The apology was issued during a Government debate by Home Office Minister Brandon Lewis MP on January 10, 2017.
George had run an online petition calling for an apology to be issued to accompany the pardons.
He presented a petition with 14.400 signatures in support of his campaign by hand to The Prime Minister, Theresa May in Downing Street on November 2 2016.
George aged 93 was forced to resign in 1974 from his position as a Senior Commissioner in the Boy Scout Association where he ran camps for severely physically disabled boys from six southern counties in the UK.
He says: “As a consequence of the Gross Indecency Laws at the time, I was arrested and charged enthusiastically by homophobic police officers, assisted by provocateurs and informers. Then, if one was born to be “in love” with another man, one was automatically presumed guilty of these offences.
“Myself, and 49,000 others, still have criminal convictions. I am therefore petitioning for an apology from this Government on the part of their predecessors. Some of those past legislators are still alive, often asleep in the House of Lords on £300 per day, many of them refusing to accept the fact that being homosexual is NOT a choice.
“I agree that any indecency of a sexual nature IN PUBLIC should still be an offence but our ‘offences’ were often ‘committed’ in private. I don’t seek a pardon, for that admits guilt (eg. Alan Turing), I believe that these convictions should be quashed and want that apology from my Government BEFORE I die.”
The Home Office letter reads:
Thank you for your letter of November 1 to the Prime Minister about past convictions incurred by gay men, to which I have been asked to respond. You request an apology from the Government on behalf of its predecessors.
On January 10 2017, in the debate to introduce pardons for men convicted of gross indecency offences where the activity involved would not constitute a crime today, Home Office minister Brandon Lewis made the following apology.
“At this point, I want to take the opportunity to apologise unreservedly, on behalf of the Government, to all those men who will receive a pardon. The legislation under which they were convicted and cautioned was discriminatory and homophobic. I want to make sure that all who were criminalised in this way and had to suffer society’s opprobrium, and the many more who lived in fear of being so criminalised because they were being treated in a very different way from heterosexual couples, actually understand that we offer this full apology. Their treatment was entirely unfair. What happened to these men is a matter of the greatest regret, and it should be so to all of us. I am sure it is to Members across the House. For this, we are today deeply sorry” (See House of Commons Hansard for January 10 2017, volume 619, column 283.”
I hope this addresses the concerns you have raised.
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