Britain's Biological Weapons – The Hidden History of Porton Down

Dr Brian Balmer

January 2002

The recent spate of anthrax attacks in the USA has brought to light the real curse of biological weapons. Naturally the public has reacted with concern and outrage. But although our concerns are largely with terrorists, it was nation states that originally researched and developed these living weapons. And amongst the most renowned of those states was Britain.

1930s: first fears

Concerns that Britain could suffer an anthrax attack, as the US recently did, go back to the 1930s. Then, with the growing threat of war with Germany, the main worry was that London could easily be subjected to a sabotage attack. But these fears really came of age soon after the outbreak of the Second World War. That's when Britain launched its top secret biological warfare research programme, at Porton Down in Wiltshire.

In Britain, fears about biowarfare (biological warfare) attack surfaced publicly in July 1934. In the 'Wickham-Steed Affair', leading journalist, Henry Wickham Steed, claimed that German spies had been testing biowarfare agents on the London Underground and Paris Metro. While this caused a fair amount of public concern, behind the scenes a secret committee of experts was formed who co-ordinated defensive measures. They included the stockpiling of vaccines and the establishment of the current Public Health Laboratory Service.

1940s: programme development

Within a year of the outbreak of the Second World War, a small team of medical scientists assembled at the new Biology Department at Porton Down. This site, a building complex in 7000 acres of scrubland, was set up in 1916 as a centre for chemical warfare research. Team leader, Dr Paul Fildes, was instructed by the Cabinet Defence Committee to produce a bioweapon that could be used to quickly retaliate against a similar attack by Germany. The scientists' efforts concentrated on anthrax and a lethal poison, botulinum toxin, eventually resulting in two rudimentary weapons.

The first consisted of 5 million linseed cattle feed cakes, contaminated with anthrax, stockpiled as an anti-livestock weapon. The second was a prototype anti-personnel anthrax bomb, code-named the N-bomb. Scientists carried out trial explosions on Gruinard Island, off the coast of Scotland, and on the Welsh Gower Coast between 1942 and 1943. An order was placed with the US for mass production, but the end of the war meant that this was never fulfilled.

As the war was ending, military leaders in Britain noted that the US intended to continue their biowarfare programme into peacetime. Britain followed suit and gave biowarfare equal priority to atomic warfare, thus ensuring generous funding for the post-war programme.

In 1946, the RAF placed a request with the re-named, Microbiological Research Department, for a biological bomb. Code-named 'Red Admiral', the project aimed for a production capacity of 200 cluster bombs a week. This would provide a reserve of 10,000 bombs by 1955. Clandestine research, both to fulfil this aim and provide defence, continued apace at Porton Down. The programme began to broaden in scope, beyond just anthrax and botulinum toxin. The scientists considered the biology of pathogens responsible for other diseases, such as brucellosis, tularaemia and plague.

Another aspect of the burgeoning research programme involved trials at sea using pathogenic organisms to assess biological weapons. The first, Operation Harness, was carried out off Antigua in 1948. In this operation, animals on floating dinghies were exposed to bacteria released up-wind from sprays and munitions.

1950s: policy change

Further similar trials, using an increasing diversity of pathogenic agents, took place between 1952 and 1955 off the coast of Lewis in Scotland and off the Bahamas. But generally, throughout the early 1950s, the status of biowarfare declined enormously in military and political thinking. Britain exploded its first atomic bomb in 1952 and committed itself to nuclear weapons in 1954.

Enchantment with nuclear weapons, coupled with an increasingly stringent defence research budget, led to an overshadowing of biowarfare. No government decision to abandon an offensive biowarfare policy was made, but statements and directives through the 1950s slowly prioritised defensive over offensive work. Eventually, in 1956, a government decision to abandon Britain's chemical weapons capability was widely interpreted as the end of offensive biological warfare.

