UK government's apology for Turing's mistreatment

The online petition (link below) for an official apology over the treatment of Alan Turing has produced the following response from Prime Minister Gordon Brown. Cutting and pasting from the original email led to a few formatting errors, which I've tried to fix, but some may remain.

Understandably, the message focuses on Turing's codebreaking work during the second world war, but many of us also celebrate his contributions to cognitive science.

DH

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Thank you for signing this petition. The Prime Minister has written a response. Please read below.

Prime Minister: 2009 has been a year of deep reflection – a chance forBritain, as a nation, to commemorate the profound debts we owe to those who came before. A unique combination of anniversaries and events have stirred in us that sense of pride and gratitude which characterise the British experience. Earlier this year I stood with Presidents Sarkozy and Obama tohonour the service and the sacrifice of the heroes who stormed the beaches of Normandy 65 years ago. And just last week, we marked the 70 years which have passed since the British government declared its willingness to takeup arms against Fascism and declared the outbreak of World War Two. So I am both pleased and proud that, thanks to a coalition of computer scientists,historians and LGBT activists, we have this year a chance to mark andcelebrate another contribution to Britain’s fight against the darkness ofdictatorship; that of code-breaker Alan Turing.

Turing was a quite brilliant mathematician, most famous for his work onbreaking the German Enigma codes. It is no exaggeration to say that,without his outstanding contribution, the history of World War Two couldwell have been very different. He truly was one of those individuals we canpoint to whose unique contribution helped to turn the tide of war. The debt of gratitude he is owed makes it all the more horrifying, therefore, thathe was treated so inhumanely. In 1952, he was convicted of ‘gross indecency’ – in effect, tried for being gay. His sentence – and he was faced with the miserable choice of this or prison - was chemicalcastration by a series of injections of female hormones. He took his own life just two years later.

Thousands of people have come together to demand justice for Alan Turing and recognition of the appalling way he was treated. While Turing was dealtwith under the law of the time and we can't put the clock back, his treatment was of course utterly unfair and I am pleased to have the chance to say how deeply sorry I and we all are for what happened to him. Alan and the many thousands of other gay men who were convicted as he was convicted under homophobic laws were treated terribly. Over the years millions more lived in fear of conviction.

I am proud that those days are gone and that in the last 12 years this government has done so much to make life fairer and more equal for our LGBTcommunity. This recognition of Alan’s status as one of Britain’s mostfamous victims of homophobia is another step towards equality and longoverdue.

But even more than that, Alan deserves recognition for his contribution to humankind. For those of us born after 1945, into a Europe which is united,democratic and at peace, it is hard to imagine that our continent was once the theatre of mankind’s darkest hour. It is difficult to believe that in living memory, people could become so consumed by hate – by anti-Semitism, by homophobia, by xenophobia and other murderous prejudices– that the gas chambers and crematoria became a piece of the European landscape as surely as the galleries and universities and concert halls which had marked out the European civilisation for hundreds of years. It is thanks to men and women who were totally committed to fighting fascism,people like Alan Turing, that the horrors of the Holocaust and of total warare part of Europe’s history and not Europe’s present.

So on behalf of the British government, and all those who live freely thanks to Alan’s work I am very proud to say: we’re sorry, you deserved so much better.

Gordon Brown

If you would like to help preserve Alan Turing's memory for futuregenerations, please donate here: http://www.bletchleypark.org.uk/

Petition information - http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/turing/