fissionline

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CONTENTS 4 Nuke Vets deserve better 6 MoD Bigwig comes clean 8 Tea For Two! 9 I’m Afraid it Won’t Wash 10 Roy, you should not be alive 20 Me and My Dad 22 Goodbye Old Friend 24 Your Letters 26 The Big Interview 35 Test Ban Treaty Shock

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The story behind this is in 2015 Chan- those in power. cellor George Osborne announced that Britain’s nuclear veterans were to benefit from the millions of pounds in fines imposed upon the big banks. The British Nuclear Tests Veterans’ Association Charity initially received £1million, the bulk of which was for research. Ken McGinley Derek Chappell Barbara Penney Dr Ian Gibson Albert Isaksen Later a further £5million was awarded to the Nuclear veterans, but by some sleight of hand the BNTVA charity had morphed into something called the Nuclear Community Charity Fund (NCCF). After paying for the research, some limited handouts to diverse members of the ‘nuclear community’, and nearly £400,000 to the management company responsible for overseeing the expenditure, £4million was locked away in a 15-yr investment account run by Americanbased financial giant BlackRock. It seems the only people who haven’t benefited from all this money are the nuclear veterans themselves. This is plainly wrong and goes against all natural justice. The reconstituted British Nuclear Tests Veterans’ Association should start an immediate campaign to seize back control of the money that is rightfully theirs. Britain’s nuclear veterans should decide what to do with the money awarded to them. A GIVE IT BACK! Campaign would appeal to the great British public whose sense of fair play and justice would ensure maximum embarrassment to 3

Robert Wells

Gerry Rice

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Whether it was his sniffy colleagues from other universities involved in the project who enforced the ban, or the NCCF and the thuggish company managing the project, doesn’t really matter. The upshot is Prof Dubrova is no longer talking to us which means we won’t be able to tell our readers what is really going on with this vital study. Instead we have to rely on a spokesman for Brunel University with the title of ‘Head of Media Services’ for any news. When we asked this lofty personage for an update on the study, what we got was a link to the university's website . Contrast this with the close relationship the New Zealand Massey University enjoyed with the veterans when it carried out a similar study. Instead of shutting the door on the veterans Prof Al Rowland, the man in charge of the research, approached the chairman of the veteran’s association, Roy Sefton, and took him to the heart of the project.

PROFESSOR Yuri Dubrova Head of Genetics at Leicester University is a rarity in this age of lies and deceit: he’s an honest man. He told fissionline the honest truth when he said in an interview that nuclear veterans were reluctant to give blood for DNA tests as part of the £2million study to find out if their genes were damaged. He said the whole project was being held up because the men, quite naturally, were worried about the impact the results might have on their whole family. It’s hardly a controversial opinion. But what happened? Prof Dubrova so enraged the people behind the study that they banned him from talking to this newspaper. 4

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When important decisions were being made Roy Sefton was sitting alongside the decision-makers with helpful suggestions and advice on publicity and other matters. This helped to forge a bond of trust between the veterans and the scientists which exists to this day. Is it beyond the wit of Brunel University to do the same? The British Nuclear Tests Veterans’ Association should be brought into the process forthwith; after all the money was awarded to that association, not the unelected hybrid NCCF which is currently holding the purse strings. When in 2015 Chancellor George Osborne announced that Britain’s nuclear veterans were to benefit from the millions of pounds in fines imposed upon the big banks, the British Nuclear Tests Veterans’ Association Charity initially received £1million, the bulk of which was for research. Later a further £5million was awarded, but by some sleight of hand the BNTVA charity had morphed into something called the Nuclear Community Charity Fund (NCCF). After paying for the research, some limited handouts to diverse members of the ‘nuclear community’, and nearly £400,000 to the management company responsible for overseeing the expenditure, £4million was locked away in a 15-yr investment account run by American-based financial gi-

ant BlackRock. The plan is to just use the interest on the account for items of benefit to the ’nuclear community.’ It seems the only people who don’t benefit from all this money are the very people George Osborne stipulated in his budget speech: the nuclear veterans themselves. This is plainly wrong and goes against all natural justice. The reconstituted British Nuclear Tests Veterans’ Association should be at the heart of the decision-making process that allocates the funds. Most nuclear veterans, the men who were actually at the bomb tests, are now in their 80s. They really don’t have the time to wait 15 years before the BlackRock investment matures. There should be an immediate move to seize back control of the money that is rightfully theirs. Only Britain’s nuclear veterans should decide what to do with the money awarded to them, not some organisation cobbled together by the Ministry of Defence and its apparatchiks. A GIVE IT BACK! Campaign organised by the BNTVA would strike an immediate chord with the great British public whose sense of fair play and justice would be rightly outraged. The BNTVA should use every resource at its disposal to ensure maximum exposure and embarrassment to those who have contrived to snatch what is rightly theirs. 5

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Melloney Poole , the MoD official in charge of the £6million grant to nuclear veterans replies to conflict of interest concerns over the near £400,000 paid to a company run by an ex-chairman of the BNTVA. Mrs Poole originally stated on record the company would only receive £34,000.

BH Associates provide all staffing and administration for the NCCF, in the delivery of their grant funded project. On other projects that we fund, staff may be employed directly by the charities that we support. We acknowledge that there will be delivery costs associated with carrying out activities. Trustee Boards can decide in line with their governing documents whether or not they would prefer to employ staff or engage outside consultants to deliver works. Typically, we generally see organisations that have expanded their funding move away from using consultants and contracted management solutions to develop staffing structures to deliver their work. There

can, however be valid reasons why an organisation may prefer to use a different approach, particularly where they have not previously hired staff. We would consider this to be a matter for individual trustee boards but would expect value for money to be a consideration. Two grant awards were made to support the Nuclear Test Veteran Community: The first grant of £999,970 was awarded in April 2016. A second grant of £4,999,229 was awarded in April 2017. We discussed in fissionline the first grant in April 2016. Within the first grant, £34,000 had been budgeted by the BNTVA for expenditure on BH Associates as a Delivery Partner. 6

