Alan Turing gets a belated apology

[Posted September 11, 2009 by corbet]

A determined petition campaign has finally achieved its goal: the British government has apologized for its treatment of Alan Turing. "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 cant 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." Congratulations to all the people who worked to bring a small bit of late justice to an important figure in our field.

Alan Turing gets a belated apology

Posted Sep 11, 2009 13:42 UTC (Fri) by davidw (guest, #947) [Link]

Here's a cool little bit of additional information:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=816943

Alan Turing gets a belated apology

Posted Sep 11, 2009 16:47 UTC (Fri) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link] (2 responses)

I think this is the first time a petition on Number 10's site has *ever*
achieved anything, probably because an apology is cheap. Petitions with
literally millions of signatures have been ignored before.

Alan Turing gets a belated apology

Posted Sep 11, 2009 22:37 UTC (Fri) by cortana (subscriber, #24596) [Link]

I think the anti-road pricing is the biggest example of a #10 petition that achieved something. After two million people signed it, the government did a very hasty u-turn over the whole issue. :)

Alan Turing gets a belated apology

Posted Sep 21, 2009 6:41 UTC (Mon) by efexis (guest, #26355) [Link]

Petitions aren't very democratic though are they? They only count the people who feel one way on an issue (or think they do) ignoring all those opposed. In a country of 60+million people, a petition that collects 2million signatures FOR something means that there could be up to 58+million people against it. Add on top of that the fact that you can easily get people to sign a petition banning water [1] or ending their very own rights [2], it's clearly obvious that petitions really don't mean a lot, and shouldn't be treated like they do.

Alan Turing gets a belated apology

Posted Sep 11, 2009 17:46 UTC (Fri) by pr1268 (guest, #24648) [Link] (5 responses)

This is great news. I still cringe at the thought of how horribly and unjustly Turing was treated simply for who he was. Kudos to the British Government for acknowledging the mistakes made and apologizing for them.

Alan Turing gets a belated apology

Posted Sep 11, 2009 18:11 UTC (Fri) by clugstj (subscriber, #4020) [Link] (4 responses)

It's quite easy to apologize to a dead man for something you had no part in. Maybe I'm too jaded, but I can't see this kind of thing as anything but pandering to special interest groups.

Alan Turing gets a belated apology

Posted Sep 11, 2009 18:17 UTC (Fri) by martinfick (subscriber, #4455) [Link] (1 responses)

Yes. It is ironic how in the article he is praised for fighting facism in defense of democracy... unfortunately he may have been defending a government with some scarely similar behavior to the one he was "fighting".

Alan Turing gets a belated apology

Posted Sep 13, 2009 10:01 UTC (Sun) by njs (subscriber, #40338) [Link]

The apology actually calls out that parallelism pretty explicitly: "[I]n living memory, people [became] so consumed by hate - by anti-Semitism, by homophobia, [...] - that the gas chambers and crematoria became a piece of the European landscape..."

That's... the British PM comparing post-war British government to the Nazis? I don't have any kind of feel for British politics, but that wasn't something I was expecting to see!

Alan Turing gets a belated apology

Posted Sep 11, 2009 20:58 UTC (Fri) by ntl (subscriber, #40518) [Link]

There's nothing wrong with people engaging in organized effort around a shared cause (your "special interest groups") to prompt action from their government. And it's not necessarily pandering when a government acts on the expressed desires of its citizens.

There's nothing wrong, and there's plenty right, with a government publicly repudiating inhumane policies in the form of an apology letter to someone long dead. Even if those policies are no longer in force, this statement affirms that they should remain in the past. It serves as recognition of the injustices committed (not only against Turing, but thousands of others, some of whom may still live).

Alan Turing gets a belated apology

Posted Sep 12, 2009 1:47 UTC (Sat) by mark_h (subscriber, #4628) [Link]

I don't disagree, but having witnessed how hard the previous Australian government fought to avoid apologising for past gross injustices to the indigenous population, it is still welcome to see it occur.

Alan Turing gets a belated apology

Posted Sep 12, 2009 3:00 UTC (Sat) by fest3er (guest, #60379) [Link] (7 responses)

In my opinion, it's really not much of an apology. If you read carefully,
you'll see, "... I am pleased to have the chance to say how deeply sorry I
and we all are for what happened to him" and "I am very proud to say:
we're sorry, you deserved so much better." It reads more like a corporate
press release announcing the latest generation of hemorrhoid suppositories
or a new menstrual flow control product.

