Ministry of Defence staff conspired to hide Cold War radiation experiments on British troops.
A 2001 fax shows civil servants knew hundreds of soldiers, sailors and airmen had blood tests after being deliberately exposed to toxic fallout, but told press and public it wasn’t done.
It took another 20 years – in which thousands of nuclear veterans died – before the truth was uncovered. Now a Tory minister has been accused of misleading Parliament and pressure is on Keir Starmer and Rishi Sunak to back a fast-track public inquiry.
Manchester mayor Andy Burnham said: “The Mirror has got the MoD bang to rights: this is proof that it has been lying to our servicemen and to the country for decades.”
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Documents hidden for decades behind false claims of national security show the MoD knew hundreds of servicemen had blood tests while being deliberately exposed to fallout, with implications for their health and future compensation claims.
When rumours about the blood tests surfaced, officials wrote a “press brief” with “lines to take” which claimed “no blood tests were necessary”, and were of no scientific value.
It would be another two decades before anyone found out the truth: that thousands of blood tests were ordered, taken, and recorded, with results hidden from the ‘lab rats’ for decades. Veteran Terry Quinlan, 84, said: “The MoD has lied and lied and lied. It’s the only language they understand.”
To donate to the nuclear veterans’ legal crowdfunder, click HERE
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The tests that have been uncovered so far indicate servicemen were suffering lowered white blood cell counts and anemia, two possible signs of internal radiation damage which, if widespread, could lead to multi-million pound compensation payouts.
Former Army driver Terry was at Christmas Island in 1958 for a series of H-bombs, and spent a week in the infirmary having regular urine tests.
“After one of the bombs I began having nightmares and wetting the bed, so they took me in,” he said. “There were loads of other lads in there, with sickness and diarrhoea. They told us we all had tropical fever and it would all be over in a few days.”
Gut and bladder problems, as well as a high fever, can be another sign of radiation poisoning.
Decades later, during a triple heart bypass, Terry’s surgeon found a lump of shrapnel which had been lodged in his chest since the explosions. He told Terry that radiation from it could have caused his heart disease, as it is a known side-effect of radiotherapy.
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Terry, from Leybourne, Kent, was refused a war pension but finally won on appeal last year – 65 years after the injury. He asked for his medical records to fight the case, but while they confirmed his time in the island hospital the MoD says it cannot find the urine tests he had every day.
Finding radionuclides in urine can show what the body has ingested, and how much it is able to get rid of.
Mayor of Greater Manchester Andy Burnham said what happened to nuclear veterans was “the longest-standing scandal of them all”. He added: “These ‘lines to take’ could more accurately be described as ‘lies to take’. They were given to ministers and the media when the MoD was sat on a mountain of evidence to the contrary.”
He demanded Labour and Tories unite to expose the truth by backing the veterans’ call for a fast-track public inquiry as soon as the election is over. He said:“I ask all of the main parties to show people who served our country the respect they are owed by including a commitment in their manifestos to establish the tribunal in the first year of the new parliament.”
Mayor Andy Burnham tells Labour and Tories: “End this scandal”
The Post Office and infected blood scandals lifted the lid on Whitehall’s cover-up culture. These explosive documents take it to a new level. Finally, the Mirror has got the MoD bang to rights: this is proof that it has been lying to our servicemen and to the country for decades.
These ‘lines to take’ should be more accurately labelled ‘lies to take’. They were given to Ministers and the media when the MoD was sat on a mountain of evidence to the contrary. Crucial personal records which could have helped our ex-servicemen protect their health and that of their families were hidden from them. What a shameful way for the Government ministry responsible for helping our veterans to treat them.
Just as the infected blood inquiry exposed the Whitehall lie that “no one was knowingly given unsafe blood products”, so the Mirror has done exactly the same with the official claim that “no blood tests were necessary”. This is yet another criminal cover-up and the longest-standing of them all. We need an urgent cross-party agreement to expose it.
Time is not on the side of our nuclear test veterans. They are calling for a one-year, fast-track special tribunal to review official documentation and finally establish the truth. They deserve nothing less. I ask all of the main parties to show people who served our country overseas the respect they are owed by including a commitment in their manifestos to establish the tribunal in the first year of the new Parliament.
The revelations come after the MoD was forced to declassify 4,000 pages of documents about blood and urine testing which it had previously denied having.
Among them is a four-page fax sent from the MoD to the AWE in June 2001, showing officials discussed diagnostic tests on servicemen during the Cold War nuclear weapons trials.
Five days earlier, a radio programme in Australia had broadcast claims that veterans were denied blood checks, leading to accusations of negligence.
