May 2015 International Bulletin of Nuclear Veterans and Children Issue 37

fissionline fissionline

MOD LIED

IN COURT

Sensational Charge by Leading Lawyer Neil Sampson

‘I will testify

against them’

Will Give Evidence as Witness in Radiation Tribunal

PAGE 2 FISSIONLINE 37

LAWYER Neil Sampson has ac-cused the Ministry of Defence of telling lies in court over documents produced during the controversial Appeal Court hearing which sunk hopes of compensation for Britain’s nuclear veterans. Mr Sampson, a partner in prestig-ious London law firm Rosenblatts, says he will repeat the charge when he gives evidence before a judge at the special Ionising Radiation Ap-peal Tribunal due to sit later this year. “They will probably take me to the Tower for saying this, but the Min-istry of Defence lied through their teeth when they said they had pro-duced all the documents, when I know for a fact they didn’t” he said. The row centres on thousands of classified documents, many ‘Top Secret’, concerning the Christmas Island H-Bomb tests of 1957-58 which the MoD were ordered to produce for the Appeal Court hear-

ing in November 2010. The Appeal Court was comprised of Lady Justice Smith, Lord Justice Leveson and Sir Mark Waller,. Lady Justice Smith has presided over many controversial cases including that of Harold Shipman, while Sir Bernard Leveson famously was in charge of the phone hacking scan-dal. Sir Mark Waller is currently the Intelligence Services Commis-sioner. The formidable trio were convened to hear an appeal by the MoD to set aside Mr Justice Foskett’s High Court decision which paved the way for a multi-million pound compen-sation payout for the veterans. Court documents obtained by fis-sionline and published here for the first time, reveal how the MoD’s legal team told the court they had provided ’comprehensive’ disclo-sure of ALL documents relating to radiation monitoring. But barristers for the nuclear veter-

ans furiously denied this, leading to a tense stand-off as both legal teams ar-gued over who was right. At one point the veteran’s legal team shook their heads and gasped in disbelief at the insistence by the MoD that all the docu-ments relating to radiation exposure had been disclosed. Transcripts of the court proceedings reveal how the row developed after Lady Justice Smith asked for details of the amount of radiation exposure men had received after bomb tests. Michael Kent QC for the veterans, said this couldn’t be done for lack of informa-tion. But Charles Gibson QC for the MoD argued there had been full disclo-sure. As the row escalated, the judge intervened:- LADY JUSTICE SMITH: You see, you (Mr Kent) are going to be dependent on measurements that were taken by the MoD, you have not got any of those? MR KENT: We have some monitoring material, yes. Maybe we have all of them, I don’t know.

MOD ‘LIED THROUGH TEETH’

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LADY JUSTICE SMITH: I want to be absolutely clear. It is said that you have ALL the monitoring material. Do you accept that you have all the moni-toring material? Can you take instruc-tions about that because it really is quite important? MR GIBSON: Perhaps I better check that. Certainly my understanding was that we had given disclosure of all the readings. LADY JUSTICE SMITH: You see, Mr Kent has told us that it is impossible for the claimants to begin to assess their exposure until they have had much, much more disclosure of docu-ments and, on that basis, he submits that it is unfair for us even to think about the broad merits of the case be-cause they are not at the moment as-sessable. MR GIBSON: My Lady, the disclo-

sure exercise took two years and cost

well in excess of £1 million.

LADY JUSTICE SMITH: Was it lim-

ited to limitation issues?

MR GIBSON: No. It was a compre-

hensive disclosure exercise of the is-

sue pleaded in the master of particu-

lars claim. We have exhibited (in a)

witness statement the key words used

in the searches which were exposure,

dose, all the words you would expect

and a database was created over the

course of two years.

SIR MARK WALLER: There are so

much noddings and waggings of

head at the back, it seems possibly

one ought to write this down and let

somebody see it and then we will

know what the form is.

MR GIBSON: I am disappointed to

hear that because I have Katie Powell

with me, one of 15 barristers I per-

sonally ensured were on the task in

October, November and December

because I was so concerned to make

sure that we were able to say that we

had given comprehensive disclosure

of the documents raised by the issues

in the case…

LADY JUSTICE SMITH: Not lim-

ited to limitation.

MR GIBSON: Not limited. We had a

comprehensive disclosure exercise.

