Jeffrey ‘Jeff’ Liddiatt was born in Bristol in 1940. Liddiatt’s father was in the RAF during the Second World War. Shortly after joining the Royal Air Force (RAF) himself, Liddiatt was posted to Australia to assist with the Minor Trials at Edinburgh Field and Maralinga. He was then posted to Gloucester. Following his service in the RAF, Liddiatt worked in engineering. He has faced significant health problems throughout his life and first began to get involved with the nuclear test veteran movement in the 1980s. He led the application for the British Nuclear Test Veterans Association (BNTVA) to be assigned charitable status. Liddiatt also founded the Nuclear Community Charity Fund (NCCF) to assist nuclear test veterans with specific medical needs. He played an important role in the creation of the Nuclear Test Medal and received an MBE for his work in this field. Liddiatt now lives with his wife in Portishead.
Interview extracts
Description
Jeff Liddiatt did his National Service with the RAF at Maralinga in the early 1960s. He contributed to the Minor Trials, which involved various scientific experiments with radioactive materials. While these trials did not involve the detonation of atomic or thermonuclear bombs, they were often just as dangerous and caused more contamination of the Maralinga site than the standard tests. Despite these risks, Liddiatt states that he cannot be sure if his health issues have been connected to his service.
In the clip, he describes what he perceived as the need to make the British Nuclear Test Veterans Association (BNTVA) a more respectable, high-profile organisation. He tried different tactics to gain support from the government, in contrast to actions by others within the BNTVA. To this end, he was a leading figure in gaining charitable status for the BNTVA in 2017.
This is a short extract from an in-depth interview. Jeff Liddiatt was recorded for the Oral History of British Nuclear Test Veterans project in 2024. The interviewer was Joshua A Bushen. The project was run in partnership with National Life Stories and the full interview can be accessed at the British Library.
Transcript
Well, we were talking to John Baron MP. He came into this because one of his constituents had a son which was very badly affected medically, so John and a Labour colleague – and there again, I can’t remember his name – set up a cross-party investigation which we had in Parliament. And that was the first chink of real organisation. And people started taking note of the possibility, not any fact, just the possibility.
At this time though, did you believe that the radiation had caused your health effect, or were you just…
Well, there was the possibility.
But there was never any certainty in your mind?
There is no certainty of any sort.
[ends at 0:00:54]
