How many more generations of the damned will our politicians allow to suffer before they accept the calamities of their predecessors and the consequences of their own cowardice?
Former Mirror and People editor Richard Stott, 2002
More than 60 years ago, the UK ordered its servicemen to stand and watch as it exploded the deadliest weapons known to man. Today it is the last nuclear power on Earth to insist its radiation experiments were harmless. But a black cloud now hangs over 1,500 surviving veterans and an estimated 155,000 descendants. Mirror writer Susie Boniface, who has reported on the scandal since 2002, investigates six decades of denial.
Once upon a time, it was necessary to have a weapon that could unleash hell.
The Second World War was humanity’s deadliest conflict, and both Nazis and Allies raced for the ultimate weapon. The USA got there first, dropping atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945.
An account of the attack in LIFE magazine read: “People’s bodies were terribly squeezed, then their internal organs ruptured. Then the blast blew the broken bodies at 500 to 1,000 miles per hour through the flaming, rubble-filled air. Practically everybody within a radius of 6,500 feet was killed or seriously injured and all buildings crushed or disembowelled.”
The raids killed an estimated 200,000 people. But after a war that killed 56 million in 30 countries, such a weapon seemed the only guarantee of survival.
Building nuclear bombs is a dirty business. Britain was one of many countries to try, and one of the few to succeed.
A small nation, wracked by poverty and rationing, somehow defied American anger, Soviet spies and growing public outrage to create a bomb 100 times more powerful than those dropped on Japan.
But victory came at a price. More than 22,000 servicemen and scientists took part in bomb trials in Australia and the South Pacific, and just a handful are still alive. Their families report aggressive cancers, rare medical problems, high rates of miscarriage, and deformities, disability and death for their children – and grandchildren.
The UK is the last nuclear power on Earth to deny its bomb tests caused any harm. The Ministry of Defence insists hardly anyone was exposed.
But a black cloud still hangs over the 1,500 surviving veterans and an estimated 155,000 descendants. Many mistrust their government, fear every new pregnancy, and have laboured for decades with the growing belief that they were used as guinea pigs.
The psychological effect has been immense. Families also report suicides, marriage breakdowns, alcoholism and mental illness. Throughout it, the Ministry of Defence has fought its own veterans – arguing every war pension, fighting every court battle, and even denying the existence of documentary evidence only for it later to be found in their archives.
Scientific proof of genetic damage remains elusive, and may not be found in the veterans’ lifetimes. Morality and common sense, while obvious to many, have yet to be weaponised by the MoD.
Many of those men were on National Service, called up to serve their country in a time of terror, and had no choice about what they had to do. And in a different era with different fears, many would argue what they did was necessary.
Whatever you think of their claims, and whatever we believe today about nuclear weapons, there is one truth that cannot be ignored.
The nuclear test veterans and their families have quite simply been damned – condemned to suffer eternal punishment for something that was none of their doing.
This is their story...
