ianlouisiana Review of Let Him Have It

Let Him Have It (1991)

Events in 1952 viewed with the benefit of 40 -odd years hindsight

[4/10 · 12 April 2006]

Not much in the way of subtlety here,the makers' stall is set out from early on,Derek Bentley was murdered by "The State" in revenge for his juvenile partner-in-crime's murder of a policeman.They couldn't hang a boy of 16 so they hanged Bentley instead. Let's have a closer look at the facts.Firstly,this happened in 1952.There was no "gun culture" amongst teenagers.Teddy Boys,the "Hoodies" of their day,carried razor blades or flick knives.There were no drive by shootings,no drug wars.For a young man to have access to a gun was a very rare event.Christopher Craig apparently had access to a gun obtained by his older brother,a professional criminal.Very few professional criminals took guns with them on the job because if you have a gun,you will use it. In 1952 the law of the land was very clear about what would happen to you if you killed someone in furtherance of theft.You would hang.If two of you were so engaged,you would both hang. Regardless of what we might think of this law today it was in force in 1952. You cannot judge the Bentley/Craig case by 21st century standards. And this is what "Let him have it Chris" demands that you do. One of the cornerstones of the controversy is the title of the film. The defence argued that when (or,later,if)Bentley shouted that across the rooftop he meant the Craig should surrender his gun to the police. Not surprisingly the prosecution argued that he was telling Craig to shoot the policeman.Craig denies it was ever said.This turns those five words into a "verbal",the defence say,a statement fabricated by the police.Now if you think seriously about this you may find that "Let him have it Chris" is far too ambivalent to be a verbal."Shoot the bastard" would be far more to the point and there could be no argument as to its meaning.You might think that police officers would be far more likely to fabricate a unequivocal verbal. The implication that Craig was pushed off the roof is ludicrous,there is no evidence to support it.It's merely a move to further discredit the police.If you spread enough muck around some of it is bound to stick. And the emotive power of the phrase "Bentley was already in police custody when Craig fired the shot" doesn't give a true reflection of what actually occurred.He wasn't in a cell somewhere,he was on the rooftop,in the dead of night,being restrained by a police officer. Scarcely "in police custody" then, in any meaningful sense of the term. Questions about his mental acuity are,once again,beyond the remit of our 21st century overview.The degree of his handicap has been in dispute for years,but to call him a virtual mental defective is simplistic in the extreme. Certainly in these more enlightened times it is unlikely given the strongly argued mental competence issue that he would be charged with murder - I would expect a plea of diminished responsibility to be acceptable to the prosecution.But this was 1952,and I cannot emphasise enough the folly of considering events of the past through the sensibi- -lities of the present. Derek Bentley may not have been very sharp,but he knew that warehousebreaking was a crime and he went out and did it anyway.He may well have been in thrall to Christopher Craig who was clearly the main instigator of the crime,but he wasn't dragged up on that rooftop kicking and screaming. The only innocent victim here is PC Miles,whose name no one seems to remember.He was just a middle-aged London copper trying to do his job and get home safely in the morning.Thanks to Derek Bentley and Christopher Craig he never made it.