But in London, officials decided not to refute the claims. They exchanged papers showing hundreds of troops DID get blood tests, including fears about the “medico-legal risks” of future compensation claims.
Then they agreed “how to handle the suggestion that blood testing was denied” by saying: “Blood tests were considered, but it was clear at the time that there was no medical reason for them.”
It was a lie still being repeated to veterans’ families as recently as February last year. In fact, the files show repeated orders, and that scientists had found blood changes in exposed people when other forms of monitoring had failed.
The document added that “if pressed” about the fact some scientists had blood checked, press officers should say only a few RAF staff “who were regularly exposed” had the same.
The truth was that thousands, across all three services, were involved.
The file was locked from public view on the grounds it could harm national security, and a Freedom of Information request to see it was refused on the basis of expense. It was declassified only after the Mirror revealed its existence, and Parliamentary pressure was put on defence minister Andrew Murrison. He published them a day before the election was called, telling Parliament they do “not contain, and AWE does not hold, any medical records for any former service personnel”. He had previously told MPs there was only one individually-identifiable blood test in the files.
Yet our analysis found:
- Proof 1,000+ blood tests were taken
- Medical record forms which AWE denied holding
- At least 550 named servicemen were ordered to have ‘special medical examinations’, involving blood and urine tests, and chest x-rays
- More than 30 separate instructions for mass check-ups
- Top brass wanted troops to have blood tests because they knew they were at risk from fallout a long way from Ground Zero
Voice of the Mirror: This is the scandal to end all scandals
Hillsborough, Grenfell, Orgreave, infected blood, sub-postmasters… the list of scandals is a damning indictment of the British state.
What was done to nuclear veterans in the name of peace is the oldest, and worst, of the lot. If the central pillar of our government can lie and cover-up what everyone knows to be wrong, then it can infect every institution. And it has.
Our nation’s moral compass will only return to balance if the Nuked Blood Scandal can be repaired by politicians able to see what the Mirror has been shouting about for 40 years – the desperate need for justice for the Nuclear Test Veterans, for all our sakes.
Alan Owen, founder of campaign group LABRATS, said: “The minister said there were no medical records in here, yet there are. He said no-one was identifiable, but there’s hundreds of names. He has misled Parliament and the record must be corrected. The cover-up is there in black and white. I always knew this existed, I just never imagined we’d get it as a result of a minister not reading things properly.”
Lawyer Jason McCue, who is leading a fresh legal case against the MoD, said: “They can no longer pretend this didn’t happen. The last government failed to act when this scandal erupted, and now the veterans demand the next one make reparations while there is still time to deliver justice.”
The Mirror first revealed the Nuked Blood Scandal in November 2022, with a top secret memo about “gross irregularity” in the blood tests of Squadron Leader Terry Gledhill, who repeatedly flew through mushroom clouds in 1958 and died without answers about reasons for his lifetime of ill-health.
The memo was among 28,000 stored at the AWE on a secret database codenamed ‘Merlin’, built to hold information about nuclear test veterans’ legal claims, and locked from public view on the grounds of national security.
The files also show medical tests on indigenous people in Australia, blaming their alleged radiation injuries on venereal disease, even though any possible link between STDs and the symptoms reported had been discredited 20 years earlier.
Mr Owen, said: “These repeated instructions were sent to the commanding officers, medics, quartermasters, regimental sergeant majors, NCOs, of multiple ships, army units, and military establishments all over the world, wherever men were mustered for the bomb tests, for more than a decade. Any suggestion that hundreds of officers spontaneously decided to not follow orders is for the birds.”
The data dump includes copies of Army Form 21, a standard medical record used by the military, which is mentioned in orders to take the blood tests. There are pages of blood test results, with names and service numbers of personnel redacted or covered with paper before publication.
And there is overall analysis of how servicemen’s bodies dealt with radioactive dust they inhaled, in what appear to be human experiments. In 1952 men were ordered into Ground Zero wearing different combinations of protective clothing, some without respirators, and their urine examined for radionuclides.
Veterans who request their blood tests from the MoD and AWE are told they do not exist. Those who receive a copy of their medical records find months or years relating to their time at the tests are missing. In March a judge ruled the MoD was acting unlawfully in withholding the remainder of Sqn Ldr Gledhill’s medical records from his family.
Now veterans are crowdfunding a legal action to force disclosure of all the records that are missing, or reveal what happened to them. The MoD has refused to answer their questions or respond to the offer of an inquiry.
We asked the MoD and Mr Murrison to comment on the allegations of misleading Parliament, and the detail of our findings. The MoD said it could only reissue the minister’s statement, which said that the files do “not contain, and AWE does not hold, any medical records for any former service personnel”. Mr Murrison did not respond to our request.