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This was for: Conducting day to day operational management of the Portfolio activities; Managing Project Organisations; Collation of financial activity across the Portfolio; Provision of monthly progress reports on achievement and financial milestones to the NCCF & BNTVA; Assisting with corrective intervention. This is the ÂŁ34,000 that I referred to in our discussion. The second grant was awarded in April 2017, but the programme opened for applications in 2016. We required Expressions of Interest to be submitted by 1st July 2016. From these applications, a number were invited to complete a stage two (full) application form. This stage two form needed to be submitted by 7 December 2016. Within the period that you are interested in therefore, applicants would have been working on their Expressions of Interest, and full application forms. BNTVA made the choice to continue to use BH Associates to manage the grant activities rather than employ staff directly. The programme of activities supported through our grant is complex, and involves: managing research projects being delivered by

universities; the delivery of a grants programme that identifies the mobility needs of vulnerable nuclear veterans and makes appropriate small grants to support their needs; and delivering memorial and communication projects. We would expect there to be a cost with the delivery of this. In the application form for all AVF grants, we asked organisations to tell us how much funding is going directly on the project, and how much in management costs. BNTVA in their second bid asked for ÂŁ390,783 in management costs. Management costs of 8% on a grant of this nature are not unreasonable; given the complexity. All projects funded through the Aged Veteran Fund budgeted for management costs as part of their overall spend. Most would have spent these costs on employing staff. We looked at the management costs of the portfolio as a whole. Decisions as to how to spend the management costs that they were awarded are the responsibility of the Trustees of the grantholder. *The full interview with Mrs Poole and fissionline recorded in April 2016 can be read on pgs 26-34 7

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Dear Jeff, I am looking forward to it and have booked somewhere very close. Can I meet you at the entrance to VSC at 11.45? All best wishes Melloney In a statement Mrs Poole said:“I am happy to confirm that I met with Jeff Liddiatt at the Victory Services Club. This location was proposed by Mr Liddiatt as being an accessible location. Room availability at the MOD in Whitehall can be limited, and I was minded when arranging the meeting of the accessibility needs of attendees, particularly the difficulties of travelling across London. The meeting was duly recorded on our visits register; and I paid for my own meal.

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Ministry of Defence official in charge of doling out millions to servicemen’s charities enjoyed a cosy lunch with the chairman of one of its major beneficiaries. Mellone Poole, head of the MoD’s Aged Veterans’ Fund met for lunch with the chairman of the British Nuclear Tests’ Veterans Association Jeff Liddiatt. The meeting took place at the Victory Services Club in Central London on Tuesday July 12, 2016 An e-mail from Mr Liddiatt,79, dated July 07, 2016 arranging the meeting ended: Looking forward to hearing from you. Best as ever, Jeff Replying on an “MoD Blackberry device”, Mrs Poole gushed:8

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grateful to Melloney Poole for taking the time to justify the enormous fees paid to a commercial company called BH Associates, which is run by two former Trustees of the BNTVA Charity. (see pg 6). But I’m afraid it won’t wash. I’ve read the transcript of fissionline editor Alan Rimmer’s interview with Melloney Poole. In it Melloney is at pains to assure Mr Rimmer of the “very, very, very” low costs of hiring BH Associates. She insisted that the company was only getting £34,000 spread over three years “that’s just £10,000 a year. Which is very good value for money,” to use her own words. It is disingenuous of Melloney to now insist that that was just for the first

tranche of cash. At no time did she mention the second and much greater sum of money awarded to the nuclear veterans. And it’s clear why she was so coy. By her own admission, BH Associates slapped in a bill for £390,000 which she now insists was “not unreasonable.” That’s doesn’t sit well with her earlier insistence that BH Associates were working on the cheap and therefore ‘good value for money.’ I think you are trying to pull the wool over our eyes, Melloney. The £6million cash from Libor fines was supposed to go to the BNTVA. Why was it diverted to a brand new organisation called the NCCF? There is a bad smell around this is, Melloney. It’s time to really come clean. 9

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LIKE startled faces staring out of the mists of time these haunting images illustrate the damning legacy of nuclear weapons testing of the 1950s. The terrible damage caused to the genes of an ex-serviceman who witnessed five H-bomb explosions at Christmas Island is clear for all to see. When a top scientist saw them he felt compelled to personally warn the man, Roy Sefton, a sailor on one of two Royal New Zealand Navy ships, involved in Operation Grapple. The scientist was Professor Al Rowland of Massey University and he bluntly told him: “Roy, you shouldn’t be alive.” The dramatic confrontation took place just before Rowland published his sensational report which concluded that DNA damage in 50 New Zealand veterans was caused by fallout. Follow-up studies by two universities are now under way to see if British nuclear servicemen 11 suffered the same fate. Here, Roy Sefton tells for the first time his amazing story.

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THAT’s me, a young guy barely 16, sitting among several other guys on the deck waiting for the bomb to go off. I never thought much of it at the time. Today I would be regarded as a child, but In the navy you were just somebody who if the worst came to the worst you were part of the fighting machine and you went down with the ship with the rest of them. That block of eight sailors sitting down with me in the middle were the younger members of the crew, boy sailors. That particular position was where you went when you were called to blast stations for each detonation. Only a small number of crew were excluded, a couple in the engine room and the officers on the bridge‌just a skeleton crew; everybody else had to be on deck to witness this damn thing and soon after this picture the first bomb went off. We were looking down at our feet. There was no conversation; you just sat there thinking what the 13 hell was going to happen.

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It wasn’t exactly fear, but there was an uneasy feeling. I can remember what was going through my mind very well because I was a little clued up on radiation. Before I joined the navy I read several books on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. I was also in the communications branch and I used to transcribe the messages including Reuters Morse newscasts. I was reading stuff about protests. One report I read was about a flotilla of boats from Japan trying to stop the blasts, and I knew that when that thing went off there would be radiation here. The deck would be burning with it When it did It seemed as though the radiation was everywhere. You couldn’t see it and you couldn’t feel it, but it was there, and that was a bit worrying. Because on the voyage out they showed us a film about a new form of weaponry called radiation and the damage it can cause. Immediately when we left New Zealand they started the procedures, blast stations with the idea that if we encountered radiation fallout we were to go to shelter stations deep within the ships. The men on the top deck in the picture were wearing full protective clothing with the weave being very tight. They were the guys who would set up the wetting down procedures with all the

ventilation intakes covered with canvas. There was one guy, he was only 15 years old. His job was to hide pellets of radioactive isotopes in various places on the ship, and guys with Geiger counters had to find them. But they couldn’t because this young lad put the pellets in his pockets. He had a

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container of them. God knows what happened to him. When we got back to port we never saw him again. We practised every day getting to the shelter stations in the quickest time possible. The heat was terrible and guys kept fainting They did this day after day, the sweat was pouring from us it was like training for a rugby match. It was just relentless.

