London Socialist Historians Group

Liz Willis, "The British Government, WMD, and spin, 1950s style"

Summary of a paper presented at the New Socialist Approaches to History seminar, Institute of Historical Research, October 6th 2003.

• Summary
• Publication information

After the Second World War, five series of experiments with animals at sea were undertaken as part of the British biological weapons (BW) research programme:

• Operation Harness in Caribbean waters off Antigua, Bahamas, 1948-49
• Operation Cauldron in Scottish waters off Stornoway, Isle of Lewis, 1952
• Operation Hesperus (same location as Cauldron), 1953.
• Operation Ozone in Caribbean waters off Nassau, Bahamas, 1954
• Operation Negation (same location as Ozone), 1954-55.

'Harness' was a pilot scheme. Trials were conducted by Britain, overseen by scientists from Porton Down under the auspices of the Ministry of Supply, with the cooperation of the USA and Canada (the BW tripartite alliance). Secrecy was a prime concern. The organisms (BW agents) tested included plague, brucellosis, and tularaemia ('rabbit fever'). They were tested variously on monkeys, guinea-pigs, mice and chick embryos.

Prior to 'Cauldron' the Scottish Home and Health Department (SHHD), raised the question of compensation payments to fishermen for loss of normal catches but this was not agreed in principle. At the end of the 'Cauldron' series a trawler, the Carella from Hull, passed through the danger area while the plague organism was being tested, and was kept under covert observation while returning to Fleetwood, and then to the Icelandic fishing grounds, until the incubation period was over. Ministers met to discuss action, and briefings were prepared for the PM. A Naval Medical Officer was to render medical assistance; help was not to be sought in any foreign port. The Admiralty kept only one complete file on the 'incident'; all other records were to be destroyed by fire.

Prior to 'Hesperus', the Ministry considered issuing a statement about the sea trials but the PM was 'most insistent' that there should be no publicity and nothing said unless 'some issue' was raised in the House of Commons. As in the previous year, no breach of security was reported, but the Hebridean weather (the area is prone to gale-force winds) had hampered activities.

In the run-up to 'Ozone' the Cabinet asked for a draft press statement in case any leakage should make one necessary and at midnight on 11 March 1954 a press notice was issued 'because a journalist had got to know something'. This asserted the need to be prepared for all kinds of attack, in view of which trials had been carried out off the coast of Scotland in recent years to obtain the technical data on which precautions should be based. Certain further trials were to be held in Bahamas waters. Press cuttings about the BW programme were collected on file, the more inaccurate apparently the better in the official view.

In May, widespread serious agitation on the issue was reported by the British Ambassador in Cuba. The Foreign Office asked to be consulted in advance of any resumption of the Bahamas trials, but decided it would not raise objections, despite protests from the Cuban government. In June 1954 the return of the laboratory ship involved, HMS Ben Lomond, brought renewed press interest, and Parliamentary Questions (PQs) about BW in the UK. In September 1954 the PM formally agreed to resumption of trials in the Bahamas in October despite fears of further protests and agitation. A new press release was issued in the Bahamas about the next season's trials, Operation Negation, 1954-55.

Reports, scientific and naval, on the trials generally voiced satisfaction, but MPs and doctors were among those who spoke out against BW weapons development. The phrase 'weapons of mass destruction' - though not the acronym WMD - was current in the wake of allegations about the US deploying BW in Korean.

A changing political climate, and the enormous cost, brought the end of the sea trials programme. Subsequent publicity about them was sparse and sporadic: an MP's question in 1979; a front-page article in The Observer on 21-7-85, "Germ Bomb Sprayed Trawler"; a brief account in Robert Harris' and Jeremy Paxman's A Higher Form of Killing: The Secret History of Gas and Germ Warfare(first edition, 1982). PQs in the mid-1990s brought a little more information, then Operation Cauldron received extended treatment in the (Scottish) Sunday Herald, in March 2003 and the Carella incident was described in the West Highland Free Pressin April.

Several useful files are now declassified. More work is being done on the topic.