I know it's the Queen's English and we colonists across the pond grunt a
coarse vernacular that bears only a remote semblance to it, but to
be 'pleased' to apologise? Being proud to be sorry? I am sorry, but this
is at best a faux pas, and at worst ill-considered pandering. Delivering
an apology is not pleasant, nor does it fill the apologizer with pride.
And I am neither pleased nor proud to illuminate that.

Mr. Turing, God rest his soul, still deserves better.

Alan Turing gets a belated apology

Posted Sep 12, 2009 3:22 UTC (Sat) by cjb (guest, #40354) [Link] (1 responses)

Agreed; I'm British, so don't have the colonists' excuse, and I cringed on reading the word "proud". Not appropriate. I was glad to read the apology in general, though.

Alan Turing gets a belated apology

Posted Sep 21, 2009 7:04 UTC (Mon) by efexis (guest, #26355) [Link]

You don't think someone should be proud of how far we've come in breaking away from a negative mindset, and doing what's possible to correct mistakes and avoid letting them happen again? However much like an apology this statement reads, you cannot apologise for the dead or to the dead, so this is 'merely' a statement of recognition of bad things that happened in the context of "it shouldn't happen".

Pride should be felt with steps forward, I don't understand the thinking that it shouldn't.

Alan Turing gets a belated apology

Posted Sep 12, 2009 12:06 UTC (Sat) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]

It's an apology phrased like a boast. Probably unintentional: politicians
rarely do actual apologies in which they aren't trying to wriggle out of
something, so when they do come up they use the same old phrasing they'd
use for one of those...

Alan Turing gets a belated apology

Posted Sep 13, 2009 1:56 UTC (Sun) by Richard_J_Neill (subscriber, #23093) [Link] (3 responses)

That's not quite fair on Gordon Brown. It's one thing to grovel when apologising for something that *you* did, but Brown didn't persecute Turing personally, and I don't think that he should have to be overdoing the humility. And it's fair enough to be proud of the fact that we now have a country in which such a persecution would never happen again - and Labour do have a good record on gay-rights.

Alan Turing gets a belated apology

Posted Sep 15, 2009 8:23 UTC (Tue) by jamesh (guest, #1159) [Link] (2 responses)

That might be the case if he was giving a personal apology as a private citizen, but that's not the case. This is an official apology on behalf of the country responsible for the behaviour.

While he might not have created the system that led to Turing's conviction, being Prime Minister does make it fall on his shoulders.

Alan Turing gets a belated apology

Posted Sep 17, 2009 17:14 UTC (Thu) by mrshiny (guest, #4266) [Link] (1 responses)

I think people are reading too much into the "proud" comment... I read it as Brown was proud that things had improved and proud of the progress made, not proud of having to apologize or proud of the past behaviour.

Alan Turing gets a belated apology

Posted Sep 17, 2009 17:30 UTC (Thu) by jordanb (guest, #45668) [Link]

Or that "I am proud to" is an immutable prefix that gets attached to any official announcements or proclamations, even when spoken. ;)

Obenhiemer Next?

Posted Sep 12, 2009 6:08 UTC (Sat) by ccyoung (guest, #16340) [Link]

since it's safe to go back that far, maybe the US can apologize for its treatment of Robert Oppenheimer.

maybe then move to Linus Pauling

while neither personally torturous as Turing's, despicable treatment of great men serving their country and humanity.

Alan Turing gets a belated apology

Posted Sep 15, 2009 8:32 UTC (Tue) by AndreE (guest, #60148) [Link]

While it's encouraging, it would have been nice in the apology to see some mention of his contribution to computer science. It would frame his contribution to society at large in a very relevant and modern context.

Caster Semenya

Posted Sep 17, 2009 18:44 UTC (Thu) by Tuxie (guest, #47191) [Link] (1 responses)

It's great to see that Alan Turing finally gets an apology for the horrible treatment he received. Too bad he wasn't around to hear it.

I wonder how long before Caster Semenya gets her official apology. Their stories have a lot in common.

Caster Semenya ?

Posted Sep 24, 2009 4:30 UTC (Thu) by xoddam (subscriber, #2322) [Link]

Erm, except that Caster Semenya has not been charged with a crime nor convicted of one, nor has she chosen to take her own life. Nor (AFAIK) has she made any major contribution to information science, but I'd welcome corrections on that point.

None of which is to say that Semenya's situation isn't upsetting or even humiliating, but the situations are rather distinct.