34. Memorandum submitted by Lilly Lewy
I attended the CCA/TUC conference on the Bill
yesterday. One subject which was not raised by anyone is the subject
of this submission:
In the Porton Down experiments the Ministry
of Defence was in the position of "employer" to the
Armed Forces and thus of National Servicemen, to most of whom—being
under the age of majority—it was also their temporary guardian,
charged with the duty of training them.
The deliberate exposure of these young National
Servicemen (duped into submitting under the pretext of research
into the Common Cold) to substances known to be harmful (for full
details see the accounts published in the course of the recent
inquest on the death of Roland Maddison, Trowbridge, Wiltshire
was quite obviously in deliberate breach of all health and safety
regulations, whether they existed at the time or not.
The death of Roland Maddison 50 years ago was
therefore definitely corporate manslaughter by the Crown and its
agents.
Such occasions were not imagined by the drafters
and presenters of the Bill, or deliberately ignored for "policy
reasons." Please let me know which it was.
This form of CM requires to be incorporated
and to be made retrospective in application (as in the "R
v R" case, ca.1991, where it was at last made plain that
no husband had the right to rape his wife: and when the Offender
appealed, claiming that such rape had been no breach of the law
at the time he committed the offence, the Court of Appeal ruled
that the injuries inflicted on the victim were so grave that the
conviction was fully justified).
The immediate death, more than 50 years ago,
of one young National Serviceman, and the increased morbidity
and mortality of the cohorts who underwent Porton Down processing
and still suffer (if they survive at all) the after-effects, have
in exactly the same way had so grave effects on the survivors
that a prosecution must be undertaken.
14 June 2005
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