From wikipedia
Post-World War II
From 1939 to 1989 experiments on chemical weapons including nerve agents and countermeasures were carried out at the Porton Down research establishment. Although volunteers were used, many ex-servicemencomplained about suffering long term illnesses after taking part in the tests. It was alleged that before volunteering they were not provided with adequate information about the experiments and the risk, in breach of the Nuremberg Code of 1947. This became the subject of a lengthy police investigation called Operation Antler.
From 1950, a Chemical Defence Establishment was established as CDE Nancekuke for small-scale chemical agent production. A pilot production facility for Sarin was built, which produced about 20 tons of the nerve agent from 1954 until 1956. A full-scale production plant was planned, but with the 1956 decision to end UK’s offensive chemical weapons programme it was never built. Nancekuke was mothballed, but was maintained through the 1960s and 1970s in a state whereby production of chemical weapons could easily re-commence if required.[19]
In the early 1980s the government took the view that the lack of a European chemical weapons retaliatory capability was a “major gap in NATO’s armoury”. However the political difficulties of addressing this prevented any redevelopment of a British chemical weapons capability.[20]
An inquest was opened on 5 May 2004 into the death on 6 May 1953 of a serviceman, Ronald Maddison, during an experiment using sarin. His death had earlier been found by a private MoD inquest to have been as a result of “misadventure” but this was quashed by the High Court in 2002. The 2004 hearing closed on 15 November, after a jury found that the cause of Maddison’s death was “application of a nerve agent in a non-therapeutic experiment”.
How my heart sings 