Link between Call the Midwife, test vets, the Mirror.. and me
On fighting for justice
then, and they matter now. We need to see them with younger faces, optimistic for the future, and what it meant when that was destroyed.
“As a country we’re very proud of our Armed Forces but no one wants to talk about deformities. If they’re going to serve our country surely it’s the most fundamental thing that we have to return the favour.
“It cuts me very deeply, because it’s unfair at the most basic, moral level. It’s a broken contract. “I hope Boris Johnson or someone in the MoD is watching it, and gives them a medal.
“They’re not asking for the Earth. There are friends of Vladimir Putin with peerages sitting in the House of Lords. A piece of metal for these men could bring an incredible degree of closure. It worked with the Hillsborough families,” he says, referring to the decades-long campaign for justice.
“They knew they weren’t going crazy, you could see their relief that the world had realigned.”
Scriptwriter Heidi Thomas, who is married to Stephen, decided to tackle the issue after noticing nuclear veterans at the Cenotaph Remembrance Day parade.
“My dad served in Korea, so I look for the Korean veterans and the nuclear ones are next to them, the forgotten ones,” she says.
“They always look so proud, and have never fully had the acknowledgement they desire and deserve. A period drama can shine a light on the way we live today, and the fact these were once young men trying to start families. Call the Midwife can take a simple story of a young couple and go behind closed doors. We see their shock – there were no scans – and you don’t know about defects until they’re born.”
She knows how it feels to be the victim of official denials, after her brother David, who had Down’s syndrome, died aged 15 during heart surgery at Alder Hey hospital.
“We found out later his body had been ransacked,” she says. “His heart was in one place, one lung in Bristol, the other in Newcastle, all without our permission. We got a degree of satisfaction in the end, but I know what it’s like to wonder how long you have to shout before you are heard.”
The hospital apologised in 2003 after it was revealed it had kept body parts from 850 children between 1988 and 1995.
Although Audrey and Derek are fictional, the plot strives to reflect real stories.
Heidi says: “I was reading things from the Mirror campaign, and Dougie was a huge help. He changed a few lines, for example that the MoD had never fully admitted what had gone on.
“His was a real voice, coming from a real place, and so it was like having thousands of veterans looking at my script.”
■ Call the Midwife tomorrow at 8pm. is on BBC1,