Keir Starmer urged to do just one thing every day to fix the Nuked Blood scandal
Keir Starmer was already gacing a £5bn lawsuit and police investigation over a cover-up of human experiments on British troops.
Now a video of Labour's broken promises to survivors has gone viral, with 2 million people seeing proof of Cabinet ministers demanding compensation schemes they've failed to come up with in office.
And after 327 days of Downing Street ignoring requests to resolve what has become known as the Nuked Blood scandal, campaigners have vowed to repost the clips every day until they get a sit-down with the PM.
Starmer risks further humiliation in the months to come, with publication of an estimated 750,000 classified documents packed with juicy details of what really happened to 40,000 troops ordered to take part in nuclear weapons trials over more than a decade.
Alan Owen, founder of campaign group LABRATS, said: "Keir was the first party leader to sit down with members of the nuclear community and we believed him when he said 'your campaign is our campaign'. But after almost a year in government we are no nearer the truth or justice. Veterans are dying every week, and families are suffering chronic illness and psychological harm.
"We can start to fix that if we can show him our evidence of an official cover-up of biological experiments with radiation. It is fairer to the taxpayer to resolve it now, rather than wait for a judge's order. All we want is for him to look us in the eye and hear what we have to tell him."
The Ministry of Defence has denied for seven decades that troops were deliberately put in harm's way during the Cold War race to create nuclear weapons. But in 2022 the Mirror uncovered a memo detailing the blood tests of Group Captain Terry Gledhill, conducted before, during and after he led a squadron of planes through the mushroom clouds to gather samples.
It led to more than 30 separate orders for blood tests, covering thousands of men in all three armed forces, plus Commonwealth troops and indigenous people, between 1952 and 1967. Most were locked on a top secret database, codenamed Merlin, at the Atomic Weapons Establishment, which is about to be declassified and published following cross-party pressure from parliament and the Mirror. A partial release has already revealed hundreds of named servicemen called up for testing, confirmation that thousands were involved, and analysis of the results by weapons scientists.
Yet veterans who remember giving blood and urine specimens have found their medical records are missing, denying them accurate diagnosis for the high rates of cancers and blood disorders they report, as well as blocking war pensions and compensation.
In Opposition, Labour bigwigs who now hold influential government roles said "it shames us as a country" that nuclear veterans did not have justice, and demanded financial compensation from the Tories.
Deputy Leader Angela Rayner sent campaigners a video she had scripted herself, calling for the Tories to "set up an appropriate financial compensation programme for veterans and their descendants". Defence Secretary John Healey told the Labour Party Conference that the lack of a scheme "shames us, it shames us as a country". And Armed Forces Minister Luke Pollard told the Mirror's News Agenda podcast that it was "really dumb" for the Tories not to have paid out already.
Peter Stefanovic, lawyer and CEO of the Campaign for Social Justice, edited the clips together and has been sharing them on social media, gathering more than 2m views in just a few weeks.
He said: "They all backed compensation for our nuclear test veterans while in Opposition, and Keir Starmer himself told them 'the country owes you a huge debt of honour. Your campaign is our campaign'. I will repost my film every single day until the PM agrees to meet with them to discuss how his government will honour the commitment his party made to these national heroes."
LABRATS asked the PM for a meeting within days of his taking office, but has had no response for 327 days. The Mirror has also asked Mr Healey for a meeting, but none has been arranged. The Met Police are assessing a 500-page dossier of evidence about allegations of criminal misconduct in public office, while lawyers are preparing to issue a legal claim for the missing medical records that is predicted to lead to a 10-figure payout.
Last month, the MoD admitted the monitoring "may have been" conducted without proper medical supervision.
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