Peter Stefanovic, a lawyer and CEO of CAMPAIGN FOR SOCIAL JUSTICE whose films have been watched over a billion times has produced another shocking video supporting nuclear test veterans’ latest campaign calling on Prime Minister Andy Burnham to honour his promise to end the Nuclear Test Veterans Scandal.

Andy Burnham’s Nuclear Test

LABRATS (Legacy of the Atomic Bomb Recognition for Atomic Test Survivors) have named their new campaign “Andy Burnham’s Nuclear Test”, given that in 2025 Burnham described the nuclear veterans scandal as “a criminal cover-up on an industrial scale”

This latest film by Stefanovic backing the nuclear test veterans fight for justice has had a staggering 11 million views on social media platform X and hundreds of thousands more on other platforms.

His new film contains footage of senior Labour MP’s seen vocally expressing their support for the nuclear test veterans’ campaign whilst in opposition.

Chancellor John Healey MP, then shadow Defence Secretary, is seen telling the nuclear test veterans:

“On behalf of the British Labour Party I’ve said to our veterans your campaign is our campaign…There is no good reason, there is no good moral reason, there is no good military reason for withholding the compensation other countries have had”

Housing Secretary Angela Rayner, then shadow deputy Prime Minister, goes further, telling the veterans:

“Myself and my Labour colleagues are calling on the Secretary of State for Defence to…liaise with the treasury to set up an appropriate financial compensation program for veterans and their descendants as America, France, Australia, China, Russia, Fiji and the Isle of Man have done”

Broken promise

Despite expressing his “gratitude” to the veterans in opposition, after becoming Prime Minister, Keir Starmer made no public comment on the nuclear blood test programme and despite a promise made on BBC Breakfast on October 1st, 2025, to meet with veterans of Britain’s Cold War nuclear weapons testing programme “hopefully by the end of the year”, no meeting materialized prior to his leaving office. The veterans are now looking to new Prime Minister Andy Burnham for the justice successive governments have denied them.

Cover-up?

Stefanovic’s film also contains footage of Former veterans minister Tobias Ellwood accusing the Ministry of Defence (MoD) of deliberately withholding the medical records of Cold War veterans who oversaw nuclear tests, calling it “an absolute cover-up”.

Ellwood told BBC Newsnight he now believes some information he gave to Parliament about the UK’s nuclear programme, based on MoD briefings, was “a complete lie”.

Ellwood, who served as a junior defence minister between June 2017 and July 2019, said he believed ministers over the years had been briefed to say they had no evidence to help nuclear test veterans, despite thousands of documents about the programme being held.

He said the information was “deliberately withheld” by the MoD and claimed there was an effort to delay its release until surviving veterans had passed away.

“The more you unpick this story, the more murky, the more shady, the more concerning it becomes,” Ellwood told Newsnight, calling it bigger than the infected blood, Windrush and Post Office scandals “because of the longevity… and the number of people that have been involved”.

Nothing to see here

Calling for an independent tribunal into the matter, Ellwood asked: “Why it is that the MoD – rather than help veterans, provide the information – closed ranks and said, ‘nothing to see here’, and then told ministers such as me ‘actually we haven’t got that information and we’re not willing to help the veterans’?”

The nuclear test veterans are calling on new Prime Minister Andy Burnham to establish a Truth, Justice and Legacy Special Tribunal for Nuclear Testing Veterans as the only fair process to deliver the justice they need.

Stefanovic says “we owe our nuclear test veterans and their families a huge debt of honour and gratitude, but instead successive governments have stonewalled them and subjected them to decades of maltreatment and injustice -and time is not on their side”

Personal Angle

This campaign has a personal angle to it, as my Uncle was one of those sent to Christmas Island, unaware of what the consequences would be. He also helped found LABRATS.

I spoke to him recently, from his home in the US.

This is what he shared:

“I arrived on Christmas Island in 1956 aged 18, as a part of the RAF task force designated 160 wing airspace.

There was no indication when we took off as to where we were going or why. On arrival we were bused in from the airport and lived in surplus World War II tents. We had to find wood to make our furniture and to raise our beds because of the migrating red crabs.

The men were aged between18-22 yrs with many on National Service, no one agreed to what we were about to take part in as no one knew.

On Christmas Island there were 3 or 4 bombs dropped whilst I was there, the largest being just before I left in November 1957.

We sat down with our backs to the testing site with our eyes covered with our hands, dressed in light shirts and shorts, the rest of our bodies were exposed. It was worse for the Royal Engineers as they were closer.

First there was the flash

Then came the hot wind

And finally, the bang

I remember being able to see though my hands as though they were transparent.

Within a few years some of the men started dying (in the early 60’s).

I am 87 years old, I have had digestive problems, skin cancer and the lung problems I now have, my doctors have said, are a result of being exposed to radiation.

For those of us present at the nuclear testing, the effects have possibly been passed on to the third generation, but that is difficult to prove.

We want a full inventory of the medical issues that those on Christmas Island and other nuclear testing sights have endured.

Time is running out

But after 70 years, time is running out.

I am aware that documents have been found with proof of blood tests and their results. I can’t remember.

We didn’t even have radiation badges that can be worn on your uniform to detect radiation.

Guinea pigs

British Nuclear Test Veterans Organisation closed and Labrats took its place. Labrats had proof we were there as an experiment even though it was denied for years. We were definitely Guinea Pigs.

The Ministry of Defence doesn’t seem to answer to anyone. Even veterans protesting in London were arrested, and these were old men.

I received a medal a few years ago, but this didn’t change anything, I suppose that was to shut us up and to make us go away.”

More than 40,000 men from Britain and the Commonwealth took part in dozens of nuclear blasts in Australia and the Pacific between 1952 and 1963 in the race to build thermonuclear weapons. Nearly 600 highly toxic radiation experiments were also conducted in the Outback, leaving it one of the most contaminated places on Earth.