Sir John Hayes: The scandalous cover up of Britain’s atomic heroes, and why even now they’re being let down

Sir John Hayes is a former Home Office Minister and MP for South Holland and The Deepings.

More than 20 years ago, meeting my constituent, Douglas Hern, who served in the Royal Navy during Operation Grapple in 1958, I learned of the experience and subsequent plight of all the young men who, like him, were to become Britain’s nuclear veterans.

Doug and his wife, Sandi, lost their beloved daughter, Gilly, at the age of 13. Doug often spoke of his continuing grief at her two years of suffering adrenal cancer, a rare condition more commonly seen in horses than humans, and which led to such excessive hair growth that she had to have her face shaved twice a day. Doug held her in his arms as she died, and never really recovered.

He channelled the pain of loss into many decades of work with the British Nuclear Test Veterans Association, of which I became Patron. Doug has now passed away, but the fight for justice rages on.

This just campaign for the proper recognition of tens of thousands of servicemen who participated in atomic tests between 1952 and 1967, and the multitude of serious health conditions which followed due to radiation exposure.

Doug was instrumental in the call for a medal to recognise his comrades’ service. It was granted after, along with my parliamentary colleague Rebecca Long-Bailey, I took campaigners to meet then Prime Minister Boris Johnson. It was in that meeting that a firm commitment to the long overdue service decoration was agreed, and when the first evidence was laid out of potential illegality by people with power.

There and then Daily Mirror reporter Susie Boniface presented Boris with a 1958 memo between atomic scientists, discussing the “gross irregularity” in the blood tests of Group Captain Terry Gledhill. He was in charge of a squadron of sniffer planes which flew sampling missions through the mushroom clouds, and his family had been denied his medical records.

Susie alerted the Prime Minister to the fact this was a criminal offence. Moved and alarmed, he asked, “Where do you think they are?”.

It is striking how little many MPs, across the political spectrum, knew then and know now of what is amongst the greatest scandals in modern British history.

Perhaps understandably, the then Prime Minister wasn’t aware of the 600 toxic “safety” experiments at Maralinga in South Australia, where plutonium was dispersed across the Outback for a decade. It’s also not clear whether Ministers knew about HMS Diana, the ship ordered to sail through fallout, or Operation Buffalo, where men crawled on their elbows through the poisonous dust.

Terry Gledhill’s daughter won a Judge’s ruling that his medical records were being unlawfully withheld, and when the Ministry of Defence provided them, they contained evidence of continuing blood tests more than a decade after the bombs.

From one memo, the extraordinary feat of tracing back more than 30 separate orders for blood and urine testing of men from all three armed forces, plus Commonwealth troops, civilians, and indigenous people, was achieved. This weekend, through further investigation, unnecessary chest X-rays were added to the list of biological monitoring – inhaled radiation would show up as a scar on the lung.

We have established that the Atomic Weapons Establishment held more than 150 documents about blood tests, locked behind spurious claims of national security. Thanks to Rebecca Long-Bailey, in Parliament their declassification was secured.

Following a meeting with Rebecca and myself, then Minister Dr Andrew Murrison revealed more than 4,000 pages of blood tests, blood data, and discussion which were featured in a BBC documentary last November. It was clear that Andrew was as keen as us to publish what was previously unrevealed.

This evidence now forms the spine of a criminal complaint of misconduct in public office in regard to the classification of these medical records, and a civil suit predicted to cost £5bn.

All this is despite Sir Keir Starmer, when in Opposition, meeting these men to assure them that “the nation owes you a debt of honour”, and a Defence Secretary who, in Opposition, called for immediate compensation. Neither pledge has been met – so far.

In a meeting with current Veterans Minister Alistair Carns, Rebecca and I were told a review of the files is underway, but with no clarity about the budget, nor certainty about the deadline. FOIs and my written parliamentary questions about the content of the AWE files have received ambiguous answers or none at all.

What’s worse is the veterans are having to fund their legal fight alone, despite Labour’s earlier promises.

This is not a party political issue. I have worked in and out of government to earn justice and the truth for Douglas Hern, and the thousands like him and their descendants.

It is beyond me why a Prime Minister, threatened with criminal action and a £5bn bill, has refused requests to discuss the cheaper, quicker, and politically-viable alternative of a special tribunal to deliver the answers he once acknowledged that these men, who gave so much, for so many, are due.

Our campaigning efforts are driven by recognition that we owe so much to those who have gone before us and to those still living with the effects of what they witnessed. Britain’s nuclear test veterans deserve our gratitude for what they did then, and our dedication here and now.