'The national scandal that Rishi and Keir won't talk about'

03 June 2024 , 11:44

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They both say the first duty of government is to keep people safe. So when will they do it for nuclear veterans?

The Ministry of Defence has existed, in some form or other, for more than 1,000 years.

It wrapped itself around the heart of the British state long before the late 1950s, when it took up residence behind a limestone facade in Whitehall. Alfred the Great built a navy to battle the Vikings; William the Conqueror needed a fleet to move cavalry across the Channel to claim the crown. Over centuries, warring noblemen used military service owed by ordinary folk who lived on their lands, and spilled others' blood to their own ends.

Eventually it became the King's Army, then Parliament's, and professional soldiers, conscripts and mercenaries joined forces with career sailors and press-ganged unfortunates in the Royal Navy to forge the British Empire. With the arrival of flight came aerial bombardment, and the dogfights of the First World War. Through it all, the soldier, sailor or airman was a chess piece for higher-ups with greater aims in mind.

And it is this gnarly, entitled institution, which has never cared any more for its veterans than it does a spent ammunition cartridge, which has just admitted to the scandal it insisted they were imagining: that it used troops in human experiments, collected the results, and then covered it up.

Survivor Brian Unthank demonstrates how veterans were ordered to ball their fists into their eyes during the flash of nuclear weapons

Today the Mirror publishes a 2001 fax which shows MoD officials conspired with counterparts at the Atomic Weapons Establishment to tell ministers, Press and public that blood tests were considered, but never thought necessary, for the 22,000 troops who took part in Cold War nuclear weapons trials in Australia and the Pacific.

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The same officials had exchanged files which showed the blood tests HAD been conducted. And within the 4,000 pages of documents we found the fax in, lies evidence that at least 1,000 servicemen were tested, around half of them named on call-up rosters for 'special medical examinations', and subjected to more than 30 orders for tests over more than a decade.

In 2001 a single document had emerged, showing that in 1958 there was a discussion about whether blood tests were necessary. Veterans of the blasts, who at that point had been fighting for recognition for almost 20 years, accused the MoD of negligence. But rather than admit the lengths to which it had gone to check if radiation entered their bodies, the MoD produced 'lines to take' insisting it hadn't bothered - and coincidentally, no need to check, or to sue.

Seventeen years later, when asked in Parliament about an order for blood testing, then-defence minister Tobias Ellwood signed a statement prepared by officials insisting the MoD had "no information" about it. In 2022, we found a memo detailing the blood tests of Squadron Leader Terry Gledhill, who was ordered into the mushroom clouds. 'Oh,' said the MoD. 'THOSE blood tests.'

Terry Gledhill, on the steps, with his fellow 'cloud flyers' in 76 Squadron - almost all of whom have since died (Jane O'Connor)

As late as last November, MoD officials were briefing ministers that Gledhill's tests were the only ones it held. In February, it told the son of a veteran who asked for his father's records that "although blood and urine tests were due to be conducted, the AWE does not hold evidence that such tests ever happened". Despite holding 4,000 pieces of evidence that they did, and despite it being a crime to withhold medical records

Every time I write another story about the nuked blood scandal, I send a link to the online article to the Downing Street director of communications, to the Leader of the Opposition's press officer, and to Veterans Minister Johnny Mercer. They also receive briefings on what's in every day's newspapers. They cannot have failed to notice, over the past 18 months, the drip-drip-drip of a dam of lies about to burst.

Before the general election was called, it was hard but not impossible to get a quote out of the Labour machine. The Tories simply ignored my regular requests on behalf of veterans for the Prime Minister to make good on his promise to meet them. Now that we are in the midst of the campaign, it is next to impossible to crowbar the story into a rigid, get-our-message-across media grid. Today is economy day, today is NHS day, no room here for you.

Today is actually Labour-talking-about-the-nuclear-deterrent day, yet still the election mill can't find space to ask or answer even one simple question about the men and women who provided it. It is because of them that the first task awaiting the Prime Minister on July 5 will be to write the letters of last resort, and say what our armed forces should do in the event of a nuclear strike. It is because of them that our PMs are not as globally insignificant as they otherwise would be.

Nuclear veterans Brian Unthank and Terry Quinlan, with LABRATS founder Alan Owen, deliver legal papers to the Ministry of Defence (Ian Vogler)

It's not the fault of the politicians, who when reached in person usually react as you'd hope. It's their teams, pushing a message, unaware they're part of the institutional failure to heed what happens outside their bubble. And all are frightened of irking the MoD ahead of a vote in which national security may play a vital role. But that is not going to hold much longer.

Greater Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham has called on both parties to make clear commitments in their manifestos to a one-year public inquiry demanded by the veterans and their lawyers. Labour peer, and giant of the party Tom Watson has called on all parties to respond to the latest developments, which prove beyond all doubt the MoD and its officials have lied, and lied, and lied again - to us, to you, to ministers of the crown.

Veterans are speaking to their election candidates. TV debates with questions from the audience are imminent. And neither side can keep saying they'll keep the country safe, when our own servicemen have been treated like laboratory rats, exposed to radiation, with and without protection, their blood and urine examined afterwards to determine the effects, and the results withheld from them ever since.

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For once the officials of the MoD cannot be blamed for a lack of comment, due to election purdah. They couldn't reverse 70 years of denials, even if they wanted to and were capable, behind their institutional blinkers, of seeing the bright red radiation burn that scars an organisation that has considered itself so important, for so long.

This Friday the Labour Party holds its Clause V meeting to sign off its manifesto. Within a fortnight, they and the Tories will both publish the election promises which we'll be rating them against for the next five years. And if Keir Starmer and Rishi Sunak fail to include in there an end to the longest and most appalling scandal in British history, it will contaminate them.

It is a stain on the legacy of Churchill, Attlee, Macmillan, Thatcher, Blair, and every other PM who ordered the tests and presided over these lies. But never before have we been able to prove so much, with evidence pulled from the bowels of the MoD itself, like an intestinal worm being decoiled with a Biro. Never before has a PM, and a wannabe PM, had the opportunity to show the MoD on day one who's boss, and show veterans who really has their backs.

Excise this tumour from the British state. Make the MoD fit for purpose. It is time to do or die.

Fleet Street Fox