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As soon as the bombs went off, our ship was sent toward it. Our main objective was weather reporting. Radio sond balloons gave us lots of information about wind directions etc. at various levels From that info they could predict were the radiation was going. We passed within a few miles of the detonation and picked up some equipment that had been left to monitor the radiation. Submarines were detected one night; we didn’t know if they were Russian or Ameriican On this picture of the mushroom cloud we were just swinging about heading right for it and we could see the cloud getting bigger. Other times we went right into ground zero and picked up any surviving recording equipment. All that was handed on to HMS Warrior which was the flagship. We returned to Christmas Island after the detonations straight underneath the fallout clouds. I was at five tests. When we did the

first three, we thought it was all over. When we got back to Auckland the bulk of the crew were drafted off and a new crew came on. I hung about with the ship hoping to go to the far east and then we were told there were going to be more tests. We went up there and I was amazed how things had changed. There were few ships, and I felt very apprehensive even though I was by now a veteran. The ships were being placed closer to ground zero, and the protective clothing was diminished. I watched Grapple Y and Grapple X in shorts and sandals. At Grapple Y I had grown so accustomed to things I didn’t give a fig. We didn’t have any blast stations or anything like that. You just went up on deck and watched the thing in your shorts, But I remember the blast wave was quite significant. I’d gone down to the mess by that time and I was counting some change to go to the canteen to get a cold drink or something and the blast wave hit the ship. She keeled well over to starboard as it hit us on the port side. This money I was holding went everywhere. I got such a fright. It was a weird, weird experience. And we were 80 miles away! So that was a hell of a bomb. I think that bomb was a lot bigger than they said. When you are in calm seas with no wind, for a ship to list to a point were you notice it , you realise just how big it was.

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So that was a hell of a bomb. That was the one I remember best. In fact I can still hear the crackling and the bubbling and the fireball. I used to have dreams where I was trying to get away from a huge explosion and it always involves swimming and going with the current. And I’d be swimming at a great old pace. And then I’d have others where I was swimming in the river and underneath a bridge trying to outpace this bloody bomb. So when I think about it, it must have had some lasting psychological effect on me. I started experiencing health problems at about 18 well before my 21st birthday. Aches and pains and muscle pains in my joints. As they went on through my twenties they got worse and worse. I couldn’t work it out. I was always tired. Then I got to thirty and I was in line for chief petty officer and I wanted to stay in the Navy and I wanted to make a career out of it. I was put in charge of a department down at Wellington. Then I went on to a cruiser which is a big ship and I had a section of ship to look after and I was doing long hours and I had difficulty staying awake; and quite often I used to make an excuse that I was just going down to the trans-

mitting room to tune the transmitters and I would put my head down for an hour. And it got to the stage were I bought an alarm clock and I used to put it on every half hour otherwise I would just flake out at my desk. So when I reached 30 and the opportunity came up to sign up for another eight years I reluctantly thought to myself I’m never going to make this in the navy, I thought I’m going to get caught sleeping on watch which for a petty officer or chief you are demoted back to the mess decks. So I left. As time went on my condition became worse I was so down at that stage I couldn’t get out of the chair and walk across the room to change the TV channel. I couldn’t walk to the letterbox. I had to be fed. It was pretty grim. I saw every specialist under the sun and I was on sickness benefit. Nobody could diagnose what the hell was wrong with me. I dreaded going out because if I got a cold I would end up in hospital. The GP I had at the time was a Chinese bloke and I didn’t know what he did but he said to me that he was pretty well convinced that my immune system was not working properly. He said it might be something to do with my naval service. 16

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We started working on getting me better and gradually I improved but I still have various symptoms of sudden immobility to this day. But it has improved…mind you I’m on a lot of medication as well. Because of what the doctor said about my naval career, I got involved in veterans affairs and I met a lot of MPs in that area. We formed the New Zealand Nuclear Tests Veterans’ Association and started lobbying government and any other political party. The MP that listened to us most was Winston Peters. He showed the most interest mainly because he’s a warrior and he was interested in the idea of suing the British government. He was very vocal about it , especially when we got a visitor from the British embassy in Wellington who warned him about it because it could reflect badly on New Zealand. Winston Peters laughed at him. Anyway Peters was made Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance and one day he stood up in Parliament and said the government was going to give the

NZNTVs $200,000 to investigate a possible class legal action against the government of the UK. This came right out of the blue. It blew me away. And it blew everybody else away as well. But this got Winston into trouble because the Prime Minister said it would affect trade. So they sacked him. He was standing up for what was right, of course, but anyhow they didn’t like it so he had to resign. The Prime Minister who was Jenny Shipley, then just dismissed the $200,000. So we started the fight all over again: Government had made us a promise and they hadn’t delivered. And we fought for 10 years; we lobbied every political party, and everybody but the National Party said they would honour the promise. When Labour came into power we changed tack and started lobbying for research funds. I got hold of the minister for Veterans Affairs and I suggested we use $100,000 for research and the other $100,000 to issues relating to the charitable Trust. The Minister said he was agreeable to that, subject to a meeting in parliament. And so we got the $200,000

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After that Al Rowland took up the research and got hold of Peter Barton at St Andrews University. Another scientist got involved and the ball really started rolling. Al Rowland and I hit it off straight away. We are still close friends and he is now Patron of NZNTVA. One of the things that is good is if this had gone to any other university they would have taken the money, they would have done the research we wouldn’t have known what was going on and I would have had to wait for the results at the end. Al Rowland came to me because he knew I was interested in science; he wanted to train me up to the level of a second or third year student on mFish and genetic research. And he did. And he also made sure that when they had meetings up there at Massey about the research, I was there. I was able to help in finding volunteers and publicity. Dr Judy Blakey was solely in charge of taking the blood samples from all the veterans and the control group. She then coded these people and the outcome was that none of the researchers like Al Rowland, had any idea they

were diagnosing a veteran or a control. And the idea of that was to take away any hint of bias, imagined or not, so they had no idea. So Al told me they were going through these samples and there was one in particular that shocked everybody. It showed clear damage to the cells; instead of being nice and round like they should be they were deformed, shaped like footballs with bits coming off them. And those cells were mine. It must have had quite an affect on him because he came to see me straightaway. He visited and just knocked on my door. It was round about 10 in the morning. Al’s one of those guys who is a great fellah for a joke, he had a fresh one every day. But when I opened that door that day and I can still remember it clearly I could see by the look on his face.. there wasn’t the friendly smile, he was very serious. So I asked him inside. He suggested we sit down I could see something was wrong. He explained that they’d got this sample and sent it up to Auckland hospital and they told him that is the worst sample they’d seen. 18

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They said get hold of me and let me know so that I could inform my doctor that I need regular cancer checks. Al was in a quandary because he was bound by the ethics committee not to break the codes until the research was completed. But he felt he had a moral obligation to tell me he had this sample and that was it. To be honest I felt I’d just been given a death sentence and he felt the same. Al is a straight talker; he went

through the whole situation with me. He showed me the cell division sample and said, ‘I am surprised that you are still alive; you should be dead. He said this to me a number of times. He can at times be quite insensitive about what he says. He doesn’t mean to be, it’s just the way it is. And he often says to me. I can’t understand how long you’ve lived. But I’m still here and I’ll go on fighting for as long as I can.

