<table cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0" border="0" ><tr><td valign="top" style="font: inherit;">Hi Jim - I just had the same email dropped into my inbox. Too little, much too late - NuLiebour's legacy, I'm sorry to have to say.<br><br>At least they've made a start, I suppose, but there is a very long way to go yet.<br><br>--- On <b>Fri, 11/9/09, Jim <i><JimTheBad@ntlworld.com></i></b> wrote:<br><blockquote style="border-left: 2px solid rgb(16, 16, 255); margin-left: 5px; padding-left: 5px;"><br>From: Jim <JimTheBad@ntlworld.com><br>Subject: [Nottingham] Message from Gordon Brown<br>To: "Notts GNU/Linux Users Group" <nottingham@mailman.lug.org.uk><br>Date: Friday, 11 September, 2009, 4:38 PM<br><br><div class="plainMail">Just got this message from Gordon Brown in response to the petition to <br>apologise for the shameful treatment of one of the founders of Computer <br>Science, Alan Turing:<br><br>--<br><br>Prime Minister: 2009 has
been a year of deep reflection – a chance for<br>Britain, as a nation, to commemorate the profound debts we owe to those who<br>came before. A unique combination of anniversaries and events have stirred<br>in us that sense of pride and gratitude which characterise the British<br>experience. Earlier this year I stood with Presidents Sarkozy and Obama to<br>honour the service and the sacrifice of the heroes who stormed the beaches<br>of Normandy 65 years ago. And just last week, we marked the 70 years which<br>have passed since the British government declared its willingness to take<br>up arms against Fascism and declared the outbreak of World War Two. So I am<br>both pleased and proud that, thanks to a coalition of computer scientists,<br>historians and LGBT activists, we have this year a chance to mark and<br>celebrate another contribution to Britain’s fight against the darkness of<br>dictatorship; that of code-breaker Alan Turing.<br><br>Turing was
a quite brilliant mathematician, most famous for his work on<br>breaking the German Enigma codes. It is no exaggeration to say that,<br>without his outstanding contribution, the history of World War Two could<br>well have been very different. He truly was one of those individuals we can<br>point to whose unique contribution helped to turn the tide of war. The debt<br>of gratitude he is owed makes it all the more horrifying, therefore, that<br>he was treated so inhumanely. In 1952, he was convicted of ‘gross<br>indecency’ – in effect, tried for being gay. His sentence – and he<br>was faced with the miserable choice of this or prison - was chemical<br>castration by a series of injections of female hormones. He took his own<br>life just two years later.<br><br>Thousands of people have come together to demand justice for Alan Turing<br>and recognition of the appalling way he was treated. While Turing was dealt<br>with under the law of the time and
we can't put the clock back, his<br>treatment was of course utterly unfair and I am pleased to have the chance<br>to say how deeply sorry I and we all are for what happened to him. Alan and<br>the many thousands of other gay men who were convicted as he was convicted<br>under homophobic laws were treated terribly. Over the years millions more<br>lived in fear of conviction.<br><br>I am proud that those days are gone and that in the last 12 years this<br>government has done so much to make life fairer and more equal for our LGBT<br>community. This recognition of Alan’s status as one of Britain’s most<br>famous victims of homophobia is another step towards equality and long<br>overdue.<br><br>But even more than that, Alan deserves recognition for his contribution to<br>humankind. For those of us born after 1945, into a Europe which is united,<br>democratic and at peace, it is hard to imagine that our continent was once<br>the theatre of mankind’s
darkest hour. It is difficult to believe that in<br>living memory, people could become so consumed by hate – by<br>anti-Semitism, by homophobia, by xenophobia and other murderous prejudices<br>– that the gas chambers and crematoria became a piece of the European<br>landscape as surely as the galleries and universities and concert halls<br>which had marked out the European civilisation for hundreds of years. It is<br>thanks to men and women who were totally committed to fighting fascism,<br>people like Alan Turing, that the horrors of the Holocaust and of total war<br>are part of Europe’s history and not Europe’s present.<br><br>So on behalf of the British government, and all those who live freely<br>thanks to Alan’s work I am very proud to say: we’re sorry, you deserved<br>so much better.<br><br>Gordon Brown<br><br><br>_______________________________________________<br>Nottingham mailing list<br><a
ymailto="mailto:Nottingham@mailman.lug.org.uk" href="/mc/compose?to=Nottingham@mailman.lug.org.uk">Nottingham@mailman.lug.org.uk</a><br><a href="https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/nottingham" target="_blank">https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/nottingham</a></div></blockquote></td></tr></table><br>