Prime
Minister: 2009 has been a year of deep reflection – a chance for Britain, 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 to honour 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 take up 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 and celebrate another contribution to Britain’s fight against the
darkness of dictatorship; that of code-breaker Alan Turing.
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 World War Two 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.
Thousands of people have come together to demand justice for Alan Turing and
recognition of the appalling way he was treated. While Turing was dealt with
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 LGBT
community. This recognition of Alan’s status as one of Britain’s most
famous victims of homophobia is another step towards equality and long overdue.
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 war are 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