Al Rowland was the head of Massey University's Institute of Molecular Biosciences. He and his team were engaged in studying the DNA of fifty New Zealand Navy veterans who had served at the 1957/8 British Nuclear Weapons Testing Programme, Operation Grapple, at mid-Pacific Christmas Island. The purpose of the study was to identify any genetic damage as a result of being exposed to radiation at the British nuclear tests. Two Royal New Zealand Navy frigates, HMNZS's Pukaki and Rotoiti, and 527 crewmen were loaned to the British. The ships crews were to be on deck when the detonations took place. In 2011 the Chair of the Advisory Group Professor John Campbell of Otago University, presented the Advisory Group's conclusion: “The Massey University mFISH study results do provide evidence that the nuclear test veterans were exposed to ionising radiation”. Professor David Brenner, the esteemed Higgins Professor of Radiation Biophysics, at Columbia University, New York, advised: “In my opinion, the Rowland mFish study provides extremely strong evidence that the nuclear test veterans have a statistically significantly increased burden of chromosome aberrations, compared to the controls.” Unbelievably Government refused to accept the findings of its OWN Advisory Group. You have to ask, why would Government fund, and set up a highly professional investigative group, and then discard the Groups findings? From that point on we lost all trust in Government. The NZ Government has offered NZNTVA further research. We refused. The reason is primarily we cannot trust Government to uphold the results of any research.

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lucky to be extremely close to my dad Mike Doyle, one-time press officer with the British Nuclear Tests Veterans’ Association. His death in 2005 had a dramatic impact on me. As a trained jobbing actor, thoughts have turned to my relationship with Dad and growing up as the daughter of a Nuclear Test Vet and the impact that had on my adult life. And I've realised that outside of Nuclear Test Vet circles, very few people have heard their story - and especially theatregoers in their 20s & 30s. So I've written a short 'docudramady' play exploring my relationship with Dad and telling his story it's a fictionalised dramatisation of the truth. Plans are to produce it low key (and low budget!) at a couple of festivals, possibly schools, colleges etc. I contacted the BNTVA saying that I would like to partner with them in future (solely with a view to bringing their campaign to a new audience, post show talk-backs etc) although they may have thought I was asking for funding - which I wasn't; knowing that they are a small charity, it would be illogical to take money from the people who you are seeking to support - but I maybe I wasn't explicit enough about this. After a delay of a few months I received a short email to say that due to 'inaccuracies' in my play that they couldn't support me. I did reach out

asking for them to clarify what the inaccuracies were - not with the intention of challenging their decision but because I don't want to misrepresent anything. I never received a reply so I am still completely in the dark. Initially I was very upset at being rejected by them, given the extensive relationship Dad had with the BNTVA in its early days. But in hindsight, I think this is maybe for the best; it would be an enormous responsibility to try to represent in one play all of the ongoing mental and physical effects endured by a large, disparate group of people. My dad on Christmas Island was as a 19 year old technician employed directly by AWRE, and it seems that the BNTVA are very much a military veteran outfit these days. I have an Oscar Wilde approach to being a member of one club or other; I have my story to tell and if in doing so it shines a light on the causes of the BNTVA, NZ naval vets, Aboriginal families, Kiritimati inhabitants, Sellafield workers, children of Chernobyl etc - I wish them all well. There are some opinions and beliefs expressed by characters in my play that I can entirely appreciate the BNTVA may have felt were too provocative to align themselves with in light of their medal campaign. However, they didn't say this, citing only 'inaccuracies'. 21 *Comment pg

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artin Forwood once chained himself to a rail line for wagons carrying deadly radioactive waste to highlight the dangers of reprocessing at the giant Sellafield nuclear site. He later chided himself because the fire brigade were called to cut him free, thus possibly taking them away from the more immediate task of fighting fires and saving lives. That was typical of the innate decency and humanity of a man who was marching, protesting and demonstrating long before most of the climate-change activists who recently took over much of central London were born. He teamed up with legendary antinuclear campaigner Janine AllisSmith who runs Cumbrians Opposed to a Radioactive Environment (CORE) in the early 1980s, and they forged a formidable bulwark against the burgeoning power of British Nuclear Fuels. They lived together in a chaotic but idyllic cottage perched halfway up a wild Cumbrian hillside festooned with bright yellow gorse, and silver mountain ash. The house itself is draped in ivy and all manner of plants , and seems to grow out of the earth like a living monument to all that is good about nature and life.

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In the far distance over the rolling hills was their Nemesis, the darkly brooding Sellafield nuclear complex whose cancer-causing, baleful discharges they alerted the population in Cumbria and the wider world to. They fought against the excesses of this environmentally disastrous behemoth for more than 30 years and their work was recently honoured with the prestigious international Nuclear Free Future Award (NFFA). Cited for their three decades of work ‘unmasking and disseminating’ information on operations at the West Cumbrian site to a world-wide audience – and with CORE described as ‘an indispensable pillar of the British anti-nuclear movement’ . Martin, who made many valuable contributions to fissionline, was always willing to help fellow travellers on the road to a nuclear-free future and showed infinite patience in helping campaigners and journalists alike in understanding the complex issues surrounding the Sellafield site. He never gave up campaigning for the cause, and fought the good fight right up to the end. He died of complications following treatment for lung cancer on Sunday October 6th, 2019, aged 79.

Alan Rimmer

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totally seize the precedence that particuarily the world class Massey University study, and HM Queen approving the awarding of the Special Service Medal Nuclear Testing to NZ veterans. NZNTVA has provided this information to the relevant countries. Their media, and veteran groups should be continually pushing these precedences to the public and politicians. I cannot help but wonder if their is a mindset amongst these 'bigger' countries that this little country on the underside of the world is primitive and could not possibly produce any worthwhile science. Mind you, it was the New Zealander Rutherford who started all by splitting the atom!

POLITICAL parties in opposition have made great promises before but once in Government they follow the puzzling international political denial of test site harm to servicemen. Looking at the latest promise of (of £50,000) if it is honoured in its present form, many will be unhappy, e.g. widows whose care of sick veterans and possibly their off-spring. These dedicated women have also had their lives ruined. There is also a question of Britains responsibility to the Commonwealth servicemen who, under command of the British served at the British Weapons Nuclear Weapons Programme in Australia and the Pacific Operation Grapple. New Zealand's nuclear test veterans campaigned for pensions, a nuclear medal, and contracted Genetic research that identified test site radiation induced DNA damage in the veterans. All of these campaigns ended in success.. However I am greatly puzzled why Britain, Australia, and the USA veteran groups and their media do not

Roy Sefton QSM. Chairman New Zealand Nuclear Tests Veterans’ Association. THOUSANDS of journals and other communications are processed at the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) in Cheltenham every day. Some are marked for ’evaluation’ and diverted to a secure hub. Your publication for some reason is one of them. I thought you ought to know.

