He voiced his fears to a doctor and was frustrated when the man showed little interest. The doctor took notes, but said he was unable to say one way or the other if they were connected, adding that he ‘rather doubted it’.
Murdo insisted, however, that it be looked in to, and the doctor reluctantly agreed to take it up with his colleagues. Meanwhile John continued to improve and he was moved to the hospital’s geriatric unit (it was felt his presence would be too upsetting on the baby ward) where he soon became a firm favourite with the old folk.
Murdo said: “We wanted to take him home, but the doctors thought it would be best if he stayed on at hospital. They said he would be subjected to ridicule from other children if he was allowed out. We didn’t like it, but the doctors said John still needed a lot of treatment and it was best if they kept an eye on him.
“We bided our time because we wanted what was best for him. But we yearned to take him home. John was such a bright, happy little boy. He used to crawl all over the ward, getting up to mischief and making everyone laugh. As soon as we walked into the ward he would scoot over to us and throw his arms around us, and he used to cry when we left. I begged the doctors to let him come home with us, but they always seemed to find some excuse for him to stay.”
During this time Murdo was surprised to receive a summons to the hospital to see a consultant who had been sent up from London. Murdo was expecting a talk about his son and, hopefully, be given news about when he could take him home. Instead, he found himself being effectively chastised for bringing up the A-bomb tests.
“I was greatly surprised,” he said. “This man questioned me quite severely about why I thought the bomb tests had anything to do with John. I told him about the animals and the fact I had no protective clothing at all and that I couldn’t think of any other reason why John was born the way he was.
“The consultant got very impatient with this and told me in no uncertain terms that ‘all that’ had nothing whatever to do with John or what had happened to him. He told me I must just wipe all that from my mind. He repeated that several times. He tried to make me feel foolish, as though it wasn’t my business to be worrying about ‘all that.’ The man even accused me of scaremongering and it wouldn’t help anything if I carried on talking like that. I was most surprised by his attitude. After all I was only trying to get to the bottom of why my son was born the way he was.”
Murdo was in for an even bigger surprise a few days later when he was again summoned to the hospital.
“I was shown into this room with all these people sitting round a table. I didn‘t know most of them, didn’t know where they had come from. It was like going before some sort of tribunal and I was on trial. One of the few people I did know, a doctor, told me that John’s condition was so serious that it was doubtful he would ever be allowed home. I was told it was in the child’s best interests if the local authority took responsibility for him. I started to protest, but another man chipped in and said that everything would be taken care of. A special place had been prepared for John on the mainland where he would get all the care and attention he needed.”
A document was produced for Murdo to sign. He found himself staring at an official form, a care order, effectively relinquishing the MacLeod’s from all parental rights to their son. Confused and with the anger boiling inside, Murdo demanded to know the reason for the sudden change in attitude. He pointed out that assurances had been given they would be able to take John home at some stage.
The vague replies he received made him even angrier: “They wouldn’t give me a straight answer to anything. I felt we had been messed around for long enough. I was suddenly very afraid we might never see our wee lad again. I remember shouting at them that we loved our son and meant to have him with us, no matter what they thought and I remember throwing the document at them across the table. ‘I’m not signing that,’ I said and walked out.
“When I got home I didn’t tell Margaret because it would have been too upsetting. I did tell her it might be longer than we thought before we could have John with us.”
In fact it was more than a year before the family were united. During that time Murdo was involved in an almost constant battle with the authorities who said they wanted to keep John for what seemed an almost endless series of tests.
Murdo recalled: “I was convinced they were hiding something from me. Looking back now I am more convinced than ever. At one stage they even admitted to me there was nothing more medically that could be done for John, yet they still wanted to carry out tests.
“Why? I asked myself over and over again. They even took him to Edinburgh for some reason and didn’t even tell us. I realise now that what they were doing was wrong, but what could I do? I knew nothing about the law and I mistrusted lawyers even more than I did the doctors. All I could do was keep battling away at them, insisting they let John come home.”
The turning point came when Murdo’s local community decided to rally around to help. They’d heard about little John and began to lobby local politicians to do something about him. The pressure finally brought results and John, at last, was released into the care of his parents.
They took John home in triumph and the whole village turned out for a celebration. John was given pride of place at a big party and all the children came to wish him well. Far from ridiculing him, they all fought over who was going to be his best friend.
The MacLeod’s hugged each other and cried as they watched John at the table surrounded by all his new friends. John sat smiling, loving every minute of it. Murdo said: “Some said he looked like a little old man, but we loved him. I knew we had done the right thing in bringing him home.”
But John was still a very sick little boy and they were warned something would take him sooner rather than later. John Alexander MacLeod, died in his mother’s arms at two o’clock on the morning of December 20, 1963. He was three and a half years old and his death, according to the certificate, was due to a brain haemorrhage.
The whole village turned out for his funeral. Prayers were said in local churches, and children in the village school were given the morning off. Bells pealed as the small funeral cortege made its way to the little hilltop cemetery at the end of the village. There, buffeted by the clean, wild Atlantic winds, little John, a victim of ‘God’s will’ was laid to rest.
CHILDREN OF THE BOMB
John MacLeod introduced a new dimension to the nuclear veterans’ campaign. The idea that men, who may have been exposed to radiation many years ago, could father ‘mutant children’ (as some of the more lurid sections of the press later dubbed them) had something of a Hollywood ‘B’ movie ring to it.
McGinley decided to contact other BNTVA members to try to gauge the extent of the problem. He was staggered by the results. A pattern emerged showing that throughout the late 1950s and early 1960s hundreds of deformed, crippled and sick babies were born to the wives and partners of test veterans.
The records later showed that more than 750 children suffered various genetic disorders. Incidences of cancer, blood disease, Down’s syndrome, spina bifida and other crippling illnesses were well above normal levels. Whole families were affected; it was almost like a biblical plague, and yet no-one had sounded the alarm. How had this scandal gone unnoticed for so long?
A very prominent Welsh politician, whose sister’s husband had spent two years on Christmas Island, provided one answer. He said his sister was so overwhelmed by grief at what had happened to her family that she was simply unable to talk about it. He said her husband, a soldier, had died of pancreatic cancer at the age of 39.