How Britain's Christmas Island H-Bomb tests brought death and destruction to an English village

By Alan Rimmer

You could hardly call it a village...just a little cluster of houses on either side of a road fringed by overhanging trees.

Etterby in Cumbria had no pub, no shop, no hall, no church. It was just a disparate scattering of semis and cottages skirting fields just north of Carlisle. But if there had been a church bell to toll it would have heralded a mournful dir for a collecti very frighten people living the shadow o nuclear death

Unexplained cancers devastated Etterby's population of only 50, cancers which logically could have only one origin...and that could be found a short walk away across the fields

Just half a mile from Etterby, patrolled by armed police and surrounded by razor wire, lay a top secret RAF base

It was a sinister place, a collection of anonymous, grey, corrugated sheds, with no obvious purpose, shrouded in mystery and going under the cryptic name 14MU. Only two small signs pointed the way to it from surrounding roads.

But MU14 had a secret past, a past so terrible that nothing was ever officially divulged about it But the local populace found out what it was but too late to do anything about it.

For they discovered that vast quantities of nuclear waste from Britain's H-bomb tests on Christmas Island in the Pacific were disposed of there. Normal radioactive objects, mainly dials and instruments were buried there, as well But tons off more sinister radioactive materials from the nuclear tests sites was also there.

And during a d in the 1960s, most criminal ard for , this highly minated ial was evably burnt d spread over arby fields s from the nearby Solway Firth were able to whip up the nuclear dust and blow it across nearby Etterby, a reeking harbinger of a catastrophe the authorities were helpless to stop. And it wasn't long before the creeping curse of cancers began to have its deadly impact in Etterby. As the years went by cancers in the village reached epidemic proportions, so much so that one villager Leslie Bell, who was one of the early casualties, drew up a "doomsday list" of victims among his neighbours

To his astonishment it revealed that half the population had been affected in one way or another. Out of a total of 50 people living in just 26 houses, Leslie, the boss of a coach firm, and a neighbour Ronald Barton calculated that 28 had either died or were suffering from cancer

Ronald, then 65, said in an interview: "When we got our heads together we discovered that the problem was much worse than we imagined. Almost every house in the village seemed to have been affected at one time or another.

"It seemed that every time someone got ill it was cancer. It just seemed to spread and spread." An investigation carried out at the time, using official medical records and death certificates revealed that at least 10 people had died of rare cancers over a 20 yr period beginning in 1974

In that same period only three people from the village had died of other causes such as heart attacks. The investigation also discovered that in that same period three more people, who had subsequently left the village, had died of cancer

And more tellingly three people died of the blood cancers, leukeamia, with one more battling the disease One had the further complication of multiple myeloma, a condition firmly linked to radiation exposure.

The statistic astounded local health officials. Dr Peter Tiplady, Carlisle's director of public health, examined the figures and estimated that the number of blood cancers in the village was up to TEN TIMES what might normally be expected

But statistics can only tell half the story Like Britain's nuclear test veterans the personal tragedies suffered by many of the villagers when interviewed were heartbreaking

People like Doreen Nicholson lost not one, but two husbands from exactly the same same type of cancer Her torment began in 1985 when her first husband Geoff Taylor was struck down. They had been married for 25 years and although they had never had children were blissfully content in their little semi In a interview Doreen said: "We'd both lived in the village since 1954 and loved it It was such a beautiful place Geoff used to go salmon fishing in the River Eden at the bottom of the village and he used to say it was the ideal place to live

"He was such an independent man and very fit a big, strong man whio had never been ill. He was only in his early fifties when he began to complain of

Stomach Pains

When cancer was iagnosed Geoff ust couldn't cope with it. He couldn't elieve that omething like that ould happen to im. He was in errible, terrible ain and he became different person o the lovely man I ad known He suffered a ramatic weight oss and had to be ropped up with uge cushions ecause his bones were swticking hrough He became very difficult, but it was only because of the pain "

Significantly by the time Geoff died concern about the number of cancer incidents in the village was already being openly expressed

People started gathering on street corners, talking in whispers, very often afraid to air their true feelings. Said Doreen: "But I was too grief-stricken to take much notice My whole world had come tumbling down and I just wanted to shut myself away. I hardly ever went out "

One day out of the blue, Doreen received a phone call from one of Arthur's friends, Geoff Nicholson. She said`: "The firsrt thing he said to me was that it was about time I went out At first I couldn't, but Geoff kept ringing and in the end I thought, 'why not.'

They enjoyed each others company and after three years Geoff popped the question. Said Doreen: "For the first time in many years I was happy; I learned to smile again "

But an almost unbelievably cruel coincidence was to shatter Doreen's new-found joy.

About a year after they were married, Geoff started to complain of frequent indigestion and stomach pains.

A cold dread seized Doreen when her local doctor visited her "I knew what he was going to say even before he said it," she said.

"He came in, threw his hat on the floor and said to me: "Geoff's got the same cancer that Arthur had " Bravely Doreen nursed her second husband throughout his illness, but she couldn't prevent the cruel illness taking its inexorable course

She said: "Geoff died, like Arthur, in my arms, in the same bedroom Another lovely man had gone out of my life forever "

When she had recovered sufficiently, Doreen decided to leave Etterby and move to the other side of Cumbria

She felt the place was "cursed "

First-hand evidence of what was exactly happening at 14MU was provided by Harry Johnson, who worked there when material from the 1957 Christmas Island nuclear bomb tests arrived to be processed

In a interview Harry said: "Hundreds of tons of waste from the tests were brought to the base by rail It was stored floor to ceiling in huge warehouses

"When the boxes were opened, there was all sorts of equipment -- engines, dials, tables, chairs, things like that The were also strange things like huge centipedes and dead seabirds.

"When I was told it had to be disposed of, I asked why couldn't things like the tables and chairs be given to local schools, I was told that was impossible because it was radioactive and had to be burned "

Harry, a shy thoughtful man, was anything but a "leftie" rabble-rouser. When he gave his interview, he was a retired heating engineer with no political axe to grind This made his description of how the deadly waste was dealt with all the more disturbing. "They used to take it out and burn it in the fields on big bonfires," he said "Most of the ashes were just spread about. No one seemed to care about the

health consequences "

His, and other eyewitness accounts, were backed up by independent findings. A leaked report by London-based consulting engineers, Cambell Reith Hill revealed that 14MU had been "extensively contaminated" with various toxic and radiological materials

The report, which also found that the contamation was present deep below ground, concluded that it would cost at least £18million to clear up

The Ministry of Defence acknowledged the seriousness of the situation, but said they were "sure" that all safety precautions would have been taken

Local councillors blamed the government for the contamination and demanded they foot the bill for the clean up

In the end it was decided to close the site completely and turn it into an industrial park

Meanwile local health chiefs promised a "full investigation" into the devastating health consequences on the villagers

But interest in the problem soon diminished especially after local people were warned of the impact on the value of their homes As a result no real investigation was carried out.

There was a different mood in the country as Britain entered the 1990s It was a time of unprecedented economic growth and prosperity. People were obsessed by celebrity and the celebrity lifestyle The nation embarked on a gigantic spending spree and considerations about the environment and other issues were brushed under the carpet They were indifferent to the horrors of the past and the nuclear bogyman didn’t seem so scary any more.

Etterby no longer exists as a village in its own right

It's sad epitaph on the local website reads:"Etterby, a former village in Cumbria, England, is now a northwestern suburb of Carlisle, on the northern side of the River Eden "