This last exchange, and the assertion

that disclosure of documents was

”comprehensive” and not limited to

issues concerning whether the veter-

ans’ claims were made in the legal

time limit (limitation) has now

been challenged by Mr

Sampson. He claims a court-

document in the form of a dis-

closure statement by Jeffrey

Mitchell CBE, Chief Claims Of-

ficer at the MoD, exposes the

lie.

The document dated July 1, 2008

states: “I Jeffrey Thomas Robert

Mitchell of the Ministry of De-

fence will say: I have responsi-

bility for the conduct of the

Atomic Veterans Litigation. I

make this statement to explain

the steps taken by the defendant

to comply with its disclosure

obligations, and specifically in

the context of the disclosure

relevant to the generic issue of

limitation.”

Mr Sampson said: “The lie is

there. The chief claims officer of

the MoD said disclosure was

specific to the generic issue of

limitation. Yet the MoD told the

Appeal Court they had disclosed

everything. They cannot both be

right.” (MORE NEXT TIME).

Left to right: Charles Gibson QC, Michael Kent QC, Lady Justice Smith, Sir Mark Waller, Lord Justice Leveson

PAGE 4 FISSIONLINE 37

FILM-MAKER CHARLES STEWART is

the first to admit that his painstak-

ingly made documentary ‘Nobody

Told Us Anything’ detailing the plight

of Britain’s nuclear veterans has not

set the cinema world alight. But he

has no regrets and here answers

some of the criticisms directed at him

since he produced the film.

‘THE FIRST thing I want to say is

that I was not ‘sponsored’ by the

British Nuclear Tests Veterans’ Asso-

ciation Charity when I set out to

make this film. In fact I started it

more than five years ago and have

spent just short of £10,000 of my

own money on making it. It is true

the BNTVA Charity gave me £1,000

to get the film shown in the cine-

mas. This was money needed to do

a movie dub because cinemas

wanted it in surround sound. And

they wanted a brighter dub,

brighter for the purposes of TV.

The Charity donated the money,

because I said I wasn’t prepared to

pay for it. I told them I had found a

sponsor for it but they insisted on

paying for it. So the charity put

£1,000 in. But it is my film entirely.

The film has got nothing to do with

the BNTVA. Although a lot of the

people interviewed are members of

the BNTVA, some are very hostile

to the organisation. Very hostile.

Some of those interviewed would not

have a good word said about the

BNTVA. I wanted very much to inter-

view Ken McGinley who started the

whole thing off back in 1983. At first

he agreed to be interviewed but at the

last minute pulled out. I don’t know

why. But I very much wanted to inter-

view him even though I knew the peo-

ple at the BNTVA would be very hos-

tile to my filming him. I know about

all the troubles with the nuclear veter-

ans. I interviewed about 60 people for

the film over an extended period of

time. They were all veterans or wid-

ows and descendents of veterans and

there were lots, tens of people, who

were very much against the BNTVA.

NOBODY’S WATCHING IT Film maker Charles Stewart hits back at critics who accuse him of ‘airbrushing from history the early achievements of the nuclear veterans.: “BNTVA Charity

paid me £1,000 to help get film screened. But this was my film and I am responsible for it. I sweated blood and spent £10,000 of my own money making it.

NOBODY’S WATCHING IT PAGE 5 FISSIONLINE 37

But I chose to ignore that issue alto-

gether. I said if I reported that the vet-

erans were battling each other, all it

would do was detract from the film. So

I ignored it. This is my

film; it is what I

wanted to say. And

nobody has an input

into the film except for

me. I have spent a bit

under £10,000 of my

own money making

the film, and I don’t

expect to see any back.

I have sweated blood

over this, and I am not

100 per cent happy

with it. The problem

is it is very hard to

find an audience for people who know

nothing about it. So there are only

small audiences in the cinemas. The

distributors are charging for people to

see it, but I haven’t seen one penny

from this film. Nobody pays me any-

thing. I gave them the film for free, but

I was shocked when they told me the

number of cinemas. Just 12; I expected

more than that. And I don’t expect to

recover any money for making the film

either. The distributors can’t be mak-

ing a lot of money out of this. They’re

getting what there is off the cinema

tickets, but its not a lot. The Box Office

is divided between the cinema and the

distributor. The distributor divides

his take with the producers which is

me. And this producer is getting

nothing. I just wanted it to be an

opportunity for witnesses to have

their say. And widows of witnesses.

