Grenfell, the Post Office, infected blood, Hillsborough … Britain has witnessed a long series of injustices where walls of silence and lies have stopped the powerless inconveniencing the powerful by telling their whole truths. To that list, in the section where further disclosure is still urgently required, we should add the UK’s nuclear testing scandal. This calmly scathing documentary sets out the case.
Post-second world war, the US and the USSR engaged in a nuclear arms race, and Britain – desperate to cling to its place at the world’s top table – felt obliged to join them. As it tried to keep up with developments in atomic and hydrogen bombs, nuclear tests were desired, but letting off nukes anywhere near regular British citizens was politically unviable, so distant lands were sought and human guinea pigs identified.
