Professor Stephen Hawkin and ten other eminent personages, many I expect replete with honours themslves, urge the government formally to pardon (I suppose formally it would be done in the name of the Queen) the late Alan Turing, the brilliant mathematician, Second World War code-breaker, and 'father of the modern computer', who was convicted of 'gross indecency' (code for practising homosexuality) a few years after the end of the war, suffered hormone therapy intended to 'correct' his sexuality and committed suicide.
Much as one finds Turing's treatment and suffering appalling, much as one recognises his brilliance and service to his country and fellow citizens, much as one recognises that, ahd he been living now, he would have received official honours and perhaps private wealth, rather than prosecution and forcible medical treatment, one wonders. Would this new measure be a symbol or an exception? Is it intended that all who were in the past properly, according to the laws and procedures of the time, convicted for things that are no longer offences or generally even regarded as morally reprehensible should be pardoned? Perhaps such an act of parliament could be framed, but I doubt there would be much public or political interest in it. Lord Grade, who drated the letter to the Daily Telegraph, has suggested a more general extension, but only apparently to those convicted of homosexual offences. Yet it is the individual on whom the focus now rests. Is this, if it succeeds, intended to be a measure in lieu, to be a symbol of such general pardon? Or is such treatment to be a posthumous honour extended only to deceased unfortunates who clear some hurdle of fame, celebrity or achievement?
We have a surfeit of honours already and their credit is not improved by elaboration. (Recently one or two have even had to be vomitted up in a fit of public indigestion.) Why should the repute, the peace or the honour of the late Alan Turing depend upon state recognition? A few years ago our then prime minister, Gordon Brown, said he was 'proud' to extend a personal 'apology' to Turing - apologies (at least for misdeeds sufficiently remote in the past) being more in political vogue than pardons. It seems to me there may have been a little moral confusion there - should one not rather than being proud to offer the apology (for what others did) confess to shame for having to say it? I suppose pride and shame are actually inseparable and the failure to recognise it is what is wrong with our 'honours system'.
Does anybody doubt that the state did much in the past (not to mention the present) of which any honourable person would now be ashamed?
