Christmas Island Nuclear Testing: Compensation — House of Commons, 2019-05-21
Topic: Defense
Carol Frances Monaghan (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): William Caldwell was a 19-year-old merchant seaman when he was sent from Glasgow to Newcastle to join the crew of the Royal Fleet Auxiliary Wave Sovereign. He thought he would be refuelling warships for the Pakistani and Indian navies, and in August 1957 he boarded, carrying his worldly possessions in a hold-all. He knew nothing of the Indian ocean, and far less of Christmas Island. However, William was about to find himself at the epicentre of Britain’s nuclear testing programme Operation Grapple was four series of British tests of atomic and hydrogen bombs carried out in 1957 and 1958 at Malden Island and Kiritimati—Christmas Island—in the Pacific ocean as part of the British hydrogen bomb programme. Nine nuclear explosions took place, culminating in the United Kingdom becoming the third recognised possessor of thermonuclear weapons and the restoration of the special relationship with the United States, with the 1958 US-UK mutual defence agreement I first heard William’s story when his son Robert visited my office in Glasgow. He told us of his father’s memories of the Grapple Y test on 28 April 1958. William was down below when they were ordered on to deck. He hurried up wearing only sandals and shorts. The crew were told that they were going to witness something special that nobody else had seen and that it was important to cover their eyes with their hands until after the flash. At that point, the Wave Sovereign was about 12 miles from the detonation site. William vividly remembered being both astounded and horrified when he saw the bones of his hands lit up in utter clarity, as though he was looking at an X-ray William remembered the cloud. The crew remained on deck to watch with dark fascination as the cloud formed and remained suspended in the sky above them. A particularly upsetting thing for William’s son Robert is how much the vision of this cloud haunted his father. Having and raising a family provided William with a distraction, but as his children grew up and he got older, this memory began to trouble him greatly, and he had many nightmares about the cloud Those on board the Wave Sovereign were exposed to gamma and beta radiation from the initial blast and then nuclear fallout, which included alpha particles. Alpha particles are the most ionising, and therefore most dangerous, of nuclear radiations, but they cannot penetrate far and can easily be stopped by a single sheet of paper, or indeed protective clothing. However, if they are ingested in water, food or air, they can wreak havoc on the body’s DNA. After the cloud went up, a black rain fell, followed by dead fish floating to the surface of the water. The crew netted those fish and ate them, delighted by the convenience of their bounty and unaware of the risks But Britain was aware of the risks before the tests began. Historical documents released from state archives show that in 1951, William Penney, the chief scientist at Aldermaston, demanded insurance for scientific staff in case any developed radiogenic diseases. Admiral Arthur Torlesse said that he would only order his men into danger "in the knowledge that the Admiralty accept liability for those killed or injured on duty" On 20 May 1953, the Defence Research Policy Committee discussed how troops would be affected by the blasts. It said: "The Army must discover the detailed effects of various types of explosion on equipment, stores and men with and without various types of protection." In 1955, Prime Minister Anthony Eden was warned that if scientists were to build an H-bomb, it could damage troops’ DNA. A letter headed "10 Downing Street" and dated 14 November says: "The Prime Minister saw the report from Sir Harold Himsworth about the report of the Committee considering the genetic effects of Nuclear Radiation. His comment was: ‘A pity, but we cannot help it’." In a draft report ahead of Grapple Y, Air Commodore Denis Wilson, the senior medical officer on the taskforce, said that he expected servicemen to die. He wrote: "It is emphasised that in the event of the expected yield being obtained or increased there will almost certainly be in addition to considerable material damage, casualties to individuals, and this should be taken into consideration." William’s health problems began shortly after. Following an unrelated accident on board the Wave Sovereign, he was taken to a military hospital, and from there had to pay to be transported home on board an RAF bomber. After four years of stomach problems, in 1962 he underwent an operation to remove an ulcer, but it was discovered that his stomach was so badly damaged that half of it would have to be removed. Coincidently—or, indeed, not—another test veteran, Ken McGinley, who went on to establish the British Nuclear Test Veterans Association, required the same operation in 1962. This is a pattern we do see repeated In response to the health concerns of some nuclear test veterans in the 1980s, the Ministry of Defence commissioned three studies of mortality and cancer among nuclear test personnel. These were conducted by the independent National Radiological Protection Board. Three analyses were carried out. The latest report, published in 2003, concluded that overall levels of mortality and cancer incidence in nuclear test veterans have continued to be like those in a matched service control group and lower than in the general population These findings form the basis of the war pension scheme policy on nuclear test veteran claims. However, there are three glaring problems: this takes no account of non-cancerous health problems, and in fact William’s stomach problem was not considered under that scheme; it does not consider the health conditions of the offspring of test veterans; and it does not include RFA personnel who were present in a support capacity. Currently, there is no specific compensation fund for this group of veterans, whose numbers are dwindling.