Anon ‘The Doughnut’ Cheltenham 24

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THE forged fissionline is a useful document as it indicates the level some are prepared to go in order to sow false information. It’s a measure of how those with nowhere left to hide from the truth can only remain silent or sow misinformation . Back in February this year I posted a letter to the NCCF study’s leader Dr Rhona Anderson giving reason for declining an invitation I had received to take part in the study . This was signed by Dr Anderson and the former BNTVA Chairman, Jeff Lidiatt. I declined taking part because a) I have no children so therefore did not qualify but also b) This study looked subject to bias in its methodology and c) Setting the parameters and methodology was said to be controlled by an epidemiologist who has close links to the MoD. All in all , enough to set alarm bells ringing . The NCCF critique I sent in Feb 2019 was shortly after the revelation that nuclear documents relevant to dosages etc were being buried in a depository in the far northern tip of Scotland and nuclear historians and researchers are denied access for an unspecified period . This appears to be part of an institutional final solution to nuclear veterans’ claims ? Dr Anderson did not reply to the NCCF critique letter, but then I never expected her to. Silence from those who are faced with questions and facts that do not agree

with their agenda ( or the agenda of those funding the research) always speak louder than any words : they have nothing honest to say . Archive records and FOIA questions show the greatest betrayal of the nuclear veterans has been the numerous clandestine studies ( including cytogenetic blood tests carried out as early as the 1970’s and post mortems , body part removal etc ) done exclusively for government ‘eyes only’. If this research and the results had been used , not just for clandestine medical research purposes , but to assist in early diagnosis of genetic damage in nuclear veterans and children ( many who have died prematurely from radiation induced legacy ill health ) then early remedial treatments could have helped them to have suffered less . It is a pity and it could have been helped . Recent events and the working of fissionline in cooperation with the BNTVA will undoubtedly help to bring forward recognition and justice in the lifetimes of the surviving veterans and their families .The public given the facts know right from wrong . Once the political melt down in the UK Parliament is sorted it is hoped that a brighter , kinder and less unethical approach will be adopted by future Ministers and officials towards the nuclear veterans and families .

Dennis Hayden 25

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MELLONEY POOLE: The Covenant fund which is put in place is an entirely new process for these grants on behalf of the Treasury and I and my Secondee both come from the Big lottery fund and the Arts council, so we are grant makers and so you would expect us to be fairly robust in our systems. The money from the fund when awarded is only paid quarterly in advance in terms of all our grant holders and the first quarterly payment will be simply on receipt of signed terms and conditions and agreed milestones. But thereafter the payments will only be made quarterly on the achievement of the agreed milestones. So at any one time the bank account of the charity would only have one quarters payment in its bank account. RIMMER: So…a quarter of a million pounds has gone into the BNTVA’s bank account…? POOLE: No, no, no this will only be a quarter of the year’s payment. I don’t have the exact amount at the moment, but it will be far less than that. RIMMER: I have a figure here of £999, 970. for the grant. POOLE: That is over a period of two years of the grant The money is put into the account quarterly on the achievement of the milestones from the previous quarter. RIMMER: And the milestones are what? The objective of the project… POOLE: They will be, for example, theoretically that an organisation will have set by the end of the first quarter will have set up x referral centres we will have contracted with two partners that we will have contracted the service to say two veterans...

RIMMER: Just trying to get my head around that... POOLE: It’s normal grant-making practise. RIMMER: I’m afraid I know nothing about that. You talk about veterans. Veterans are getting nothing really in the sense of money or... POOLE: No. No, absolutely not. The Grant is made for an organisation on trust to deliver services for aged veterans. I mean that’s across the whole of the portfolio. RIMMER: But these are specifically nuclear veterans are they not? POOLE: The definition for the programme itself is on our website under aged veterans fund as I’m sure you have found out is veterans born before the 1st of January 1950 who have seen national service or other service and in need of health, social care or wellbeing. RIMMER: As far as the nuclear veterans are concerned a grant has been made for a cytogenetic study to be carried out by Brunel University. Will they be getting the £430,000 for that? POOLE: Yes. That will be paid in instalments over the period…which I think is a two-yr research programme RIMMER: It’s three years actually. POOLE: Oh, well obviously you know…but the last instalment won’t be paid out until the last quarter of the third year. It will be the same with the other research grants to Southampton etc. RIMMER: Research money for the BNTVA is going to Combat Stress which is another charity. So the BNTVA and Combat Stress will be working hand in glove on that? 26

27 POOLE: Well I wouldn’t say hand in glove. It’s more of an arms-length relationship and as with any provision of therapies or services, Combat Stress provides its specialists assistance to individuals and the individuals are part of a cohort that the NHS contracted. In this instance this grant holder is contracting for X numbers of provision of therapies for Y number of veterans. And they do that with a lot of organisations and that’s how they get their income by the delivery of services. RIMMER: Getting back to the actual things for nuclear veterans which is what I am interested in. I can’t see exactly where the benefits are apart from research. Are they getting anything extra, anything tangible like wheelchairs? POOLE: Yes. For this particular grant holder, unlike others because some grant holders will not be providing any particular equipment of that sort to them , because they are producing different services under the aged veterans portfolio. But in this instance some of the grant will be used for the grantholder to provide after an open application process amongst its cohort of beneficiaries, additional support that they might not get through the NHS and indeed could potentially have additional equipment that is innovative and not yet necessarily marketed through the NHS. For example it might well be a particular fitting within a kitchen setting which makes it easier for a veteran with a particular disability to maintain independence. And again in terms of wheelchairs where there is quite a lot of really interesting new research being harnessed to produce wheelchairs with different physical constructions issues so that the wheelchairs are lighter or mobile and are more flexible. RIMMER: Will there be anything specific for nucle-

ar veterans? POOLE: Under this grant holder and across the whole portfolio, and you have seen the range of grants that have been made, the RBL, the air force benevolent fund, their veterans, and it is only aged veterans that we have funds for, they don’t have to be nuclear. But in the RAF benevolent fund obviously their veterans are all RAF veterans. And so that’s where they would put their grant services to good effect. You’ve got the Royal Naval Association and their members are obviously Navy. RIMMER: Yes, So nuclear veterans are across all the services. Are you saying that a nuclear veteran is now a new category? That’s very important… POOLE: It’s in the name of this particular charity, because that is their charitable purpose. But the definition if you look on our website of an aged veteran, those born before 1950, and were either in the forces or National Service or the service of the government. So that’s the overall definition of the ultimate beneficiaries who can benefit from the aged veterans fund. RIMMER: So is there a specific category then for nuclear veterans? POOLE: No. It’s not a category. This charity has been a successful applicant, just like a category for a blind veteran has been a successful applicant…for a blind veteran. RIMMER: Did you take into account people who, and this is where we are getting down to the nittygritty; the reason why a lot of people complain is that they didn’t like the way the charity was being run and they opted out. Now they are still sick people, and they are still people who need help. But they feel now that they won’t get any help, because if they apply to the BNTVA for help they will be excluded because they are not a member of the BNTVA. 27

