'I saw a crimson cloud rushing towards us'
From 1952 to 1963, Britain tested the efficacy of its nuclear bombs in Australia – Corporal John Folkes was sent into the blast…
Courtesy of John Folkes
- Michael Hodges
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There is a framed photograph of a nuclear explosion on the wall of John Folkes’s dining room in Margate, Kent. Look a little closer and you’ll notice a black dot against the sky (circled, right): a small object dwarfed by the towering mushroom cloud. “That’s our plane,” Folkes tells me. “Heading for the explosion.” The picture was taken in 1956 by a press photographer at Maralinga air base in South Australia, there to observe a series of detonations as Britain raced to develop its own hydrogen bomb.
John Folkes after arriving at RAF Weston Zoyland aged 19. Courtesy of John Folkes
Determined to rank with the USA and USSR as a nuclear power, Ministry of Defence planners wanted to know how much radiation would be released by each British bomb. Would RAF planes still be able to take off after an explosion? Would military personnel suffer sickness that would stop them fighting? One way to find out was to put men at the testing sites in Australia and the Pacific and record their health before and after the fallout, to which end blood tests were taken. In effect, the men were guinea pigs.
Corporal Folkes was one of about 40,000 British servicemen who took part in nuclear warfare tests from 1952 to 1963 – many deliberately or carelessly exposed to radiation. As revealed in the BBC2 documentary Britain’s Nuclear Bomb Scandal: Our Story, Prime Minster Anthony Eden was told that this would potentially be so dangerous it would harm the DNA of the men involved. “A pity,” Eden was reported as saying. “But we cannot help it.”
From the very beginning of the testing campaign, the state knew it was exposing the men to dangerous levels of radiation, yet apparently failed to protect them. If true, it’s a scandal on a par with the Post Office Horizon wrongdoing, Hillsborough, the infected blood scandal and Grenfell – more so, says campaigning Mirror journalist Susie Boniface, who appears in the programme: “This is the longest-running scandal in British history... there’s nothing worse. The British state has gaslighted these men.”
Britain's Nuclear Testing Veteran John Folkes. BBC
Folkes was only 20 when he climbed into the RAF Canberra jet bomber in the photograph and joined the “cloud-chasers”, as the pilots called themselves. Seated just below the pilot, his job was to flick the switch that would operate the plane’s radioactivity sampling equipment as it flew into the column of smoke and sand sucked up from the desert floor.
“We were suddenly hit by the blast,” Folkes, now 88, recalls. “I looked down and saw a crimson cloud come rushing up towards us. A pulse of electromagnetic radiation sent the instruments haywire and then a shockwave flipped the plane over. I was hanging upside down by the straps. Fortunately, the blast forced the plane away. It was like the hand of God coming down and saying, ‘No, you’re going to live.’”
When the aircraft landed, he discovered that its identification markings had been burnt off the fuselage. His hands were shaking. They are shaking now, as we talk. “My injuries are on the inside,” says Folkes, who went on to serve with the RAF for 30 years and has been told he has PTSD. Hundreds of other servicemen have developed cancers following their exposure to radiation. One veteran in the film has had 93 tumours taken from his skin; another suffers from multiple lymphoma lumps.
This dwindling band of survivors call themselves the Lab Rats, an ironic reference to their belief that they were experimented on. Equally scant attention was given to the safety and health of the Indigenous inhabitants of Maralinga (pictured top right, with RAF aircrew), who also suffered grievously. The land they had lived on for thousands of years was heavily contaminated.
Folkes also had to measure the radiation around the bomb crater and recalls walking on heat-fused sand. “The ground had a veneer like bottle-green glass, which broke under our feet. There was a blue haze above the crater. We knew about radiation, and we were fearful.”
It wasn’t just the servicemen themselves who were affected. Many of their wives and partners suffered stillbirths or miscarriages, and scores of babies died in the first months of their lives. The graveyard at the Maralinga base has rows of infants’ headstones. Other children were born with unusual or rare disabilities.
