Boris Johnson today became the first Prime Minister in history to sit down with Britain’s nuclear test veterans.
Victims of the Cold War radiation experiments told him about early deaths, government cover-ups, and hereditary illness - and the Mirror showed him evidence of possible crimes committed by the state against its own servicemen.
He told the Mirror: "Thank you for bringing this to my attention. Everybody I've heard from, thank you for your testimony. It's especially heart-rending to listen to what you have to say."
After being presented with evidence of missing medical records, with blood samples taken but hidden from health archives, he agreed it could amount to a criminal offence committed against veterans.
"I simply can't explain the shortage of medical records," Mr Johnson said. "I think that you're right, there are things you are not being told and should be told. If it's been hidden away, like in the Raiders of the Lost Ark, or stuff is being stashed in a vault or wherever, by the British government, that needs to be sorted out."
He heard from John Morris, 84, of Rochdale, who witnessed four nuclear bombs in 1957 and later found his son, Steven, dead in his cot aged just four months. It took him 60 years to get the autopsy report, which revealed he had deformed lungs.
John banged the table in the Prime Minister's office in Parliament as he said: "We protected this country by providing the nuclear deterrent, but we've been let down by successive governments. My wife and I were arrested on suspicion of murder, and I've had a lifetime of worry and illness. I had blood and urine taken which his not in my medical records, and I've been refused a war pension."
Holding back tears, John's voice broke as he added: "I just want justice for my family, and for Steven."
The visibly-moved PM told him: "I'm so sorry, so, so sorry for your loss. You need a much better picture of what on Earth is going on."
The 40-minute meeting also heard from Steve Purse, whose father David was in control of the airfield at Maralinga in South Australia, where the UK government conducted 593 experiments on radioactive triggers over a decade. "Where?" said the PM. "It's not something I've been educated about before... it's extraordinary."
Steve, 48, of Prestatyn, told him the safety measures were little more than a wire fence, through which contaminated sand could blow. Steve, who was born with undiagnosable medical conditions, said: "Becoming a dad should be joyful, but at every scan I was terrified. I played genetic roulette. My son is healthy now, but I worry about the future, and if he becomes ill I want him to have doctors who know what he has, and how to fix it."
He added: "We want a medal and for my dad to be recognised, that he made a difference, but we need medical research as well. You could go down in history as the man who made this happen, for the veterans, for my son Sascha."
The PM and his advisers, including top civil servants and Veterans Minister Leo Docherty, listened as Laura Jackson, 56, of Cheltenham, told him: "My dad saw the equivalent of 2,000 Hiroshimas in just 78 days. I've had three cancers removed from my face, a heart attack, miscarriages. My brother, my dad, both died early from heart attacks. No-one had these problems in our family, before my dad."
Her brother Alan Owen, of campaign group Labrats, told the PM how he had also "died" from a heart attack nine weeks ago, and was now being kept alive by an internal defibrillator.
Alan, 51, of Camarthen, added: "Our family were compensated by the Americans, who conducted the tests the UK sent our dad to. Joe Biden has promised his veterans a medal. When I march at the Cenotaph in memory of my dad, I want to wear a medal given in his name, by the British government."
The Mirror showed the PM evidence of wives and children being sent to nuke-blasted Christmas Island on a morale-boosting trip, mothers and daughters with dozens of miscarriages, and told him how infant mortality among veterans' children is five times the norm.
The meeting ended with John telling the PM: "It's the Queen's Jubilee, and the 70th anniversary this October of the first nuclear bomb test. It's the ideal moment, Prime Minister, for you to look me in the eye and tell me, 'you deserve a medal'. Or say, 'sod off'."
John's granddaughter Laura, 32, of Salford, told the PM he must decide soon "because veterans are dying, every day, without justice".
Mr Johnson was given a deadline of October to resolve the issue, and told campaigners he and his team would get working on it straight away.
"You've produced all sorts of evidence that seem to be more than likely, and we need to come back to you," he said. "I was very surprised to hear when this was raised that something hadn't been done for you before."
