Summer 2025 ATOM Magazine

An open letter to the Editor in Chief and CEO of Labrats International. 

                                                                                             20 August 2025

The MoD and its contractual partners, after 7 decades of deception and lies, are in a far weaker position than 'Atom' Magazine reports lead readers to believe.

On page 11 of ATOM, Susie Boniface has correctly identified a Tribunal with the power to investigate, adjudicate, compensate and commemorate the betrayal of the Nuclear Test Veteran Community ( NTVC ) as being the best chance to get the justice deserved.

A Tribunal, of the type reported by Susie ' to achieve justice within one year ' has, however, overlooked some pivotal points to achieve the justice sought by all.

These points are listed below.

1)  The Ministry of Defence Review of NTV Medical Records.

The first weakness for the above proposed Tribunal is the statement made by Al Carns, Veterans Minister (page  6 of 'Atom' ). This is the MoD's biased 'fox in charge of the hen house ' method to delay accountability and responsibility.

By making a false virtue of having 'reviewed 43,000 files, including files from the Merlin Database', the Minister's statement is another red herring.

This review overlooks the fact that a second unnamed database exists. A database, which a MoD Spokesman admitted in February 2012 is held by the MoD's contractual partner, the Atomic Weapons Establishment (AWE).       

The MoD Spokesman stated he did not know the name of the database because he did not have high enough security clearance. He also admitted this 2^nd database is protected by the MoD's Freedom of  Information team under Section 14 (1) of the FOI Act and therefore is blocked 'in the national interest ' to not be released.

The 'national interest ' referred to, of course, is to protect the MoD's policy of deception from full public and media exposure.  The truth is being blocked.

This was information of deception was disclosed at the First Tier FOIA Tribunal of nuclear test veteran activist David Whyte in February 2012.

Dave Whyte

Following on from this  February 2012 First Tier Tribunal of Dave Whyte's, the establishment had become extremely rattled by the progress being made by activists.

The MoD had, become so desperate just before Christmas 2012, seven NTV activists were falsely accused of breaking the Official Secrets Act, the 7 are :

Alan Batchelor, Vice President of the Australian Nuclear Veterans Association.

Professor Chris Busby, Britain's leading independent expert on low-level radiation.

Dennis Hayden, Founder of the Combined Veterans' Forum International.

Ken McGinley, Former Chairman of the British Nuclear Test Veterans Association.

Alan Rimmer, Editor of Fissionline.

Dai Williams, A civilian academic assisting veterans and widows at Tribunals.

and

Dave Whyte, a vexation to successive administrations for his persistent questions.

All of the above activists received a letter from TSOC - Treasury Solicitors' Office with an accusation of breaking the Official Secrets Act. They were all given just 48 hours in which to return, or destroy, a classified document or be arrested.

This threat did not spoil the above NTV activists' Christmases, because due to the exchange of information between veterans in Britain and Australia, the Tsoc were informed their threats held no validity. This is because the information said to be held had been published in the Australian newspapers a decade ago. 

2) Nuclear Activist Dave Whyte's meeting with Minister Al Carns on 2 July.

After 23 years of waiting for a meeting with a Minister for Veterans ( page 17 of Atom magazine), at an allotted time in Kirkcaldy, Dave Whyte was sent to the wrong meeting address after travelling from Kirkcaldy in Fife.

Dave then had to travel to the other side of Kirkcaldy for the designated meeting venue. As a result, this nuclear test veteran had minimal time in which to express his concerns and had to leave a comprehensive dossier with Minister Carns instead.

The fact of the matter is, all activist nuclear veterans know we have to keep talking to the MoD and badgering Ministers with the truth. This is the only way newly appointed Ministers  (such as Al Carns) will begin to realise they are being used by the MoD as stooges in a 70-year-old policy deception and delay to ensure the blocking of the entitled justice sought by the NTV community veterans, widows and descendants.

Al Carns

Al Carns, at present, in the view of NTV campaigners, is historically in the control of the 'Mushroom Brigade'.  That is, he is working under the remit of senior civil servants' policy to ensure the public and media are kept fully in the dark and only fed horse manure with regard to the truth of the betrayal of the MoD and partners.

The policy is an enforced substitute for the historic truth of the deliberate experiments on men, without adequate personal protection and equipment.

