briefly.
That Danny should be a likable character is important to the play's message
that capital punishment is wrong. He is not a vicious criminal who society might
reasonably feel better off without, having only committed his murder after being
misled by gangsters while in prison for a minor offence. The play campaigns
against hanging at every stage of the process it dramatises, from its portrayal
of the way Danny's naive honesty at his trial condemns him, to the genteel
banality of the hangmen as they practice their art. It ends with Danny's
execution and documentary evidence in the form of three quotes about the nature
of hanging, two drawn from the 1950 Royal Commission on the subject. The whole
effect is that hanging is brutal, immoral and unnecessary.
O'Connor's message wasn't lost on his audience. One viewer, previously
undecided on the issue of the death penalty, was typical of newspaper
letter-writers, stating that "Now I am convinced that this barbaric act of
ending human life is better abolished." However, despite its undoubted impact
upon transmission, suggestions that '3 Clear Sundays' had any influence on
the eventual abolition of hanging in Britain, which followed in 1969, are
fanciful, with contemporary surveys indicating that public opinion on the
subject wavered very little throughout the 1960s.
Oliver Wake
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