28 POOLE: What the BNTVA will be concerned about is to ensure when it is providing the equipment fund, I would anticipate is, that they are in fact British nuclear test veterans. And that verification of fact does have to be approached sensibly and coherently; clearly if they are members of the tests veterans association then in order to be a member some due diligence would no doubt have been undertaken in order to become a member. But if they are a British nuclear test member who is not a member of the organisation, that does not necessarily exclude them from applying to their programme for equipment. RIMMER: Yes, but the BNTVA have been taking members on who are not test veterans, for example the children of British nuclear veterans, and some who are in fact just friends of nuclear veterans. They are taking their subscriptions. So who decides ultimately who gets the benefit of the grant, who benefits in that sense? POOLE: Well the nuclear tests veterans association has got the grant and they spend the grant on those research projects they have applied for and we’ve approved so they can spend the money on Brunel, Southampton and Combat Stress. They can spend the money on that small equipment fund they are going to set up and run. RIMMER: How much is that fund. Is it £100,000? POOLE: Oh no, no, no, no its is far less than that; it’s very small. I haven’t got the figures but proportionately in their grants its minimal. RIMMER: What’s minimal? £10,000 perhaps? POOLE: It’s somewhere around…I’m sorry I have really not got the figure in front of me but I think it’s £20,000. So in the realm of a million pounds it is small. I have not got the figures so I may be wrong on that bit it is proportionately...the vast majority is going on the two research projects and combat stress therapies.

RIMMER: OK. Now concern has been raised that the former chairman and a committee member now have become the providers of these services and they have been given a contract to carry out those services. POOLE: Indeed and certainly we looked into that before, when making our assessment, and I am absolutely satisfied that it is in order. Clearly as you already know the former chairman has resigned and in order to be independent of the organisation, and he’s working with another colleague of his. He is doing what he has done professionally for many years which is project management and in terms of the application from this organisation, they had to go out and get competitive quotes for similar project management services, from two or three potential project management providers from this particular private limited company and from Price Waterhouse or from whoever provides these management services, because clearly as a membership of an organisation, they don’t have staff then they are not themselves able to run a million pound grant, and they acknowledge that. They need professional project management services . So in order to prevent any conflict of interest, although it has been a disclosable interest, they came up with this solution which is for the ex-chairman to leave; to have no further role in the running the charity, but to provide for very low cost I have to say, project management services. That organisation will provide the governance, the accountability and the reporting and the monitoring that we need here in the MoD to assure ourselves that the charity is to delivering on its commitments… 28

29 POOLE: Well it’s been disclosed in the grant application and that’s of course my concern. I don’t think it matters to the members, does it? RIMMER: Well yes it does. This organisation has been at civil war for five years. None of this was disclosed. It wasn’t announced that he was resigning; it wasn’t announced that there was to be a new chairman. There was no vote. POOLE: You don’t have a vote who is your trustee. Trustees are individuals and make their decisions to leave. That’s not a voting issue in an organisation under the charitable constitution. RIMMER: My understanding is the membership had to vote for a new chairman. The other point is that the partner of the former chairman is still on the BNTVA committee. So there is a conflict of interest there surely? POOLE: Well there would be; there would certainly be a disclosable interest and this is where you need to make the distinction under law that it is absolutely right that that interest has to be made known at all times. RIMMER: Who is it made known to? POOLE: Well, to us. In connection with our remit which is to ensure the probity of public funds. But it is not necessarily a disqualifying interest, by which that sort of level over and above disclosed interest of course; a disqualifying interest would be for example in a trustee meeting of the organisation, if that, and I mean this is entirely hypothetical, if somebody with a disqualifying interest actually took part in a discussion which related to that interest and he was in that room at the time that would be a breach of the conflict of interest. But if that disqualifying interest had not only been dis-

closed but the person is out of the room and is not part of the conversation then that is, under charity law, is acceptable. RIMMER: So you see no conflict of interest at all in the fact that two … POOLE: I said that it is not a question of a conflict of interest it’s the type of conflict and there is a difference between disclosable and disqualifying. RIMMER: Well you’re a lawyer and you certainly use lawyerly language... POOLE: I am. RIMMER: And used to this sort of thing. But you see it doesn’t... POOLE: It’s important because what you are suggesting and its, and its absolutely right that you should be thinking this, but what you are suggesting is that there may be some undue influence on one of the existing trustees on the running of the management company set up as you say with the partner of that trustee. Now provided that is known that both parties have that interest and provided in the running of the association, to which is down to as you say the chairman and the trustees, but provided that is known there by the trustees and when they are conducting their business they do not allow that trustee with that interest to adversely impact on any decision making then that is in order because there is still then the difference between that service company, the management company and, the trustees of the charity. This is really important because if there was, absolutely you’re right if there was undeclared, in other words undisclosed interests which were at work without anyone knowing and therefore influencing what was happening that would be a breach of charity law 29

30 RIMMER: But this disclosure has only been made to your goodselves and the other trustees of the charity. So that’s where the disclosure comes in. It’s not publicly disclosed.. POOLE: But why would you disclose to others? RIMMER: Because there are people who pay £20 a year into this organisation and the people themselves would like to know what is going on. POOLE: Yes… absolutely right they are members of the organisation, and I mean there is a difference between members of the organisation and the normal services of that organisation which is presumably to keep in touch with members to look after their interests, to obviously have annual meetings, and then the running of the grants is not for the benefit of their members it is for the benefit under their application of those individuals who will ultimately clearly benefit from the research and the therapies and the equipment. And they are not necessarily by any means exactly the same cohort of individuals who may or may not be members of the BNTVA. If you take that parallel, and again you have got an example of the grant here, you’ve got the Royal Benevolent Fund grant on this list their grant is for running, among other things, a lunch club at the RAF Home in Littlehampton to which again aged veterans who are welcome, they don’t have to have been former RAF serving officers although they are likely to have been, and they don’t have to be members of the benevolent association. But they are there because it is a lunch club which is being of-

fered by that organisation. So if you take that parallel for the BNTVA what they are doing is offering their services through the grants to individuals who are eligible for the combat stress therapy for example. And that’s what is really important in terms of differentiating if you like between the normal business, the day to day business of a members organisation and what the members are entitled to from that organisation and the fact that the organisation as the corporate trustees grant and the grant purposes can actually be slightly different. But clearly from our perspective we have got to make absolutely sure that the association delivers on the milestones which have been agreed which is all the rest of it. It’s two little bubbles if you like; it’s two separate, a flow diagram if you like, the members of the organisation are separate from the grant RIMMER: That’s quite a lengthy reply. Can I say something now? POOLE: Yes RIMMER: Oh good. Thank you. So you see nothing wrong, unethical, no conflict of interest in the fact that members of an organisation can set up a company and then profit from charitable funds that have been fed into this company? POOLE: They are not going to profit. RIMMER: Well they are, they are being paid for working for it.. POOLE: They are not going to be making a profit because they have, they are being paid for the services rendered and that is at a very, very low rate. So the fact that they are… RIMMER: How much? Do you know? POOLE: Yes I do 30

