Scotland’s notorious ‘island of death’ still a place apart
Gruinard was used for biological weapons testing during the Second World War, but remains little visited despite clean-up works, writes Alison Campsie
There is little life on the Scottish island of Gruinard – which was known for years as the Island of Death.
Even today, it enjoys few visitors, apart from perhaps the odd curious kayaker lapping at its shores or a fisherman collecting a stranded buoy.
Gruinard has effectively been a nogo zone for almost 80 years after it became a top-secret UK government test centre for biological weapons during World War Two.
It was here that anthrax bombs were dropped on sheep to determine how harmful the highly infectious disease could be in a warfare situation.
In 1942, Gruinard, which sits off the mainland between Achiltibuie and Laide in Wester Ross, was requisitioned from its owners to allow the covert tests to begin.
A team of 50 scientists were involved in the work with locals recalling the island becoming a hive of activity in the normally sedate landscape.
Over the summers of 1942 and 1943, sheep were placed in open pens and then exposed to bombs, dropped from a Vickers Wellington bomber plane, that scattered anthrax spores across the land.
The power of anthrax became quickly clear when the sheep started dying after three days with its potential to cause mass destruction summed up in the report of the tests.
“The report of the Gruinard experiment indicated that biological weapons are highly effective and can paralyse or render cities inhospitable,” said author Sharad S Chauhan in his book Biological Weapons.
There was concern about the welfare of those involved given the arrangements for “bio-safety were minimal, with surprise that there were ‘little or no casualties’ among
those leading the experiments,” he added.
With World War Two coming to an end, the Gruinard tests were abandoned with the owner requesting the island be returned. It was agreed it would be sold back to the owner for £500 once the land was free from contamination.
Signs were placed around the shore warning of the no-go zone - but virtually no work was done on cleaning up the test site.
The legacy of the tests remained firm, however, when a sheep infected with the Gruinard anthrax washed up on the mainland. Locals say that a dog eat part of the carcass before becoming violently ill. From then, several farm and domestic animals died with farmers rapidly paid compensation by the authorities.
One farmer told the BBC in a 1962 that the government paid up “without any quibble”.
“They knew there was something going on or they wouldn’t have paid up quite as quick as they did,” one farmer, who lost a horse and six sheep, said.
For 20 years, inspections of animals exposed to Gruinard revealed the continuing virulence of the spores left behind. Sampling was mostly discontinued until 1979 when responsibility for Gruinard was given to the Chemical Defences Establishment at Porton Down who found that spores could be found in just three acres of the island – or one per cent of its total land mass.
Decontamination was plausible – but progress was slow until a group calling themselves Dark Harvest put the issue back on the agenda in 1981. Campaigners placed a bucket of soil containing anthrax outside the CDE in protest of perceived government in difference to the island’ s contamination with another packed with uncontaminated soil left in blackpool during the Conservative Party conference.
In 1986, the land was sterilised with a solution of formaldehyde and sea water with the government, four years later, sending junior defence minister Michael Neubert to pose for cameras removing the warning signs from the shore.
Shortly after, the island was repurchased by the heir of the original owner, rumoured to be the wife of a lawyer from Edinburgh, for £500. Still today, however, Gruinard stands lonely and little unloved given the dark chapter of its past.