The UK today has some of the best queer human rights legislation in the world. This has been hard-won by forceful activism over the past few decades. Prior to that the UK had the largest number of anti-gay laws in the world, and a dismal record of harassing, arresting and imprisoning queers, in particular gay and bisexual men. In fact, to date, over 100,000 men have been victims of Britain’s criminalisation of homosexuality, including 49,000 who have been imprisoned for this ‘crime’. This number includes Alan Turing, the father of Theoretical Computer Science, the man who cracked the German Enigma machine coded messages during the Second World War, saving millions of lives.
Forgetting the Many: The Royal Pardon of Alan Turing is an excellent new documentary by Rosemarie Reed. Narrated by Ben Whishaw and featuring contributions by such luminaries as Peter Tatchell, Gordon Brown and Brian Paddick, we learn about the history of the criminalisation of homosexuality in the UK, and the effect the pointless prosecution of its discriminatory laws had on many people, including Alan Turing.
In 1533 King Henry VIII introduced buggery as a capital offence, the punishment then reduced to ten years to life imprisonment in 1861. Gross Indecency was also introduced as an offence then, an offence that amazingly has never been properly defined in law. By 1967 social attitudes had relaxed and the Sexual Offences Act 1967 decriminalised sone homosexual acts as long as they were done in private and involved no more than two people. Full decriminalization was not enacted until 2003, when the 1885 law was finally repealed. But neither of these reforms expunged the criminal records of those convicted under the old law. In 2017, a new Policing and Crime Act – with an amendment popularly known as Turing’s Law – automatically pardoned all those convicted under the gross indecency legislation who had already died, but left the surviving victims in a legal limbo, with their convictions still standing. An amendment to the 2022 Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill has widened the range of homosexual offenses eligible for a disregard and pardon and at last allows all men convicted of consenting same-sex behaviour with a person aged 16 or over, where the acts are no longer an offence, to apply to have their convictions disregarded and removed from the records. The application process, however, is cumbersome and involves reliving times many of the men want to forget, and some men remain ineligible because their offences are still crimes. These include a minor having sex with another minor and men caught having sex in public toilets. Surely these men are also due pardons so that they can live their lives and enjoy careers free of criminal convictions for relatively minor crimes? To date, only 200 men have been through the process of having their criminal convictions quashed.
Reed interviews several men who were arrested for gross indecency under these archaic laws – shockingly most of them relatively recently, in the 1990s. These include one of the Bolton 7, arrested in 1998 for having group sex which included a seventeen-and-a-half-year-old. A man caught cottaging in 1999 is featured as is Kevin who was arrested as a sixteen-year-old for having sex with someone he thought was sixteen but who was actually just shy of his sixteenth birthday. Other contributors include a couple of members of the Armed Forces who suffered huge consequences for being gay. The men suffered the loss of jobs, press harassment, some lost pensions and the resulting criminal records affected their ability to advance their careers. The brilliant queer activist George Montague is also interviewed, aged 94, and discusses his arrest for gross indecency. The case of Alan Turing is highlighted, with the help of a couple of his living relatives. He was suspected of being gay in 1951 and was arrested. He was charged under the same law that had been used to prosecute Oscar Wilde in 1891. He agreed to be chemically castrated as a punishment so that he could keep his job. His untimely death in 1954 followed. All these men suffered extremely for having consenting sex, largely in situations that would not have been crimes of they had been heterosexual encounters.
Reed’s documentary is heartfelt, detailed and an important history lesson for everyone. She shines a light on a particularly dark period of British history but also points out how much legislative change can be possible in a relatively short period of time if effective queer activism happens. This is necessary in so many of the present and former British Commonwealth countries which still have the archaic homophobic laws in place that were introduced by the British – another feature of the film. Excellent viewing.
Queerguru’s Contributing Editor Ris Fatah is a successful fashion/luxury business consultant (when he can be bothered) who divides and wastes his time between London and Ibiza. He is a lover of all things queer, feminist, and human rights in general. @ris.fatah
Labels: 2024, Alan Turing, documentary, gay icon, outed, review, Ris Fatah, war hero