31 RIMMER: Which is? POOLE: Well I think that’s potentially now a matter of, clearly some commercial interest, but I can assure again that it is extremely small and was subject to our due diligence process. We also required that there should have been a competitive process for the provision of those services so that we asked our applicants to make sure that they had got quotes from other project management providers to ensure there was value for money here. RIMMER: Well I can argue that point. POOLE: Well it’s fact RIMMER: Well you say its fact but you don’t tell me the facts. I mean what quotes did they get. Who supplies project management for this kind of thing? POOLE: It’s a fact. RIMMER: It’s a fact they are making profit. It is a fact they are making money out of something of which they were an integral part of setting up. That’s the point. POOLE: Yes they are now providing really valuable services… RIMMER: But the fact is they were in a really prime position to benefit from this because they were part of setting it up. POOLE: So you would prefer perhaps potentially for the project management services to be contracted with the local branch of Price Waterhouse Cooper? When you are making grants you have to go for value for money. RIMMER: Why didn’t you just give the money direct to Brunel University and say there it is, get on with it. POOLE: But they don’t run project management services RIMMER: You don’t need project management services to ask how much it costs to carry out the research.

POOLE: No. No. they are running the research but the grant consists of not only the Brunel but five strands. All those strands have milestones and other monitoring information that we need here at the Covenant Fund that have to be provided professionally and properly and to ensure that the money is paid out properly. Brunel doesn’t do that. It is actually project management services in running a million pound grant that need to be addressed. RIMMER: So you are telling me that two Committee members of this organisation are going to get paid for doing something that they helped to set up. You are saying to me that’s OK. I can argue about the rights and wrongs of it, but I just want to be given the facts. POOLE: And the fact is that the alternative for them would have been as I say to have gone for quotations to for example a local branch of accountants and those quotations were considerably more than the quotation from this particular service provider. Now if you are giving public money away you have to be really careful about the fact that you are not paying twice as much for services that you could.. RIMMER: And one of the reasons why in this particular case there is so much ill-feeling is that stated in their magazine for example is that they don’t have to explain what the money is being spent on. The money they are getting from the members. They have stated quite clearly that if they don’t think that the query about what the money is being spent is relevant, they won’t answer. So therefore there are suspicions which ever way you look at it. 31

32 POOLE: I can see that, but what the members think about the running of their own charity which is separate from the grant, is entirely separate from the grant. What members feel about the way their charity is being run is a totally different issue. It is not about the Aged Veterans Fund grant… RIMMER: But you really see nothing wrong…surely you have got to remove yourself of any involvement with this kind of money at stake? You surely just can’t resign your post set up a company, decide and become the partner with a person who is still within that charity then bid for £1million and go on a salary for it. I do see that people could find that suspicious. POOLE: Well it’s not suspicious because it has been declared and disclosed… But only to you Well you and I know the facts.. RIMMER: Well I didn’t. I had to find out the facts. There was no saying at any time what they were going to do. This is why people like me report it, because it doesn’t look right and it doesn’t sound right. POOLE: I hope you have really understood the reasoning. It is perfectly in order; that it is entirely appropriate under charity law and under the concept of the probity of the grant and it’s the members of the association if they are concerned about the running of the money from their membership fees that is separate to the issue about the running of the grant where it has all been disclosed and it is in public knowledge. RIMMER Well what would you think if you gave a grant to a disreputable organisation…you don’t seem to care about that; you just seem to say well they’ve asked for a grant they’ve put forward a project… POOLE: No Alan, that is really unfair because we care enormously about the probity of the organisation.. RIMMER: But that’s the point. This organisation are the members. These are the people who are ill. These are the people who are sick. These are the people you should be concerned about…not about the people running it. POOLE: Yes. You are absolutely right that is the

point of having a charity to look after their interests. RIMMER: Right. I agree with you and this charity has now been given a £1m grant which is great. Wonderful. But then they turn round and say well actually the former chairman and a present member have set up a company to manage this money. We are a charity, but we have set up a company to manage this thing… POOLE: It is a separate legal entity. Not related to the charity. It is a private company owned by two individuals and they are providing essential management services for the grant out of the, the grant which we have approved because it was cheaper to do it that way rather than any other way and therefore much better value for money. And leaving more money for the beneficiaries of the grant to be spent directly on them. And it was absolutely part of the requirement to running a grant for £1m that we have that reporting over the three years and normally under certain circumstances we allow up to 10 per cent of a grant for project management and in this instance it is significantly less. So it is really bearing in mind the need for getting the money directly to those that benefit most. RIMMER: So how much money are they getting for their services. As a company? POOLE: As a company, I am hesitating…I’ll tell you what the figure in my mind is, and this is why I am hesitating because I haven’t got it in front of me and I do have to tell you this in confidence because it is confidential information so you cannot print it…I will tell you. Over the three years it is £34,000. And when you think we allow up to 10 per cent of a one million pound grant for project management services you can see why this is extremely good value for those…

