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| Britain |
| PM issues posthumous apology to Bletchley Park codebreaker |
| 2009-09-11 |
| Gordon Brown today issues a posthumous apology to a Second World War code breaker who killed himself after being tried and convicted of being homosexual. The Prime Minister said Alan Turing was treated “terribly". Mr Brown was responding to a campaign to get a formal apology from the Government. Thousands of people have signed a Downing Street petition. However a formal apology is not possible as Mr Turing has no known surviving family. Instead Mr Brown offered a personal apology. In an article for the Daily Telegraph, he said: “Alan Turing was a quite brilliant mathematician, most famous for his work on breaking the German Enigma codes. It is no exaggeration to say that, without his outstanding contribution, the history of the Second World War could well have been very different. He truly was one of those individuals we can point 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, that he 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 chemical castration by a series of injections of female hormones. He took his own life just two years later. “I am pleased to have the chance to say how deeply sorry I and we all are for 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.” |
| Posted by:Free Radical |
| #7 but not my typos...sh*t |
| Posted by: Frank G 2009-09-11 23:41 |
| #6 I'm a little put out by your "seminal contributions" sly entendrea, lotp. I'll get over it / heh |
| Posted by: Frank G 2009-09-11 23:40 |
| #5 Yes, 'THE' Turing. I have little patience with in-your-face gay activists and more broadly with flaunt-every-sexual-activity-you-can-in-the-streets no matter who does it. But the humiliation and destruction of Alan Turing was unnecessary, unspeakably cruel and simply stupid. The man was a patriot whose work helped defeat the Nazis, he made key foundational breakthroughs in computing theory and was just started to do so in some related fields as well. There is every reason to believe he would have continued to contribute to Britain and the world had the paranoia of the time not led the British government to discard and mistreat him badly. |
| Posted by: lotp 2009-09-11 23:03 |
| #4 Not THE "Turing"? |
| Posted by: Redneck Jim 2009-09-11 20:54 |
| #3 JOE! 2008 was THIS close to PASSING. |
| Posted by: .5MT 2009-09-11 19:50 |
| #2 Turing also made seminal contributions to formal computer science theory. A real loss. |
| Posted by: lotp 2009-09-11 19:01 |
| #1 The story of the Bletchley Park codebreakers and the breaking of the German High Command code is a fascinating part of WWII history despite the slant of the story. |
| Posted by: JohnQC 2009-09-11 09:47 |