Test Veterans

Veterans of Britain’s Cold War nuclear bomb experiments (the Vets) today thank the team behind the acclaimed BBC TV film documentary Britain’s Nuclear Bomb Scandal: Our Story (Hardcash Films) for revealing the truth about their plight and the UK government’s 70 year cover up. The 75-minute documentary – aired at 2100 on 20 November on BBC 2 – stands to be as significant for the Vets as Mr Bates v The Post Office was for postmasters. Underlining the strength of the Vets’ current legal action against the Government (HMG), it makes clear: The Vets were knowingly, recklessly and negligently exposed to dangerous and health critical levels of radiation during the nuclear testing programme in Australia and the South Pacific in the 1950s and 60s. Some Vets were placed as guinea pigs in the proximity of atomic bomb blasts, without any protection, in part to generate data on its effects on humans. Some were ordered to fly, march, crawl and sail through mushroom clouds and clean up contaminated debris for experiments. They were given little or no protection from the blasts. Many were placed in front of blasts with only a t-shirt and shorts for protection. Many have suffered crippling injuries as a result – including skin tumours, heart disease, leukaemia, miscarriages and still births. These injuries and conditions have lasted generations, and harmed their families, with as many as 155,000 descendants still suffering to this day. The psychological effects on them all has been traumatic; some feared having children, others have had lifetimes of chronic disabilities. Our veterans were not alone in such ill treatment, their colleagues in the Australian military – who supported the British test programme – likewise suffered. Indigenous People were forcibly removed from their homes to make way for the blasts, and many more saw their lands contaminated and were subject to the same medical monitoring.