70 Years and still Geigercounting

Press Release

Scottish Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament 3 October 2022

70 Years and Still Geigercounting: The Art of UK Nuclear Testing

On October 3rd 1952, the UK conducted its first nuclear tests in Australia. 

Seventy years on, Scottish CND is hosting a webinar with indigenous artists and activists to explore what that has meant for them, along with some of the veterans who have also been affected.

The United Kingdom conducts its first nuclear test at Montebello Islands off the coast of Western Australia. It later conducts a series of tests at Maralinga and Emu Fields in South Australia. 

These are rural areas that the UK government of the 1950s regarded as unpopulated, despite the presence of aboriginal people. 

Aboriginal people have written, spoken and made art as a means of communicating the terrible harm that they have experienced from the tests.

The colonial nature of the relationship between the UK and Australia meant that the Australian prime minister Robert Menzies accepted the opportunity to host the atomic tests with hapless ardour and relinquished any control over how and when they were to be conducted. The Australian public was given no information about the tests which offered no benefit or reward to Australia 

The explosions not only caused immediate destruction but the radioactive fallout and toxic pollution caused longer-term harms which, for some families, continue down through generations. 

These tests were not only devastating for the lives, culture and health of the Indigenous communities, but they also resulted in permanent radioactive contamination of the land itself. The traditions of living from the land and in the open put indigenous people at even greater risk than would have been the case, a risk of harm from radioactive particles that lasts beyond the lifetimes of those present at the tests, Minimal efforts were made to warn aboriginal people. Where warning was given, there was no protection offered, it only meant that Aboriginal people were denied access to their traditional lands. 

As a partner in the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, Scottish CND has respect and gratitude for the part played by the Australian aboriginal community in advocacy for the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons when it was negotiated at the United Nations in 2017. After the death of her unborn daughter, a second-generation survivor of the Maralinga test said “I wonder, if my sisters or my sons have children, are there going to be more of our babies that are born with tumours and are they going to have to suffer the grief that I carry?”

Speaking for aboriginal communities: Yami Lester, Karina Lester, Sue Coleman-Haseldine, Mia Haseldine

Aboriginal artwork: Rita Bryant, Alinta Smart, Melvina Smart, Mima Smart, Eileen Miller and Ann Marie Woods Images and further details can be seen here

Speaking for veterans in Australia: Avon Hudson

and in the UK: Douglas Hern, David Hemsley, Ronald Bostwick, Peter Barnard, George Brooker

The webinar will be hosted by Scottish CND Chair Lynn Jamieson

Ends

Contact Lynn Jamieson 07974631397

Janet Fenton 07795594573