This is why I very much wanted to

interview Ken McGinley who was

there at the beginning. It’s true I

haven’t mentioned the veterans in

Australia, NZ or Fiji. I have stuck

to what I call the British veterans.

There had to be limitations because

I didn’t have any help. If I had had

help I would have gone over to New

Zealand, Christmas Island and Aus-

tralia. It would be lovely to go over,

but … I couldn’t afford it.

The film is divided into sections

with men talking about what hap-

pened, getting to the island etc and

not knowing why they were sent

there. The second part is people get-

ting ill And then we went on to the

children and their problems. And I

intend to move on to doing some

filming of the descendents. I am not

finished with it yet. I have met some

of the children and I believe this is a

story that has to be told. We can’t let

it die. I’m still not sure exactly what

scenes are hitting people, and what

aren’t. In one scene two letters are

read by the daughter of one veteran

and it is very good. It has tremendous

emotional impact. I have been to

every Q&A session after the films.

Most of the audiences are shocked by

what they are seeing. It’s worth talk-

ing to them, but I use all my own

money to travel to these venues. I

can’t afford hotels so my wife and I

have to travel there and back in a day.

I don’t know how it will work out, but

I plan to do something entirely differ-

ent for the descendents. A TV com-

pany could never fund this. Unfortu-

nately the media are not interested

because its about old people. Modern

media doesn’t like old people. They

realise the difficult issue is finding an

audience for this film. But the veter-

ans have got a story and their story is

irrefutable because they witnessed a

remarkable historical event.

Film maker Charles Stewart hits back at critics who accuse him of ‘airbrushing from history the early achievements of the nuclear veterans.: “BNTVA Charity

paid me £1,000 to help get film screened. But this was my film and I am responsible for it. I sweated blood and spent £10,000 of my own money making it.

Ken McGinley with renowned physicist Rosalie Bertell in Hiroshima

PAGE 6 FISSIONLINE 37

THE NEW minister for Britain’s nuclear veterans is a fireworks magnate who walked out on his four-month-old daughter. Milton Keynes MP Mark Lancaster re-placed Thatcher groupie Anna Soubry who was promoted to Minister for small businesses in David Cameron’s election reshuf-fle. Mr Lancaster 45, a major in the Territorial Army was made a whip by Mr Cameron last Septem-ber. Before becoming an MP at the 2005 election, Mr Lancaster served as an officer in the Queen’s Ghurkha Engineers, based in Hong Kong, and was a director of his family’s company, Kimbolton Fireworks, which is named after their home village in Cambridge-shire. He is known affectionately

as the ‘Rocket Man’ among col-leagues because his family firm has been responsible for several spectacular firework displays in London and Edinburgh to mark New Year celebrations. He continues to serve as a major in the Territorial Army and spent the 2006 summer recess on active service alongside British troops in Afghanistan. Mr Lancaster courted controversy a couple of years ago when he walked out on his wife and their four-month-old daughter. He is now seeing mother-of-two and Gosport MP Caroline Dinenage daughter of TV presenter Fred Dinenage, famous for the chil-dren’s programme How. They were first seen together when she took him as her guest to a black

tie dinner. She has also been pro-moted to Cameron’s new cabinet. When asked whether he was in a relationship with Miss Dinenage, he said: ‘Absolutely.’ Mr Lancaster is the latest in a long line of veterans’ ministers tasked with the thorny problem of trying to sort out claims from nu-clear veterans and others. He is thought to be more sympathetic toward the nuke vets than his predecessor Anna Soubry who famously demolished veteran’s champion John Baron’s case for a £25million payment to the nuke vets in a parliamentary debate last year. Lancaster is expected to have an easier ride after the veter-ans were effectively ‘neautralised’ in George Osborn’s budget last month.

ROCKET MAN

PAGE 7 FISSIONLINE 37

THE SLIGHT, mousey figure

ghosted virtually unnoticed into a

parliamentary debating chamber

as then veteran’s minister Anna

Soubry squared up to back-

bencher MP John Baron.

This was a rare public appearance

by Dr Anne Braidwood CBE, the

Ministry of Defence’s chief medi-

cal adviser whose ‘non-expert’

status was exposed by fissionline

last year.

We told how Dr Braidwood under

oath at the Stubbs Ionising Radia-

tion Appeal Tribunal admitted

that she was not an expert in ra-

diation-linked illnesses, even

though she had ruled on thou-

sands of pension applications

from sick veterans.

