Fallout: Hedley Marston and the British Bomb Tests in Australia
By Roger Cross
Wakefield Press, 2001
187 pages, $24.95 (pb)
REVIEW BY JIM GREEN
Fallout recounts the story of the cabal of British and Australian politicians, bureaucrats and scientists which conspired to prevent an informed public debate on the merits of nuclear weapons testing in Australia in the 1950s.
Written by Roger Cross, a senior lecturer in science and mathematics education at Melbourne University, Fallout is also the intriguing story of Hedley Marston — a celebrated biochemist working for the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) — and his fight against those he described as "ruthless liars in high places".
In 1955, British authorities sought the CSIRO's assistance with biological experiments on the effects of radiation on animals during and after the nuclear weapons tests planned for the Monte Bello Islands, off the coast of Western Australia, and at Maralinga, South Australia.
Enter Marston, using British equipment to obtain potentially scandalous data on radioactive fallout over vast tracts of Australia, including Adelaide. Worse still for the authorities, Marston was not clearly bound by secrecy provisions.
To calm public fears, the federal government appointed the Australian Atomic Weapons Tests Safety Committee in 1955. British authorities vetted the membership of the committee, and in the case of Ernest Titterton, there was a clear conflict of interest as he had been involved in the British effort to develop nuclear weapons.
The safety committee worked tirelessly to pacify legitimate public fears and colluded with politicians, bureaucrats and the establishment media to stage-manage publicity before and after the 1956-57 tests. This was, as Cross notes, "contrary to all acceptable scientific or journalistic practice".
The safety committee knew — from measurements taken by Marston and others — that vast tracts of Australia (including Adelaide) were dusted with radioactive fallout following the tests. Scientists were (and are) divided over the health effects of low-level radiation — a point acknowledged by the safety committee. Consequently, repeated assurances that the tests posed no risks were unjustifiable.
Marston wrote in a report to physicist Leslie Martin, chairperson of the safety committee: "In the light of our findings, press reports of public statements made by you and by other members of the Safety Committee from time to time during the recent weapons tests have been disturbing. Your 'unequivocal assurance' that the fallout is 'completely innocuous', that there is 'no possible risk of danger or harm to any person', 'no risk whatsoever to people', has been the opposite of reassuring."
Any number of tactics were used by the nuclear cabal to suppress information and dissent. The government refused to allow the publication of weather conditions in north-western Australia following the June 19, 1956 test at Monte Bello Islands.
Martin claimed that animal thyroids tested after the September 7, 1956 test at Maralinga showed no evidence of any radioactive iodine or any other radioactive substance, yet Marston's results indicated just the opposite; almost certainly, Martin was lying — or his subordinates were lying to him.
The British authorities tried to get Marston to return his measuring equipment before he had completed his measurements of animal thyroids.
The safety committee (and others) went to great lengths to avoid acknowledgement of the contamination of Adelaide following the October 11, 1956 test; this included falsifying information in an article published in the Australian Journal of Science.
Anti-communist red-baiting was a recurring theme, as when the minister of supply, Howard Beale, asserted that radioactive fallout from the tests was not an issue except for "the Communists and a few fellow travellers".
Marston's research proved that vast tracts of Australia (including Adelaide) had been subjected to radioactive fallout, and controlled experiments also proved that most of the exposure to livestock came from contaminated feed (posing a long-term risk) rather than contaminated air (a shorter-term risk).
The nuclear cabal did everything it could to prevent Marston from publishing his research, or failing that, to minimise the political fallout. Delaying tactics were deployed again and again. There was deliberate obfuscation in relation to scientific data and its interpretation, selective use of available scientific data, specious and irrelevant comparisons between radioactive fallout from the tests and background radiation and medical radiation, plus pressure on Marston not to publish.
The safety committee placed a number of conditions on publication of Marston's manuscript despite having no authority to do so. Once publication was inevitable and could no longer be delayed, the committee schemed to publish an article critical of Marston's research in the same issue of the same journal as Marston's expose.
The committee demanded a copy of Marston's final manuscript prior to publication, which it had no right to do. There is, according to Cross, "strong evidence" that Titterton lied to Marston's superior at the CSIRO, claiming the British authorities demanded certain changes to the manuscript which they had not demanded.
Eventually Marston's manuscript was published, in the August 1958 edition of the Australian Journal of Biological Sciences. Twenty months (and three more weapons tests) had passed since Marston first completed his report.
Marston hoped and expected that publication of his research would fuel the political controversy over weapons testing. However, only one publication picked up Marston's research — a national farmers' paper, Stock and Land.
The research was undoubtedly newsworthy (not least the contamination of Adelaide), and the daily metropolitan papers must have known about Marston's research, if only through Stock and Land. "Most likely they were leaned on by the government", Cross argues.
Cross says he wrote this story of "jealousy, hate and power in the hope that we may come to a better understanding of the tensions that lurk behind the bland face of 'science rhetoric' here in Australia". He achieves that aim, but also tends to undermine his arguments with some overblown commentary on the uniqueness of the events surrounding the weapons tests.
For example, he claims that the saga surrounding Marston's manuscript, and in particular the delaying tactics, represented what was "arguably, the worst case of politically motivated interference in Australian science". And he says that Titterton's attempt to publish a parallel paper in the same edition of the Australian Journal of Biological Sciences as Marston's paper was "an affront to scientific protocol ... an almost unheard-of breach of confidentiality".
However, the manipulation of science and scientists ("jiggery-pokery" as Marston called it) by corporate and political elites is commonplace. Almost every dirty trick used by the nuclear cabal in the 1950s has been deployed in more recent controversies in Australia over uranium mining, reactors and radioactive waste dumping.
In the preface to Fallout, Cross notes that in March 2000, industry minister Nick Minchin declared Maralinga "safe" after $108 million had been spent on a "clean-up". Cross invites readers to compare Hedley Marston with nuclear engineer Alan Parkinson, who lost his job as a government adviser on the Maralinga "clean-up" and has since become a vocal whistle-blower.
Both Marston and Parkinson have played important roles in exposing the scandals surrounding the weapons tests and the "clean-up", respectively. But Parkinson has been far more influential than was Marston, if only because the media has been more receptive to his expose.
Many comparisons can be drawn between the Australian Atomic Weapons Tests Safety Committee and the current "independent" nuclear regulator, the Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Agency (ARPANSA).
As with the ARPANSA's "independence" is open to question given its links to the government and to the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation (ANSTO).
Just as politicians were at pains to invoke the scientific authority of the safety committee in the 1950s, so too any mention of the Maralinga "clean-up" (or the plans for a new reactor in Sydney or a radioactive waste dump in South Australia) is almost invariably accompanied with soothing remarks about the oversight of the "independent" regulator ARPANSA.
As in the 1950s, there is a vast gap between the public and private faces of nuclear agencies. Privately, Geoff Williams, a senior ARPANSA officer, expressed his annoyance at a "host of indiscretions, short-cuts and cover-ups" associated with the "clean-up". Publicly, ARPANSA chief executive John Loy describes the "clean-up" as "world's best practice".
Parkinson wrote in the April 22, 2000 Canberra Times: "Is Dr Loy saying that a hole in the ground, without any treatment or lining is world best practice? That isn't even world best practice for disposal of household garbage, let alone a long-lived hazardous substance such as plutonium."
Another point of comparison is the treatment of the Maralinga Tjarutja — as racist under the Howard government as it was in the 1950s. As Parkinson notes: "A very disturbing feature of the Maralinga ["clean-up"] project is the lack of openness about what was done. Even those who might be the future custodians of the land have not been kept truthfully informed on the project."