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Being Justice Minister means never having to say you’re sorry. Even ifyou’re guilty as hell! Not just an apology and a [pardon, but give him a posthumous medal and name something appropriate after him.
Maybe not what you had in mind, but he did give his name to the Turing test… a variation on the test seen at the start of Blade Runner designed to tell the difference between responses given by artificial intelligence and human intelligence.
Thers’s Alan Turing Way in Manchester and there’s the Alan Turing statue in Sackville Park in Manchester, a few yards from Canal Street.
Not forgetting, of course, the logo of the Apple computers. It represents the poisoned apple that Turing ate when he took his own life.
Well done to Iain Stewart MP for his part in making this happen! Great work.
To describe Turing simply as a computer genius is to understate his staggering contribution to the world as a true mathematical, scientific and intellectual giant whose work on morphogenesis is, sixty years after its publication, only just beginning to be understood for the jaw dropping insight into nature that it seems to be.
A true national hero.
A true genius who was let down by the country he served just because of who he loved. Every time you use a computer, just remember that wonderful man who made it all possible.
And just about every digital device, including our dishwashers and ovens! His influence is tremendous.
I hope everybody who reads these pages have signed the petition to grant him a pardon:
http://epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/23526
It says that the epetition is closed already.
EVERYONE convicted of ” homosexual crime ” under those evil laws of the time should be given a pardon.
Shame on HM government for continuing the same patter of complete indifference to Alan’s suicide after his invaluable work cut short the most murderous war in human history… but then Alan was gay, and we can’t have war heroes being gay.
Turing was not only gay but an atheist which I suppose made him doubly personna non grata in the eyes of the Establishment of the time.
I think Lord McNally makes a good point. The shame of Turing’s convition does not fall on him but on the attitudes of the past. Giving him a pardon forgives that as much as it forgives him. The strongest point is made by leaving the conviction in place and allowing it to stand as a gravestone to an era to which we no longer wish to return.
Both you and Lord McNally are correct. I’ll be 70 next week. Alan Turing has been one of my few heros for nearly 60 years. I would need a whole column to explain all the reasons why, so please just take my word on it. The Prime Minister’s apology on behalf of the government and populace Turing helped save was right and proper. Pardoning Mr. Turing, without pardoning everyone else in British history who were legally persecuted for what they were would be wrong. Pardoning everyone would be meaningless and insulting, a sop to appease current consciences by saying “let’s pretend the past never happened, by pardoning the unaware dead.” I hold pardoning the long-dead to be the moral equivalent of giving ‘reparations’ to me for what was done to some of my ancestors ending 149 years ago. It might make the descendants of the slaveholders feel better about their own dead relatives but it wouldn’t do a thing for what my ancestors suffered.
Thank you. I like your mind, Sir. On posting i felt the only replies I would recieved would be at worst, fuming and at best, unlettered.
Thank you for a well-expressed post. I too am uneasy about self-indulgent symbolic attempts to ‘correct’ past injustices – I found, for instance, Tony Blair’s attempts to ‘apologise’ for British responsibility for the Irish Potato Famine of the 1840s utterly cringe-making and egotistical. I feel that the appropriate attitude is to inform ourselves and others of past wrongs, reflect on them, and try to ensure they are not repeated – not try to pretend that they can be retrospectively magicked away, which is what this all too often smacks of.
See a picture of his teddy bear here http://www.dauphin.co.uk/Meet_Porgy.htm
the exhibition is well worth the visit
This Justice Minister seems to not understand the meaning of his title. Alan Turing’s memory is stained with an unjustified conviction. Reguardless of the fact that they believed that law was acceptable at that time, we understand the injustice now and his memory should be vindicated to show history when we evolved socially. It’s about taking responsibility for past abuses.