Computer pioneer and world war two codebreaker Alan Turing has been given a posthumous royal pardon.
Turing played a key role in cracking the German Enigma Code in WW2, an act which helped swing the advantage in Britain’s favour and bring an end to the war.
In 1952 Turing was convicted of ‘gross indecency’ because of his homosexuality and chemically castrated by the state. The conviction meant he lost his security clearance and had to stop the code-cracking work he was engaged in. He took his own life two years later.
The Parliamentary Bill, introduced by Liberal Democrat peer Lord Sharkey passed through the House of Lords in July this year.
The pardon was granted under the ‘Royal Prerogative of Mercy’ following a request by Justice Minister Chris Grayling came into effect on Christmas Eve, December 24.
The UK gay humanist charity the Pink Triangle Trust (PTT) has warmly welcomed the posthumous royal pardon granted to Turing.
In 2009 thousands of people added their names to the on-line petition calling for the Government to recognise the “consequences of prejudice” that ended the life of the scientist aged just 41.
Notable among the petition’s signatories was the well-known atheist and Humanist Professor Richard Dawkins who said that this would “send a signal to the world which needs to be sent”, and that Turing might still be alive today if it were not for the repressive, religion-influenced laws which drove him to despair.
Dawkins, author of The God Delusion, who presented a television programme for Channel 4 on Turing, said the impact of the mathematician’s war work could not be overstated.
He said: “Turing arguably made a greater contribution to defeating the Nazis than Eisenhower or Churchill. Thanks to Turing and his ‘Ultra’ colleagues at Bletchley Park, Allied generals in the field were consistently, over long periods of the war, privy to detailed German plans before the German generals had time to implement them.
“After the war, when Turing’s role was no longer top-secret, he should have been knighted and fêted as a saviour of his nation. Instead, this gentle, stammering, eccentric genius was destroyed, for a ‘crime’, committed in private, which harmed nobody.”
Professor Dawkins also called for a permanent financial endowment to support Bletchley Park, where Turing helped break the Nazi Enigma code.
Pink Triangle Trust secretary, George Broadhead said: “It was great to have such a prominent atheist and Humanist as Richard Dawkins supporting the campaign for Turing to be pardoned and it is significant that he identified religious-influenced laws as being to blame for Turing’s suicide.
“As a gay atheist Alan Turing is a Humanist hero and a pardon is long overdue. However, I agree with other LGBT activists that it’s wrong that the many other men convicted of exactly the same offence are not even being given an apology, let alone a pardon.”
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