To hang or not to hang? That was the question an “Observer” reporter put to Watford people as they went about their Christmas shopping in the High Street on Friday morning.

The majority seemed to want hanging for certain classes of murder – premeditated murder, poisoning, murder during robbery were the main ones – and the only people spoken to who were absolutely against hanging for any crime were students.

Politicians seem to have turned the issue into a political one. David Clarke, prospective Conservative candidate, regarded it as a tragedy that capital punishment for murder of policemen, prison warders and in the course of theft was ever abolished.

[From the Watford Observer of December 19, 1969]