From 1956 onwards, the so-called Large Area Concept (LAC), emerged as a dominant theme in expert advisory discussions. In the LAC scenario, instead of bombing, an enemy plane would spray a deadly bacteria cloud capable of spreading over several hundred square miles. Under the new defensive policy, the threat of LAC led to a variety of outdoor trials to assess the early detection and danger of attacks. Initial trials, in the late 1950s, involved a plane spraying a fluorescent marker, zinc cadmium sulphide, across much of Britain in a mock biological attack. These experiments were superseded by trials involving ships and planes. They sprayed live non-pathogenic bacteria over the south coast of Britain, across many parts of Dorset.

1960s and 70s: scaling down

The trials at sea continued through the 1960s and into the 1970s, as Britain entered negotiations for, and then signed, the international Biological Toxins and Weapons Convention 1972. This treaty bans nations from developing, producing, stockpiling or acquiring biological weapons. Work at what was now called the Microbiological Research Establishment (MRE) at Porton Down continued, but now under successive reviews of its future. In 1979, the MRE was re-structured. A small Defence Microbiology division was created within the Chemical Defence Establishment (CDE) to focus on defence research. The majority of staff from the MRE remained within a new Centre for Applied Microbiology and Research (CAMR).

1980s and 90s: back on alert

During the 1980s and 1990s, military leaders regarded the threat from biological warfare as increasingly prominent. Consequently, defensive research received a boost.

In 1991, CDE became the Chemical and Biological Defence Establishment (CBDE). In 1995, it fell under the auspices of an umbrella organisation for several defence research establishments, the Defence Evaluation and Research Agency (DERA). Most recently, in July 2001, the Government split DERA into two organisations, one publicly and one privately owned. CBDE was portioned into the public organisation, the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (Dstl), and re-named as Dstl Chemical and Biological Sciences.

The British programme of research is still in existence today and is likely to receive a further boost after the recent anthrax attacks in the USA.

Resources

Channel 4 is not responsible for the content of third party sites

Websites

Porton Down – A sinister air?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/uk/
newsid_426000/426154.stm
Damning article on the secret chemical and biological weapons centre in Wiltshire.

UK Politics – Germ Warfare Fiasco Revealed
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/
uk_politics/newsid_526000/526870.stm
Outlining the bungled germ warfare trial, 'Operation Harness'. This was carried out off Antigua in 1948 and resulted in the deaths of thousands of animals for little scientific benefit.

Tourist Temptation – Anthrax Island
www.cbsnews.com/stories/2001/10/29/
world/main316169.shtml
CBS News website with an article on the history of Gruinard Island, Scotland, where scientists carried out trial explosions of anthrax in 1942.

Biological warfare: Are we prepared?
www.channel4.com/health/microsites/0-9/4health/body/hal_biowarfare.html
In this Channel 4 Health alert special, find out what the risks are of biological warfare, with information on anthrax, botulism, smallpox and plague.

Foreign and Commonwealth Office
www.fco.gov.uk
Contains up-to-date speeches from the PM and ministers, plus a good search facility with articles on issues of biological warfare.

Chemical/Biological/Radiological Incident Handbook
https://www.cia.gov/library/reports/
general-reports-1/cbr_handbook/cbrbook.htm
Online CIA publication, originally published in 1995, that explains the different types of incident plus personal safety considerations.

Bioterrorism
What's the history of biological weaponry and to what extent is bioterrorism a threat?

Books

Britain and Biological Warfare: Expert advice and science policy 1935-65 by Brian Balmer (Palgrave, 2001) £45
From fear of sabotage in the London Underground to the first anthrax bomb and the massive outdoor tests, this tells the largely untold history of biological weapons research and policy in Britain.

The New Terrorism by Walter Laqueur (Phoenix Press, 2001) £12.99
The increased availability of weapons of mass destruction, cheap and easily accessible chemical and biological weapons and cyberterrorism is a disturbing factor of recent times. The author, a world-renowned expert on terrorism and international strategic affairs, recounts the history of terrorism and examines the future of terrorism worldwide.

Chemical and Biological Warfare: A common sense guide for concerned citizens by Eric Croddy (Springer-Verlag, 2002) £17
Defines the basics of chemical and biological warfare for concerned citizens. Includes non-alarmist scientific descriptions of the weapons and their antidotes, methods of deployment and defensive response. Also covers the likelihood of additional proliferation in the current global political climate.

top ^