When Dropping A Sweet Wrapper...
....is regarded as more of a crime than poisoning an entire island.
Gruinard Island. Seen from a (relatively) safe distance (Toby Speight/geograph)
Now here’s a thing.
If you or I were to be seen dropping an empty packet of crisps or a sweet wrapper onto any street or the open countryside, there is every chance that someone armed with a clipboard and officious attitude might be able to issue us with a fine of up to £2500.
And, lest you all now think I’m a serial litterer, that’s a sanction I heartily concur with. We live in a terribly untidy and litter strewn nation, so it is only right and fair that those who treat the great outdoors in the same casual manner they might regard their own homes are suitably brought to heel.
But look.
We all know that Governments, all over the world, live by the mantra, “…do as I say, not as I do”. Which means that whilst DEFRA can spend time and money educating us all about why we mustn’t despoil our surroundings, their masters at the very highest level of Government can, at the same time, sanction the dropping of anthrax bombs onto a remote and beautiful Scottish island.
The motivation to do so came from the perceived threat that, at some point in the Second World War, if things weren’t going terribly well for Nazi forces, then they might, as an act of desperation, launch either chemical or biological attacks against either allied troops or civilians (ie) British towns and cities.
It was therefore not unreasonable, mused powers that be, to, a) try to establish how effective and widespread an attack of that nature might be, and, b), in the event of it ever taking place, having an effective response available in kind.
A friendly welcome awaits curious visitors at Porton Down (Oscar Taylor/geograph)
This led to, in 1942, to British scientists from Porton Down heading off to the remote Gruinard Island which, after being successfully ‘requisitioned’ from its then owners (I find it hard to believe they were even remotely happy about having to do so) started carrying out tests of that nature on the island which culminated, over the summers of 1942 and 1943, with a Wellington aircraft dropping the anthrax laden bombs on or nearby to some sheep that had been placed in open pens across the island.
Inadvertently dropping your sweet wrapper onto the local High Street doesn’t seem quite such a big deal now, does it?
The effect of the anthrax on the sheep was swift and deadly. They were all dead or dying within three days of the bombs having been dropped with both the effectiveness of the weapon and the area that it ultimately covered leading to one report that followed these tests stating, with fiendish glee;
…the report of the Gruinard experiment indicated that biological weapons are highly effective and can paralyse or render cities inhospitable”.
Can we assume, from that brief and simple sentence that, if needed, a British Government would have sanctioned the dropping of biological weapons onto the civilian population of a city that, war or not, would have been the home of several hundred thousand non combatants?
Gruinard Island seen from atop the neighbouring Torr Mor (Michael Earnshaw/geograph)
Presumably, had the need been, somehow, justified, they would have done just that?
Fortunately, as World War Two was, at this time, looking as if it would ultimately result in victory for the combined allied forces, the tests at Gruinard were ultimately abandoned. The owner duly requested that they be able to re-purchase the island from the Government which, for £500, they were able to do with the caveat that they could not take back possession of the island until it was free of the contaminating anthrax spores. The British Government made, however, little to no attempt to clean up the deadly mess they’d made and, for two decades after the end of the war, tests on animals still living on the islands still showed traces of anthrax in their bodies.
Finally, in 1990, the British Government stage managed a visit by a junior defence minister (why didn’t they send Tom King, the then Minister of Defence?) who stood, smiling at the cameras, by the water’s edge on the island as the signs that warned of its contamination were, finally, removed.
It turned out to be a largely cosmetic exercise however, and nobody was fooled, the proof positive coming with the fact that, even today, over three decades later, Gruinard Island remains abandoned and barren, with the only visitors that it ever has being accidental ones.
An ongoing tragedy that still shames it’s planners and plotters.