Nuclear testing veterans fight for justice
Between 1952 and 1957 the United Kingdom carried out a number of atmospheric tests of nuclear weapons in the Pacific Ocean and at Maralinga, Australia, involving more than 20,000 servicemen.
Tomorrow, September 11, is the 50th anniversary of the UK's Nuclear Test Ban – but British serving men are still fighting to gain compensation from the government for cancers and other serious diseases which they claim are caused by the nuclear explosions.
One determined campaigner in the compensation battle is war veteran Steve Johnson from Bordon, who along with his colleagues from the British Nuclear Test Veterans Association (BNTVA), is going to the High Court in London in January in a bid to force the Ministry of Defence to pay out pensions for the damage wreaked by the nuclear tests.
Steve (77), from Horseshoe Crescent, Bordon, was an army special engineer and was involved in the Grapple Zulu and Grapple Yankee series of six detonations on Christmas Island in the Pacific between November 1957 and September 1958, of weapons many times more powerful than those discharged at Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
He explained: "When the British Nuclear Test Ban was due to come into operation in September 1958, Britain had to hurry up with its nuclear tests to complete them in time.
"An H-bomb test was carried out in April 1958, followed by two A-bombs that were exploded under four barrage balloons in the August.
"During the actual tests it was a bit worrying when first thing in the morning RAF and Navy personnel went off to sea for their safety while soldiers sat out on the island hoping that the bomb hit its target." Steve stressed: "Sadly many veterans and their children suffered terrible illnesses from these tests, but after 50 years they are still being refused compensation from governments.
"Surely now, 50 years after these men, many of them national servicemen, were required to face known hazards for the sake of our national security, it is time for the government to honour its duty of care and pay out compensation."
According to the BNTVA, a survey of 2,500 servicemen carried out in 1999 showed that 30 per cent of the men had died, mostly in their fifties.
The association said that medical evidence showed that the servicemen's grandchildren were more than five times likely to be born with spina bifida. More than 200 skeletal abnormalities were reported and more than 100 veterans’ children reported reproductive difficulties.
The High Court action is being supported by Sue Rabbitt Roff, a medical sociologist from Dundee University Medical School, who explained that epidemiological studies conducted by the National Radiological Protection Board under the commission of the MoD are routinely ruled to be irrelevant to individual men’s compensation applications since they only seek to estimate the chances of contracting cancer for the whole group of servicemen – rather than the clinical cause of a particular man’s illness.
She said: “The several hundred applications that have been denied over the past decades should be reviewed to see if they are in fact legitimate claims – and the government might even acknowledge our debt to our nuclear test veterans by striking a medal in their honour as the New Zealand government has recently done.”
For more information about the BNTVA, contact the chairman, John Lowe, 7 Bedale Drive, Whitley Bay, Tyne & Wear NE25 8UR or ring Steve Johnson on 01420 472555.
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Sunday 27 May 2012
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