Navy's H-bomb veterans push on with legal claim

New Zealand nuclear test veterans seeking compensation from the British Government are continuing their legal battle, despite a funding setback.

About 551 New Zealand Navy personnel witnessed nine nuclear detonations during Operation Grapple at Christmas Island and in the Malden Islands in Kiribati in 1957 and 1958.

New Zealand Nuclear Test Veterans Association president Roy Sefton is in London talking to lawyers preparing a class action against the British Government over the testing.

He said yesterday matters had been stalled temporarily by funding issues.

"The legal action that we are bringing was originally funded by the UK legal services commission," Mr Sefton said.

"It was to be funded in three payments. The first payment was paid to the lawyers, but the commission has not responded with a second payment to date."

Mr Sefton said the British Nuclear Test Veterans Association hoped to use the British media to bring pressure on the commission to honour the two further payments.

The British veterans were taking the issue to the House of Lords, he said.

Meanwhile, the lawyers had served a letter of claim on the British Ministry of Defence late last year and had agreed to wait until late June for a response from the ministry, Mr Sefton said.

"But that, of course, won't solve the legal funding issue," he said.

The association hoped the as yet unknown results of a research project they had commissioned at Massey University in Palmerston North would help their funding battle. "The lawyers advise us that if there are indeed markers that indicate radiation damage to the veterans' DNA repair system, then that could assist in bringing more pressure on the legal services commission here."

Mr Sefton has been in Britain for about five weeks.

"We've done a bit of touring round - mainly to find academics and academic opinion that refutes the opinion that's been held for four or five decades that radiation didn't cause any damage to veterans at Operation Grapple.

"A scientist at Manchester University had given us good opinion that the veterans could well have been exposed, and indeed that there was high radiation on Christmas Island at that time - 1957 and 1958."

The association suffered a setback in 2003 when a British National Radiological Protection Board study found nuclear test veterans in Australia and the Pacific were no more susceptible to cancers than members of the public.

More than 22,000 British, 14,000 Australian and 500 New Zealand servicemen were involved in 21 nuclear explosions at Maralinga in South Australia and several Pacific islands from 1952 to 1958.

Despite the funding hurdle the battle would continue, Mr Sefton said.

After "decades of fighting" the association was looking at "something similar to the Vietnam veterans" - who after many years had an apology from the NZ Government, and were told in fact they were right.

- NZPA