UK spy agency chief apologises for the anti-gay prejudice that ruined code-breaker Alan Turing’s career
Turing helped shorten the second world war but was convicted of indecency in 1952 and stripped of his security clearance before eventually committing suicide.
The head of Britain’s digital espionage agency has apologised for the organisation’s historic prejudice against homosexuals, saying it failed to learn from the treatment of second world war code-breaker Alan Turing.
In a rare public speech, GCHQ chief Robert Hannigan told a gathering organised by the rights group Stonewall that the agency’s ban on homosexuals had caused long-lasting psychological damage to many and hurt the agency because talented people were excluded from working there.
“The fact that it was common practice for decades reflected
the intolerance of the times and the pressures of the cold war, but it does not make it any less wrong and we should apologise,” Hannigan said at Friday’s conference organised by Stonewall, which campaigns for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender equality.
We need all talents and we need people who dare to think differently and be different
The speech offered a poignant tribute to Turing, the gay computer science pioneer and architect of the effort to crack Nazi Germany’s Enigma cipher. Turing was convicted of indecency in 1952 and stripped of his security clearance. He later committed suicide.
A 2014 film about Turing, The Imitation Game starring Benedict Cumberbatch, brought his story to a new generation. At GCHQ, Turing is now seen as a genius – “a problem-solver who was not afraid to think differently and radically,” Hannigan said.