Nuclear veterans have handed the Ministry of Defence a 'ticking timebomb' after lodging a criminal complaint over an alleged cover-up of radiation experiments on troops during the Cold War. The complaint, made in Westminster on the eve of VE Day, accuses a long list of officials of potential misconduct in public office.
Senior officers of the Metropolitan Police will now assess a 500-page dossier of evidence compiled by the Mirror during its three-year investigation into the Nuked Blood Scandal. The dossier includes witness statements, Freedom of Information admissions, medical records, and historic documents that were allegedly hidden from the public.
Veteran John Morris, 87, from Rochdale, who suffered cancer and a 60-year blood disorder after washing contaminated uniforms at Christmas Island, said his medical records are missing results of blood tests and chest x-rays taken before, during and after his service. 'We told Keir Starmer what happened, we told his deputy, we told the Defence Secretary, and they've failed to act,' he said. 'This is a ticking timebomb of their own making.'
The scandal blew open in 2022 when the Mirror uncovered a secret memo about blood tests of Group Captain Terry Gledhill, who led planes through mushroom clouds on sampling missions. His daughter Jane, 73, from Poole, is the first named victim in the complaint. She said: 'I'm doing this for my dad because he spent years asking doctors what was wrong with him.'
Greater Manchester mayor Andy Burnham has likened the scandal to the infected blood and Hillsborough scandals, calling it 'the greatest injustice of them all'. He warned that if politicians and officials do not act, they risk becoming complicit. The dossier shows the blood testing programme was publicly denied by the MoD in 2001, the High Court was given false information in 2008, and Parliament was misled in 2018.
