The UK government has pardoned the deceased computer pioneer and cryptographer, Alan Turing for his 1952 conviction for homosexual related offences.
I can't but feel a sense of unease at this. OK, so I know there is a large element of political posturing in this but .......
What's next? Pardoning those that betrayed their country and spied for East Germany and the USSR, on the grounds that these entities no longer exist? What about convicting people for acts that are now crimes but weren't when they were committed? Remember, hate crime is now apparently not in what you say but is in how it is perceived by the recipient. So, prosecute Enoch Powell for his 'rivers of blood' speech? Posthumously prosecute all the 1930's supporters of the Communist regime of the Soviet Union and the apologists for the show trials? A pardon for Lord HawHaw on the grounds that he was an Irish nationalist and we now accommodate and treat with such terrorists?
Or maybe just leave things as they are and not apply 2013 'standards' to historical events and somehow think we know better than the people, at those times knew.
I can't but feel a sense of unease at this. OK, so I know there is a large element of political posturing in this but .......
What's next? Pardoning those that betrayed their country and spied for East Germany and the USSR, on the grounds that these entities no longer exist? What about convicting people for acts that are now crimes but weren't when they were committed? Remember, hate crime is now apparently not in what you say but is in how it is perceived by the recipient. So, prosecute Enoch Powell for his 'rivers of blood' speech? Posthumously prosecute all the 1930's supporters of the Communist regime of the Soviet Union and the apologists for the show trials? A pardon for Lord HawHaw on the grounds that he was an Irish nationalist and we now accommodate and treat with such terrorists?
Or maybe just leave things as they are and not apply 2013 'standards' to historical events and somehow think we know better than the people, at those times knew.
Agreed, pardon was the wrong mechanism. We should instead have made it clear that the way Turing was treated was wrong on every level.
ReplyDeleteTuring was a war hero of the highest magnitude and someone who made a massive contribution to the war effort. He should have had our eternal gratitude, and the state had no business in pursing him in the way that it did. A retrospective pardon is of no use to a dead man. Better to properly clear up just what a magnificent mind contributed to the history and safety of our country, in the face of fascism.
There is surely no one that doubts the great contribution that Turing made to the war effort. That isn't the point.
DeleteThis pardon, like those apologies for the Irish Famine and Slavery, is simply gesture politics. Pandering to a disproportionately vocal homosexual minority in the hope of gathering a few extra votes. When Turing was convicted he had violated the law that was operative at that time. End of!
Cameron, Miliband and Clegg would do better to push Sinn Fein and the UDA and their Northern Ireland Assembly members to do more to deliver-up the bodies of the innocent people that they murdered. To do so, they wouldn't have to go back to the 1950's They would just have to search the darkest recesses of their memories and deliver relief to long-suffering families.
So, as many have said, an apology would have been more appropriate - and then perhaps honour his memory on a more appropriate way?
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