The cost of intolerance

About time, too!

From The Guardian:

The head of GCHQ has spoken with regret of the treatment of Alan Turing, the second world war codebreaker and mathematical genius, who killed himself in 1954, two years after being convicted of homosexuality, which was then a criminal offence.

In a rare speech to mark the centenary of Turing's birth, Iain Lobban said the unique people the country needed were often mavericks, and it was his job to set them to work in the world of secret intelligence, "not to tell them how to live their lives".

Lobban told an audience in Leeds that Turing was a national asset whose death robbed the country of "one of our greatest minds". He said more people like Turing were needed if Britain was to stay ahead of the challenges and dangers posed from cyberspace.

"We can't rewrite the past," he said. "We can't wish mid-20th century Britain into a different society with different attitudes. We can be glad that we live in a more tolerant age. And we should remember that the cost of intolerance towards Alan Turing was his loss to the nation."

Lobban, who has been head of the government's electronic intelligence-gathering centre for four years, described Turing as "a founder of the information age... One of the people whose concepts are at the heart of a technological revolution which is as far-reaching as the industrial revolution."

He added: "And of course there are many Turing stories: burying his silver bullion and then forgetting where he had buried it; chaining his mug to his radiator; cycling in his gas mask to ward off hay fever.

"But Turing was not an eccentric, unless you believe that there is only one way of being normal and to be otherwise is to be peculiar. Turing wasn't eccentric. He was unique."

Better late than never, I suppose - an apology from the establishment that failed to defend its own employee Alan Turing's reputation, three years on from then Prime Minister Gordon Brown's expression of regret on behalf of the British Government.

Read my blog about Alan Turing's centenary.

The exhibition Codebreaker - Alan Turing's life and legacy is on at the Science Museum until 31st July 2013.