Future of UK Enigma site continues to confound

1999-10-27

All is not well at Bletchley Park, the World War II code-breaking centre, former stamping ground of Alan Turing and location of the world’s first programmable computer, the Colossus. Controversy centres about what should be done with the site. Once again, it seems that Britain is failing to deal with its IT heritage, let alone its wartime memory.

What’s going on is, unsurprisingly, an everyday story of folk. The battle lines were drawn two weeks ago between the old guard of Park trustees (seven out of the twelve) and Christine Large, who was brought in as chief executive to oversee the process of bringing the currently dilapidated park and outbuildings up to scratch. Mrs Large’s plans to transform the park into a modern museum, conference and education centre were seen as too ambitious for the trustees who were wary of the site becoming “a high-tech theme park”. Following a series of wrangles and a vote of no confidence by the trustees, Mrs Large was sacked from the board, only to be reinstated last Thursday.

If this wasn’t complicated enough, Mrs Large has rejected the reinstatement offer unless a new Board of Trustees is created. This is not an outlandish suggestion, as the Board itself recognised the need to disband and reform in May this year. Six months later, the impression is that the Board are reluctant to follow this through.

To an extent, the reasons for this and the current situation are less relevant than the consequence, which is that nothing is getting done. Time and again we have seen personalities get in the way of progress, in this case towards recognising our heritage. As with the failure to procure the funds to build a statue of Alan Turing himself, we are stymieing our own potential to get things done and, in this case, to broadcast to the world our own successes. Britons are experts at hiding lights under bushels – humility is a good thing, but so is recognition.

People need to have visionary focus and to act accordingly. From this perspective it would appear that Christine Large is right – there is no point in returning to the post of Chief Executive if the current composition of the Board is likely to put the brakes on every step of the way. For the sake of our IT and wartime heritage, we wish Bletchley Park the good will and commitment it needs to ensure it is developed with both sensitivity and vision.

(First published 27 October 1999)