The headline read: This Bang Has Changed The World. That is how the Daily Mirror reported Britain had exploded its first atomic bomb in October 1952.
But the fallout from that bang has affected the truth, and how much it was acceptable for a government to bend it – fallout that mirrors the Post Office Horizon scandal, the 1989 Hillsborough disaster, and the infected blood inquiry.
Prime Minister Winston Churchill told Parliament on October 23, 1952 “the explosion caused no casualties to the personnel of the expedition”, something he knew was a lie. Servicemen had entered Ground Zero without respirators, and radiation was found in their urine. Blood tests were taken from dozens of troops, and the results hidden. Hundreds more radioactive experiments took place over 15 years in Australia and on Christmas Island in the Pacific.
In a story that might one day be televised as The Daily Mirror vs The MoD – in the way the Horizon scandal was in ITV drama Mr Bates vs The Post Office – editors, columnists and reporters have proved the facts behind the headlines: Our A-Bomb Guinea Pigs, Cursed, Babies Were Sent To Nuke-Blasted Island, Heroes Denied Truth, and A Crime Against Nuclear Veterans.
The Mirror’s campaign for justice started small, with five paragraphs on page 13 in May 1980. It reported that Australian servicemen who took part in the testing were to sue both governments for compensation.
The scandal had erupted when tribal leader Yami Lester, daughter of anti-nuclear activist Karina Lester, told of “a black mist that brought death” and blinded him after a 1953 experiment in the Outback. Ex-troops realised cancers, rare blood disorders and birth defects might be connected.
In 1983, the British Nuclear Test Veterans Association was formed, with the motto: All we seek is truth and justice. But in court cases, pension hearings and studies the MoD misled veterans, widows, ministers and judges.
Forced into accepting research about veterans’ survival rates, an MoD official ordered rewrites in 1988, insisting cancers be put down to chance. When the study authors asked the Atomic Weapons Establishment for radiation records it held for the men, it supplied numbers taken from “dosimeters” made from camera film.
Almost two-thirds were recorded as a “nil dose”, but the AWE admitted the “minimum recordable level” was up to 4 miliSieverts – the equivalent of 800 dental X-rays. That fact, and raw data showing veterans were three times more likely to get radiogenic leukaemia compared to a control group, was hidden in a supplement described as “methodology”, and was not published for another 34 years.
The MoD relied on the dodgy data to refuse war pensions, some £20 a week, and to convince coroners that suspicious deaths were from natural causes.
In 2004, we reported the start of a court case by 1,011 British veterans and widows, and in 2007 came the first proof of a genetic legacy, with New Zealand research showing survivors had the same rate of DNA damage as clean-up workers at Chernobyl.
Five years later the High Court ruled the veterans must be allowed to sue, but in 2013 the Supreme Court said they had brought the claim too late. It was only in 2018 that survivors had a legal right to access their military health records, and it was the same year that the MoD told Parliament it had “no information” about blood tests. It was 2022 before the Mirror found evidence tests had been withheld.
Where once all of Fleet Street investigated the scandal, now the Mirror fights on alone for the 2,000 survivors of the 22,000 who were sent to take part in this vile human experiment. They were subject to orders for their blood to be analysed for radiation: and none were told the results. As one veteran said: “You don’t tell the lab rats what you’re doing either, do you?”
That data – scientific proof of what happens to healthy men when exposed to radiation – would be vital to protect this nation in a nuclear attack. The Mirror believes it is so valuable it has never been destroyed, but the fact that it has been hidden from those whose doctors needed it to treat their patients is morally and legally wrong.
As a result of our investigations, a fresh court case is about to launch, demanding the MoD provide the blood tests, compensation, and an apology.
Our parent company, Reach, has given £20,000 to the legal crowdfunder, with Ecotricity founder Dale Vince giving £15,000. But another £50,000 is needed. One day, the veterans will have the justice they deserve. On that day, the Mirror’s headline might well be: The Truth Has Changed The World.