The enemy within is destroying Britain's nuclear test Veterans'

An excoriating blast from one of Britain's very few surviving witnesses to the five nuclear bomb tests on Christmas Island in 1958

By Haldane Isaksen

Following events in the BNTVA recently it behoves us Nuclear Test Veterans to add our voice.

To say that the whole sordid affair was disgusting is something of an understatement. The treatment and vilification of one individual was absolutely beyond anything any decent human being would even contemplate.

I am a Veteran, one of the thousand or so who shipped out on the HMT Dunera, and spent almost the whole of 1958 on Christmas Island (Kiritimati) witnessing five detonations in that time

In 1983 the BNTVA was founded thanks to Nuclear Veteran Ken McGinley who was becoming aware of major health problems in some of his colleagues, who also had served, and realised that these problems were probably directly attributable to exposure to nuclear radiation from the tests

Thereupon the mission began to seek recognition and compensation.

A fellow Veteran claimed that we were the only British military unit ever to have been intentionally bombed by our own side. Proof has it that we were used as ‘guinea pigs’ This did not make us special ... but it did make us unique! The mission statement simply became ‘All we seek is justice!’

With a total of 22,000+ personnel involved, many, if not most of us, National Servicemen, were a disparate group drawn from all quarters of Britain.

Communication and cohesion were to prove major problems when it came to setting up the Association. Disagreements were manifold which led to much internal wrangling and, unfortunately, resulted in the law intervening on occasion. Nevertheless, members remained resolute and the focus stayed the same ...‘Recognition and Justice for those affected’.

Eventually, and with the expectation (and promises!) of a brighter more settled future for the Association and its aims, the membership opted for charitable status

That vote has seemingly sounded the death knell of the BNTVA as we knew it and of those aims Gradually we came to realise that the power and the voice of the membership were being largely ignored and slowly being eroded as a consequence

Many of us protested and, simply to silence us, both the late Trevor Butler and I were expelled from the Association When we first made public that we intended to attend the AGM that year and ask for answers to some very pertinent questions we were informed that we would be refused entry and the police would be called if we showed up.

So much for scrutiny. My observations and accusations were met with the threat of a libel action which, when challenged, was quietly dropped. I wonder why?

We would certainly have welcomed ‘Exposure’ back then!

Rumours spread that there was collusion to bring about the decline of the BNTVA – and they were not from this source, either!

We had been nothing but a big thorn in the side of the Ministry of Denial for too long and it comes as no surprise to learn, thanks to fissionline, that the BNTVA had already been infiltrated whilst still in its infancy

Then, quite unexpectedly, we learned that the British government was to donate big money to the charity, and not direct to Veterans, and we also discovered that a company had already been set up to administer this cash well in advance of any acknowledgement to the members. All nations involved in nuclear testing have awarded compensation directly to their personnel involved, all except this one. That money, that compensation, that the BNTVA membership had sweated long and hard for went to another charity set up to administer it

Veterans and OUR aims? Too many of them have absolutely no understanding, that much has become very apparent. Let me tell them that they have done us no favours whatsoever and, furthermore, they have betrayed us! I am aware that these positions are voluntary and I do know what it is to get brickbats when you deserve plaudits, I’ve been there, but at one time we were active with legal action and also had regular and rewarding contact with comrades overseas who served alongside us sense of its uniqueness or its position in history. It is to be hoped that when the gongs are strutted around some modicum of thought is given to those men who served, who did their duty and whose only award was that of fatal doses of radiation: men whose inheritance was snatched away and whose memory has been blemished

Meanwhile, back at the real BNTVA how, exactly, have THEY benefitted US the Veterans that they purport to represent? In too many instances it’s been all about them. They come, they go! The penultimate Board became known as the ‘Hokey Kokeys’ – in, out, in, out, ‘can’t have it my way and so I’m off’.

Fighting like RATS in a sack. In all this time did anyone give a single thought to the actual

In conclusion I say this:- Our legacy will be that we served,we did our duty and in return ‘All we sought was Justice’. Your legacy will be not what you did FOR us but what you did TO us! This year is the fortieth anniversary of the Association and we should have been celebrating a victory Instead, we have become not victors but victims

Harmed by our own side once again It appears that there is no Justice! And can anyone tell me exactly, what is the purpose of the BNTVA these days and what is its future aim? More of the same?

Nuclear Veteran Spr H. A. Isaksen 38 CER Royal Engineers