She was ridiculed for famously

expressing the belief that radia-

tion could be ‘good for you’ and

that she was ‘bathed in radiation’

as she spoke.

The public exposure by fissionline

of her inept performance is be-

lieved to have assisted in getting

the Stubbs tribunal decision to

deny pensions to veterans, over-

turned.

She has not turned up in a public

forum since, but one of our sharp-

eyed readers spotted her on TV

footage of a parliamentary debate

between Soubry and Baron last

November. Mr Baron was there to

plead the case for a £25million ‘ex

-gratia’ payment to Britain’s nu-

clear veterans in a bid to settle

claims from thousands of nuclear

veterans who believed their ill-

nesses were caused by radiation.

His arguments were, however,

demolished by the flinty-hearted

Soubry who pointed out that as

the BNTVA Charity no longer

held the government liable for

injuries to nuclear veterans, there

was no need to award them any-

thing. It was the moment Baron,

and the BNTVA executive real-

ized their risible policy of trying to

schmooze the MoD and MPs had

totally failed. Desperate attempts

to salvage something from the

debacle by appealing directly to

the PM resulted in only a derisory

public “thanks” to nuclear veter-

ans for their service.

Who’s the ghostly figure in the cor-

ner ? It’s Dr Anne Braidwood come

back to haunt Britain’s nuclear vets

PAGE 8 FISSIONLINE 37

‘It was October, 1957. Two frigates, HMNZS Rotoiti and HMNZS Pu-kaki, were despatched to Christmas Island which is north of the equator in the Pacific Ocean. Both ships had commissions to complete in the Pacific Islands on the way. Rotoiti went to Rarotonga to deliver depth charges to blow a gap in the coral reef. This was to allow ships to access calmer waters and enable the transportation of “Raro” or-ange juice, an important ex-port for the island-ers. When we unloaded the depth charges, there was no wharf so the islanders would paddle out, load up their canoes with depth charges (two on a big canoe, one on a small) and row like hell to the shore. The charges were later exploded by navy engineers. When we sailed from Rarotonga, we were finally told we were to witness a nuclear bomb test. We had to hand in all our cameras

and all outward mail was to be cen-sored, this was a “top secret” mission! When we arrived at Christmas Island,

the sky was full of planes, Canberra Bombers and even a Valiant and a Vulcan who greeted us as we sailed in. We went ashore to the naval canteen on the island at a place curiously called “London Town,” and sat in the sand in the radioactive remnants of previous tests. We were told that our task was to monitor weather patterns around Christmas Island so we released hydro-

gen balloons for several days and tracked where they went. This was to determine where the nuclear cloud would disperse,

hopefully avoiding inhabited local islands. On the day of the explosion, we were assembled on the starboard s i d e f a c i n g “ground zero” at a distance of less than 20 nautical miles with our backs turned away and our hands covering our eyes. We could hear the pilot of the Valiant aircraft as he re-layed the stages of the bomb drop. He called “Five minutes to bomb drop” then we hea rd “Bomb gone” followed by

the countdown to the explosion. It was a sound like nothing else, deafeningly, men-acingly loud. Then there was a safety countdown which continued for some time and we were finally allowed to turn and look at the cloud. When I first looked it was a bright yellow streak in the sky with red in the centre which was then sur-rounded by black and grey and started to move up into the sky in a great column finally exploding into a giant mushroom.

Neil Balloch is one of about 60 New Zealanders still living who witnessed British nuclear bomb tests

at Christmas Island in the Pacific in 1957-58. Many of the 500-plus veterans who took part have died

of cancers. He himself suffered cancer, and his children and grandchildren have suffered various

illnesses and birth defects. He told his local newspaper The Nelson Weekly: “We had no idea of the

side effects of radiation when the bomb went off. All we had was a sense of wonder” This is his story.