Steve Purse’s father, David, was a Flight Lieutenant in the RAF and took part in the tests at Maralinga in 1963. There was no protective equipment, says Purse. “Dad said that the sand was blowing off the contaminated area on to your bed, your clothes, your food – all covered in this fine layer of radioactive sand.”
Ten years later, Purse, who uses an electric wheelchair, was born in north Wales with a rare form of dwarfism. “There was a definite problem visible from the outset,” he says. “I was taken off my mum for days. My dad told mum, ‘Stephen is disabled, and it’s all my fault, because I served in Australia’. That was the last thing he said on the subject for decades. There was no one he could go to, no support. Basically, it was just, ‘Deal with it on your own.’”
The British state has gaslighted these men
Decades later, Purse himself had a son. “When he was born, everything was fine. Then when his teeth started to come through, they had white patches on them, which got worse and worse. They would go yellow, then crumble.” Purse doesn’t know if his son, now three, will have further health problems; more might be known if Purse had access to his father’s medical records. “I’ve got this pretty much lifelong worry about what’s going to happen to my son, which is why I’m campaigning to have the medical records released.”
In Folkes’s case, this means his blood tests from the 1950s and the Geiger counter test given to aircrew. With the help of Boniface, Folkes pressed officialdom for months. “Eventually I was delivered my 30 years of RAF service medical records. The records from the day I left the UK in early 1956 until the following year were missing. They still are. Despite many attempts to get those, there was a negative response every time. So, I still don’t know. I can’t recall anybody that’s got them.”
Purse believes that keeping these records hidden is immoral. “Are they thinking that in ten years’ time, this won’t be a problem because all the veterans will have gone? That’s not the case. This will only grow, because the genetic damage will be in our bloodline for the next 500 years.” Veterans’ support group Labrats claims there are 200,000 living descendants of men involved.
Both men hope the documentary will have as galvanising an effect on their campaign as the ITV drama Mr Bates vs the Post Office did on the Horizon scandal. They would like recognition and compensation but, most urgently, access to their medical records. A new statement from the MoD claims, “No information is withheld from veterans.” It adds, “This Government is looking hard at the issue – including the question of records – and will continue to engage with the individuals and families affected.”
There is little faith left. “A number of people have suggested that their medical records are flagged,” Purse says. “They certainly keep an eye on cancer rates among veterans. So, somebody is being paid in the MoD to look at cancer records, even up to today.” Folkes shares a similar unease. “I think people keep tabs in case I’m some sort of threat. It couldn’t be further from the truth. All I really want is justice.”
The aftermath
1963—67
The UK winds down testing at Maralinga and withdraws personnel. Two UK clean-ups (“Hercules” in 1964 and “Brumby” in 1967) are only partially effective in neutralising radioactivity.
December 1967
The Australian government is assured by the UK that the clean-up is complete, reclaims the site and releases Britain from any future liability.
1984—85
A Royal Commission criticises British and Australian governments of the 1950s and 60s for human and environmental negligence and condemns their disregard for Indigenous communities in South Australia. The UK is also criticised for the poor quality of the clean-up at Maralinga.
December 1993
UK makes a £20 million ex gratia contribution towards the Australian government’s deep-clean at Maralinga, costing a projected $101 million (AUD).
March 2012
The UK Supreme Court narrowly rules against 1,000 British test veterans seeking compensation, maintaining it was impossible to prove a direct causal link between participation in the testing programme and later serious illnesses.
November 2022
The UK government agrees to issue a medal to those involved in the testing.
September 2023
British nuclear test veterans demand the UK government releases withheld health records concerning their service and call for a “special tribunal” to evaluate compensation claims.
August 2024
Campaigners call on Keir Starmer to formally acknowledge the testing scandal and speed up compensation.
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Timeline by Professor Kevin Ruane, author of Churchill and the Bomb (Bloomsbury, 2016).
Authors
Michael Hodges
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