The meeting was organised after Rebecca Long-Bailey, Labour MP for Salford and Eccles, asked the PM to meet her and the veterans.
Afterwards, she said: "The PM seemed to be appalled at what we told him, and I think genuinely shocked by what's happened to these men and their families. Now we need to make sure he does deliver the justice he promised us, and to have that moment of national recognition and acknowledgement to end this scandal once and for all."
She added: "Beyond this I also hope the PM recognises the real need for research for descendants, financial and medical support for veterans and their families, war pension reform and education."
She invited Sir John Hayes, Tory MP for South Holland and The Deepings, to attend as patron of the British Nuclear Test Veterans Association. He told the PM a medal "was just the right thing to do". Afterwards he said: "The PM heard the cause of the veterans. I have great faith that he will now do the right thing for them."
Shadow Defence Procurement Minister Chris Evans also promised that Labour would make sure the PM kept his promise. "We need to keep the pressure up as we approach the anniversary. It would be absolutely wonderful if we can strike a medal for them, release those medical records, and justice can finally be served to these brave men, and their families."
The meeting followed a year-long Mirror campaign in which veterans demanded the PM ‘Look Me In The Eye’ after they were refused a medal three times on the grounds there was no "risk and rigour" to the testing programme.
The PM told them he would "look again" at a medal, and when the Mirror presented him with email evidence of the medal committee chairman being influenced with bogus information by Ministry of Defence officials, he said: "I will be looking at it with a very sceptical eye."
The Mirror has campaigned for justice for the nuclear veterans since 1983, and in 2018 won a medal review and fresh research after a meeting with then-Defence Secretary Gavin Williamson.
The research reported back this February that men who served at the tests were 3.7 times more like to develop chronic myeloid leukaemia, a type of blood cancer linked to radiation.
It also found statistically-significant raised rates for cancer of the stomach, prostate, respiratory system, and cerebrovascular disease, as well as increases in suicide and self-harm.
Before the meeting, the PM was sent a 5-minute video featuring the testimony of veterans and descendants. They included former RAF cook Brian Unthank, 84, from Erith in Kent, who lost all his teeth aged 20 and has since had 84 skin cancers removed.
His wife suffered 13 miscarriages, one daughter was born with two wombs, a son had a hole in his heart, and a grandson developed melanoma aged 18 months. Another son had incurable eye condition Duane syndrome, while another daughter has skeletal problems that will afflict her for life.
“If you live to be a million years old, you would never, ever, be able to describe the intensity of the white light,” he told the PM in the video.
“The scientists are saying that it’s going to be 500 years before it washes it out of my bloodline, so it’s my children, my grandchildren, their children.”
Terry Quinlan, 82, of Leybourne, Kent, was on National Service in the Royal Army Service Corps with hundreds of other young men when he was sent to take part in Operation Grapple X, the first H-bomb. He first developed cancer aged 24 and has been refused a war pension, despite having to live in the fallout, drinking desalinated seawater and eating poisoned fish, for a year after the blasts. He said that when the bombs went off “they were shaking like a leaf some of them, crying, even praying. They were scared. They were young kids”.
Also in the video were Doug Hern, 84, of Spalding, Lincolnshire, whose daughter Gilly developed a hump before being dying of adrenal cancer aged just 13, and Suzanne Eades-Willis, whose father James Eades was and her severely-autistic daughter Charlotte, 30.
Charlotte, of Sutton St Edmunds, Lincolnshire, said: “I reckon if you put me and mum together you’ll get a full person, because mostly my body works perfectly and mostly mum’s mind works perfectly, so if you’ll put us together you’ll get one.”
Veteran Terry Quinlan’s daughter Anne urged the PM to act fast, saying: “I can’t pin a medal on a gravestone.”
The PM was also shown a horrifying moment from a veterans’ seminar held last year, in which seven veterans were asked to raise their hands if they had cancer, and all did. When asked to raise their hands again if they had lost a child, all but one did the same.
