Alan Turing

There is a petition on the Downing St website for an apology for Alan Turing, the famous mathematician and computer genius (one of those few occasions where the use of the word is not an exaggeration).

Turing, from his work at Bletchley Park, helped win the war by decrypting enemy messages. After the war he began to work on computers. In 1952 he was convicted of gross indecency, involving a homosexual relationship with a young man. He took his own life a year later.

No one has more respect for Turing than I (inasmuch as I can understand his work) and I do not believe in persecuting homosexuals. But I have to say I am tired of this continual apology business. We have been urged to apologise for Britain’s actions in all manner of fields, recently soldiers shot for cowardice and the slave trade.

But why apologise? Why should Gordon Brown apologise for something that happened shortly after he was born? What effect would an apology have? To say we're not against homosexuality? Of course we're not: it's been legal for over 40 years now. The people who persecuted Turing are long since dead and were they still alive might or might not regret their actions, we'll never know.

Homosexuality was not legalised until 1967. Turing was breaking the law and knew he was breaking the law. If a law changes do we have to apologise to everyone convicted under the old law? Why?

This would be just an opportunity for Brown to wallow in his comfortable beliefs assuring the Guardian readers that he was on their side. An apology would do nothing to help poor Turing and would demean the Government. Not signing the petition doesn’t mean you hate gays and doesn’t mean you don’t respect one of the country’s greatest ever mathematicians. It means you’ve got common sense.