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33 RIMMER: Well would it not be a good idea that I publish all the figures so that I can try to rest the minds of people who do tell me they are deeply suspicious? That would be the most impressive thing to do. There is a vast swathe of people out there who are going to be excluded from everything, but you are not concerned about that because all you are concerned about is the grant holders. All I am concerned about is the majority, not the few who hold the purse strings. POOLE: Money that they got from their members is obviously nothing to do with the money that is going to go to them in grant and that is why we do have to see these two things as slightly separate.. It goes back to my bubbles. There is an issue around the charity and its members, absolutely, and the trustees and how they manage their members’ money. But we have given the grant on trust.. RIMMER: But given that there is an issue, are you not a little wary about what’s going to happen here? I mean you take at face value the disclosures etc that have been made and you have no problem with the fact that this disclosure was not made to the rank and file or publicly. You have no problem with that because you have made your own checks and you’ve decided it’s OK. POOLE Well the members are not necessarily the beneficiaries of our grants I mean I come back to the fact that we have to be really careful about not cross-muddling the two. RIMMER: But it’s not only that; all of a sudden we’ve got a new charity grafted on, a nuclear community, this charity is supposed to be for nuclear veterans. People really don’t understand; all of sudden we have got one charity and then its another charity. We had the BNTVA which is now attached to the NCCF which is attached to BH Associates… all these different tiers of influence. It

seems to the lay person, to someone looking in from the outside, it’s a muddle. But at the centre of it all there are suspicions for good reasons because you have the former chairman and a committee member setting up a company to look after monies that have been granted to a charity by the government using public money. That is the issue really. That’s why people are jumping up and down. POOLE: Well now you know the reason why they shouldn’t be jumping up and down, it’s because its all been disclosed. There is absolutely no issue provided that we know there is this service management company in existence running the project management… RIMMER: Set up by the former chairman and a current committee member… POOLE: And why does that matter, if they provide the right services at very good cost? RIMMER: Of course it matters..in your world in your technocratic bubble of civil servants, this may all be perfectly normal. No-one seems to realise the outrage of the people in the real world… POOLE: Well I think that is just a little unfair because the outrage is based on a nonunderstanding of the facts. RIMMER: But the facts have not been explained to them POOLE: They have RIMMER: You are explaining now. But you are presenting a fait accompli. This should have been done before. It should have been explained to the members that they were thinking about giving this grant to these people who used to part of this organisation POOLE: When would I say that sort of thing in the grant process? RIMMER: Well you’d publish it presumably. POOLE: Where would I publish this I just can’t see how you would… 33 RIMMER: Well because you have already admitted there is a perception that there could be a conflict here

34 POOLE: What the members feel about the members subscriptions of course is entirely different and nothing to do with us and their subscription money does not in any way impact upon the work undertaken by the grant. They are two totally separate things and this is the similar sort of thing that, and hopefully you can see, although I fully accept there is the public perception as is often the case when it knows the facts, is wrong here to be so concerned. RIMMER: Well you have given me plenty of time. Thank you very much POOLE: Well thank you very much. I am here to answer your questions. RIMMER: Well you have done, but you have not answered the central question. POOLE: Well I can give you the assurance that clearly on the assessment of this grant we were perfectly satisfied. RIMMER: What you are saying is that yes, you agree, the perception is understandable but the conclusion is wrong. POOLE: The perception is certainly understandable, but it is based on a lack of proper information and understanding because the former relationship has been fully disclosed and that through open competition process the new project management services offered to the organisation are both highly competitive and competent. Just because someone has been a trustee doesn’t mean to say that when the leave being a trustee they can’t act independently. RIMMER: Well one of them is still a committee member POOLE: Oh which one of them is that? RIMMER: Mr Bexon.

POOLE: But it’s Nigel Heaps isn’t it? RIMMER: No the company is BH Associates…the B is for Bexon and he is on the committee of the BNTVA . And Mr Heaps is the former chairman. Mr Bexon is the honorary editor. He is pictured as such in the current Campaign magazine. He’s there, and you see nothing wrong with that? POOLE: OK… RIMMER: Do you see nothing wrong with that? POOLE: I see the perception based on misinformation RIMMER: But you have just put forward an argument saying that as Mr Heaps is now no longer with the organisation, he’s retired and so there is nothing wrong with setting up this company. You’ve just realised now that his partner in this is still on the committee. POOLE: I’m sorry Alan we are just going round in circles about this RIMMER: But how do you feel about that? POOLE: I can only go back again and again and say that I am sorry we are really going to have to see this in different ways. The fact is nothing wrong with a project management company providing a service on a contractual basis to the charity using our grant fund that has been fully disclosed and was part of the assessment. RIMMER: OK. But you have just admitted to me that you didn’t realise that the other partner was a committee member. POOLE: No. No. I’m terribly sorry if I’ve confused you. I mean what I did not have in front of me was the full name of the BH Associates…and there is no deviation from my arguments that there is a difference between the organisation and the grants.. RIMMER: Thank you for your time. 34

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BRITAIN wanted to break an international ban on atmospheric nuclear bomb testing, and put up a diplomatic smokescreen to conceal the fact. Eisenhower’s scientific advisor George Kistiakowsky, a former Los Alamos scientist, reveals in private diary notes that the Macmillan Government “would be perfectly willing to go along with the resumption of the tests.” The controversial notes, unearthed in Sacramento County Library, record a meeting with Kistiakowsky, President Eisenhauer’s scientific adviser, and Britain’s atom chief Sir William Penney at the White House. The diary entry dated Wednesday, October 28, 1959, states: “Bill Penney from England...made a very significant statement, that the outcome of the British elections was such an overwhelming victory of Macmillan that the latter is no longer worried

about the outcome of nuclear test cessation negotiations and would probably be perfectly willing to go along with the USA if we proposed resumption of tests.” The 1959 United Kingdom general election was held on Thursday, 8 October 1959. It marked a third consecutive victory for the ruling Conservative Party, led by Harold Macmillan when the Conservatives increased their overall majority in Parliament to 101 seats over the Labour Party. Kisiakowsky went on to record that White House nuclear expert Spurgeon Keeny told him that Penney emphasised the same point to him in a private conversation the next day. The diary states that British claims that it would not accept resumption of the tests were for “diplomatic purposes only and will make termination of tests much more difficult.”

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Kenn McGinley

Derek Chappell Barbara Penney Dr Ian Gibson Albert Isaksen

INVESTIGATORS have identified the genuine fissionline edition used by counterfeiters to produce a phoney fissionline containing vicious slurs against two prominent members of the British Nuclear Tests Veterans’ Association. The genuine fissionline used was issue 44, first published in May 2016 which featured a front page about the row over former BNTVA bosses cashing in on charity funds, and a feature on the death of veteran Trevor Butler. The phoney fissionline was a sophisticated scan of the masthead and layout. The foreign-based owners of the ‘Proton’ digital platform used by the fraudsters have been asked to release details. Police are probing a possible hate crime.

Robert Wells

Gerry Rice

THIS is Elin Doyle, a beautiful young actress and daughter of one of the founding members of the BNTVA. Elin recently contacted the association with a request to join forces to produce a play about her dad and the bomb tests which she has written. (see pg 20) After some months she received a reply saying the BNTVA couldn’t help because of ‘inaccuracies’ with the play. Nonsense. The play is punchy, to the point and entirely accurate. It is also very well written and has the potential to bring the nuke vets’ story to a whole new audience. Those at the top of the BNTVA should think again. Elin’s talent should not go to waste. 36