Sources close to the Prime Minister confirmed to The Independent that Ms May's government is “committed” to introducing the legislation, which will effectively act as an apology while the Ministry of Justice added they would “now find the right legislative vehicle to push this through”. [...]
Mr Turing, the Enigma code breaker responsible for decrypting Nazi messages, was granted a posthumous royal pardon in 2013 – 61 years after he was charged at Manchester police station over homosexual activity.
The pioneering mathematician, whose code-breaking skills are said to have shortened World War Two by two to four years, lost his job with the secret service following a conviction for gross indecency and was forced to undergo chemical castration by a series of injections of female hormones. Two years later Mr Turing took his own life – and it is estimated that around 49,000 were convicted under similar outdated laws until homosexuality was decriminalised in England in 1967. [...]
It comes after campaigners, and the family of Mr Turing – who according to Winston Churchill “made the single biggest contribution to the allied victory" in World War II – delivered the petition to Downing Street in 2015 before the general election. Public pressure led to the major political parties pledging to right the wrongs of the past and introduce what was dubbed as the 'Alan Turing law', in memory of the Bletchley Park codebreaker.
No comments:
Post a Comment