Thou shalt not question the wisdom of Stephen Fry

[venta]

A while ago, I saw someone on my friends list posting something which basically said "here's what I think about this issue, and I'm a little confused by it, what are your thoughts

Comments

[sushidog]

Yes, I think I'm pretty much with you; there are lots of more current issues which should be addressed, and issueing an apology to a dead person from someone who had nothing to do with it seems a bit pointless.

Here, have a faintly amusing anecdote about something tangentially related; a few years ago, the Vatican decided to apologise for the Inquisitions, and they organised a conference on the subject. What with my dad being a "leading Catholic Historian" and a bit of an expert in both the Reformation and the history of the papacy, they invited him to come along and give a paper on the inquisitions in England and ireland, in order that they might know properly what they were apologising for.
He replied, pointing out that while he was quite happy to do so if they liked (they were going to pay his costs and so on), it would be rather a short paper, given that there was't an Inquisition in England or Ireland.

[emarkienna]

I agree that apologising for one's ancestors and so on doesn't make sense. I suppose one could argue that apologising on behalf of the British Government is comparable to other occasions where an organisation has done something (e.g., we still generally consider companies to be responsible for past deeds, even if the people that form the company have changed over the years

[venta]

what happens if a law is repealed, and someone is still in prison at the time

Interesting question; I have no idea.

I speculate wildly that it doesn't often happen. A criminal act rarely suddenly ceases to be a criminal act - on the whole there will have been years previously where people were being uneasy about it, and prosecutions carried lighter sentences, then no sentences, then didn't really happen.

I don't know whether this actually happened in the case of legalising homosexuality; must look it up later.

[zotz]

The removal of his security clearance was probably of at least as much importance, and (it's often said) a lot more given the importance of his work. The blanket ruling that you couldn't be gay and have clearance seems odd - it goes further than just worrying about blackmail, because having been prosecuted he could no longer be threatened with exposure. It's past the mere application of the criminal law at that point.

It has long been said (possibly without justification, I don't know) that this policy was at the FBI's insistence. If true, it would be very galling given what's now known about J Edgar Hoover.

[venta]

Ah - I thought the removal of security clearance automatically followed from being prosecuted for a criminal act. So if he hasn't been prosectued, they could have removed (he was gay, blackmail, etc) but because he was it was notionally on account of the criminal record.

I don't think I have any particular reason for thinking that, though, so it may be bollocks.

[zotz]

Whether you lose clearance probably depends on what it is. Given the circles the intelligence community recruited from, it can't have been a rare thing - three of the Cambridge Five were gay or bisexual, and their actions weren't due to blackmail. Guy Burgess was certainly known to be gay at the time, and it didn't stop him being given sensitive work.

It's also certainly been suggested that he'd have been fired earlier if he'd been officially found out earlier, conviction or no - somebody he worked with at Bletchley has been quoted as saying "It's a good thing they didn't know Alan was queer. We might have lost the war."

This rather tends to confirm what I've been told generally - the Americans got antsy about it and we threw Turing to the dogs to keep them happy.

[shrydar]

I'm in favour of the apology. As you pointed out yourself, it's from the system rather than Gordon Brown per se.

And I think it's more an apology for the system being what it was, rather than an indictment of those who followed it's prescriptions as to how Turing should have been treated (although the phrase 'just following orders' does spring to mind..)

I do know a number of people who are aware of his work, but who weren't until recently aware of the persecution, and I think both sides of the story need to be told.

But to be honest, it just seems at a gut level to be "the right thing to do."

[maviscruet]

I'm broadly against retro-ative apologies because they don't seem to do anything really.

However just because something was legal then does not mean we can not look at it now and go "oh god!" slavery being the prime example.