Britain’s nuclear past
COMPLEMENTS THE BBC RADIO 4 PROGRAMME ARCHIVE ON 4: AFTER THE FALLOUT
“We were ordered to kill the birds which had been injured by the explosion. Some were still flying around, but they were blind, as their eyes had been burned out. We used pickaxe handles to kill the birds. I did not like doing this, but we had no choice because of the terrible condition they were in.”
On 7 November 2019, during routine Scottish parliamentary proceedings, Member of the Scottish Parliament George Adam read out this piece of shocking testimony from a long-time friend, Ken McGinley. It is just one of many horrific anecdotes to emerge from Britain’s secret nuclear history, many of which are being told by the British Nuclear Test Veterans Association, representing men sent to build explosive devices and to carry out and witness Britain’s nuclear bomb tests.
“We are talking about a state that took young men in national service from one side of the world to the other and dropped a nuclear bomb on them to see how that worked out, how it affected them and how they could function on a nuclear battlefield, of all things,” Adam commented in his introductory remarks in the Scottish parliament at Holyrood. “That seems to be complete madness to us. It feels barbaric in the 21st century, and it seems almost unbalanced for a state to do