This explains why nuke-vet activist Dave Whyte was given limited time to express his long-running concerns to Minister Al Carns in Edinburgh on 2 July. NTV Dave's only option was to hand a comprehensive and detailed dossier of the MoD's unfitness of purpose to openly and honestly handle the NTV community's concerns.

3)    The 10.12 1993 Treaty to Deny Justice for the NTV Community.

Documents obtained from the National Archives in Canberra by nuclear test veteran activist Royal Australian Engineer, Alan Batchelor MBE, between 2005 and 2010, expose the lengths to which two democratic nations stooped to deny the truth.

From 1986 until 1993, documents show seven 'Cabinet–in–Confidence' meetings took place between the British and Australian Governments, which resulted in the signing and enforcement, on 10 December 1993, of a bilateral Treaty.

The Treaty between Australia, the nation that supplied the uranium weapon test locations, and Britain, which constructed the nuclear weapons and assorted radioactive isotopes being experimented with at test locations, agreed to exchange information. Both nations agreed to “ work together to deny any compensation” to the servicemen and civilians who worked at nuclear test locations.

Immediately following the enforcement of the Treaty, both nations created reciprocal Ministers for Veterans, working within the reciprocal Veterans Affairs Agency's.

The sole negative undemocratic purpose of which being the setting up of biased Tribunals to ensure any claims (always without legal aid) made by nuclear test veterans and widows for nuclear induced legacy ill health,  premature deaths and genetic damage passed to the children of nuclear test veterans etc would be 'kangaroo courts' for the avoidance any accountability and responsibility.

This, unknown to the public and to the media, the Treaty is still being enforced today. As with the forgotten Army of the recent VJ  80^th Anniversary celebrations, this is a fact of history which is being ignored and should be noted in the proposed Tribunal hearings referred to at the start of this letter for the attention of Atom Magazine.

4) With further Reference to the Current MoD Review of  NTV Medical Records.

The truth of the matter is these records are held by the Personnel Management  Departments of the Royal Navy, Army and Air Force under the control of the Chiefs of Staff of all three services. That is, the medical records are under the control of yet another contractual partnership of the Ministry of Defence, enforced since 1952.

The net result is that the Ministry of Defence is unfit for purpose to control veterans' affairs. And, as the false accusation of breaching the Official Secrets Act in 2012 is concerned, the truth continues to leak into the public domain. In 2025, the leaks continue from a rusty and toxic bucket of biased culture enforced since 1952.

Data already exposed show the MoD is in a far weaker position than has been indicated in Atom magazine: 70 years of political and legal corruptive cover-up has resulted in a dystopian scandal. 

The policy of successive administrations to protect the reputations of the MoD and this department's numerous contractual partnerships, which includes the Chiefs of Staff of the Armed Forces, has come at a cost of multi - £ millions of pounds taken by taxation from the hard-working British people. 

Wide-scale reform is therefore necessary to avoid the nation's decline into becoming an autocracy. An autocracy with a Ministry of Defence at the centre of a culture of undemocratic policy, which in the past has only been equalled by the ideology of the Soviet Union's cold-war Kremlin bureaucrats.

The above gives reason why the NTV family community is in a far stronger position than as indicated to readers in the latest edition of the ATOM magazine.

Dennis Hayden

Nuke Vet activist since 1982

V-Club Associate of www.labrats.international

On behalf of the Combined History Archive of Nuclear Veterans.

P.S.

All the above  points are supported by the book ' A Legacy of Inherited Criminality.'

Digital copy of which is available from https://www.labrats.international/product-page/a-legacy-of-inherited-criminality

Addendum

Because the nuclear test veteran community is denied any legal aid, all funds raised will be allocated to support the ongoing case to obtain NTV's medical records by the legal team of McCue, Jury and Partners of London.

IN THE INTEREST OF FREEDOM OF INFORMATION, ANY RECIPIENT OF THIS LETTER IS REQUESTED TO PASS A COPY TO ANYONE ELSE OF THEIR CHOICE, INCLUDING POLITICIANS AND MEMBERS OF THE MEDIA.

To read the latest copy of ATOM, please join as an Associate member. Membership is free until 1st April 2026 and is open to all British and Commonwealth Nuclear Test Veterans and their families.

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