A screening of The Imitation Game hosted by the American ambassador Matthew Barzun saw Alan Turing’s nephew Sir John Dermot Turing and his great-niece Rachel Barnes welcomed to 24 Grosvenor Square. There Barzun spoke of the progress that both America and Britain have made with gay rights since Turing’s day.
The wartime code-breaker committed suicide after he was found guilty of gross indecency and given chemical castration treatment as punishment. He was given a pardon for his ‘crime’ by the Queen in 2013. Now, members of the film’s cast have signed an open letter to the British government urging them to to pardon the estimated 49,000 men who were persecuted under the same law that Alan Turing was found guilty of.
Mr S suspects that the high profile pledge won’t hurt the film’s awards campaign either.
To Her Majesty’s Government,
Alan Turing was one of the greatest heroes of the twentieth Century, a man whose work on the machines that deciphered the Enigma codes helped win World War II and who was pivotal in the development of modern computers. Winston Churchill said Alan Turing “made the single biggest contribution to the Allied victory in World War II”.
In 1952 Turing was prosecuted and convicted of gross indecency under Section 11 of the Criminal Law Amendment Act 1885. He chose chemical castration instead of a prison sentence. On 7th June 1954 he committed suicide. His story was recently depicted in the film The Imitation Game.
In 2009, an “unequivocal apology” for his appalling treatment was issued by then Prime Minister Gordon Brown. Following the apology and after receiving a request from the justice secretary Chris Grayling, Queen Elizabeth II granted Alan Turing a posthumous pardon under the Royal Prerogative of Mercy in 2013. But Alan Turing was not alone.
The apology and pardon of Alan Turing are to be welcomed but ignores over 49,000 men who were convicted under the same law, many of whom took their own lives. An estimated 15,000 men are believed to still be alive.
The UK’s homophobic laws made the lives of generations of gay and bisexual men intolerable. It is up to young leaders of today including The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge to acknowledge this mark on our history and not allow it to stand.
We call upon Her Majesty’s government to begin a discussion about the possibility of a pardoning all the men, alive or deceased, who like Alan Turing, were convicted under the UK’s ‘gross indecency’ law (Section 11 of the Criminal Law Amendment Act 1885) and under other discriminatory anti-gay legislation.
Yours Sincerely,
Benedict Cumberbatch
Stephen Fry
Morten Tyldum
Allen Leech
Matthew Todd (Editor of Attitude Magazine)
Rachel Barnes (niece of Alan Turing)
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