Nuclear Veteran Neil Balloch with picture of H-Bomb —- and as a fresh-faced young rating

By Neil Balloch

PAGE 9 FISSIONLINE 37

It was HUGE, a great roiling, swell-ing mass of red, yellow, black and grey, it filled the sky and everything turned red. The cloud remained dominating the sky for most of the next day. You see bombs on TV and in movies but that does not compare with actually being there. Remember, this was a nuclear bomb, many times bigger than the atomic bombs that destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Not a sight I would ever want to see again. Planes were sent up to fly through the cloud to sample the radia-tion and some of our ship's company were ordered to wash the radiation off the ship. Unfortunately the sprinklers didn't work so we returned to the can-teen ashore and sat in the sand again drinking beer. We then stayed moored at Christmas Island for sev-eral days underneath the dispersing radiation, swimming in the sea and eating the flying fish that came aboard. This was, of course, not the only bomb test witnessed by our naval men. The Rotoiti attended four and the Pukaki nine, some sailors actually

were present at them all. I count myself lucky that I went to only one. It is certainly known now, and quite probably was then, that the effect of exposure to radiation is to inflict major damage on the chromosomes which then passes deformities on down the generations for the foresee-able future. My own grandson was born with a severe case of cleft-pallet. “He had no mouth. From the bottom of his nose to his chin was a hole. It took 14 surgeries to fix him. Looking back I feel sick about what we witnessed. It all makes me very angry. We were guinea pigs. After the bomb they said radiation had been detected on our ship and we were told to turn on the sprinklers and hose the ship down. But the sprinklers didn’t work because they had been rushed in and they didn’t really have fresh water to use them, all the fresh water was used to power the ship because it was a steam en-gine. We were there at the whim of the military hierarchy in England to determine exactly what the results of

exposure to radiation would be and how long it would take. Not, I feel, a suitable use for our coun-try's servicemen!” *The New Zealand government has never officially recognised that the veterans involved in the Christmas Island tests were ex-posed to radiation, nor offered any compensation. Last year members of the NZNTVA met with then-veterans affairs minister Michael Woodhouse, with two items on the agenda: To get the govern-ment to officially recognise that veterans were irradiated, and for the government to make a public statement to that effect. And for the off-spring of veterans to be researched to establish if they are suffering genetic damage as a consequence of their father or grandfather’s exposure to radia-tion. Both requests have been declined.

Additional reporting: Andrew Board Nelson Weekly

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Email: fissionline@gmail.com

Neil Sampson, justice is finally catching up with the MoD. * Still no sign of an explanation for the £6,000 ‘black hole’ in the ac-counts of the BNTVA Charity. That’s the amount of money trus-tees spent on B&Bs and travel for just one year, apart from many more thousands blown on ‘gala dinners’ and other lavish get-togethers. This discredited organi-sation has spent more than £150,000 in its five-year history, with not a single veteran getting any discernable benefit. Appar-ently the charity doesn’t think it is necessary to explain to members how it spends their money. As we have reported, Christmas Island veteran Peter Waltham has been striving to get some answers, with-out success. When he asked the Trustees again quite recently he was once again rebuffed and told to ‘grow up.’ Peter tells me: “I

Once again the lies, obfuscation and dishonesty at the heart of the Ministry of Defence has been ex-posed. The claims by solicitor Neil Sampson that the MoD lied in court about disclosure of docu-ments crucial to the nuclear vet-eran’s cause is the latest in a long line of cover-ups. So far the MoD have been caught out lying about rainfall following H-bomb tests on Christmas Island, wind speeds and direction after the blasts and the existence of highly-radioactive ‘hotspots’ on the island. Now they have been shown to be at the very least ‘economical with the truth’ over disclosure of crucial docu-ments concerning radioactive monitoring carried out by the mili-tary at the time. As the evidence mounts, the MoD is desperately fighting a rearguard action to keep a lid on the dirty secrets of the past. But thanks to a determined band of nuclear veterans, sup-ported by a crack legal team led by

don’t know why they won’t tell me. But it certainly seems to get them rattled.” Something else that’s rattling is the BNTVA’s charity collecting tins as they desperately search for funds for their dwindling cof-fers. They have taken to accept-ing anyone willing to pay £20 to join and are even urging mem-bers to ‘bring along a friend.’ Meanwhile they have increased the number of their trustees to 13. Trustees are all allowed to claim expenses for their impor-tant meetings, including travel and hotel bills. Which means the cost of putting this lot up at the hotel in Bournemouth for their latest AGM will be at least £2,600. Throw in the cost of travel, the ‘gala ball’ as well as conference rooms and the total cost could be nudging £4,000. For that they’ll need an extra 200 members to pay their subs. Any offers?

LIES AT THE HEART OF MOD

Ken McGinley Roy Sefton QSM Archie Ross Derek Chappell Barbara Penney Dr Ian Gibson

FISSIONLINE DIRECTORS