Dark Harvest Commandos

The Dark Harvest Commando of the Scottish Citizen Army was a militant group which in 1981 demanded that the British government decontaminate Gruinard Island, a site which had been used for anthrax weapon testing during World War II, by distributing potentially anthrax-laden soil on the mainland.

The group identified itself as Dark Harvest Commando and claimed to be include a “team of microbiologists from two universities” in Scotland, they claim to have had landed on the island with the aid of local people and removed 300 lb (140 kg) of soil contaminated with anthrax spore.

The group placed a container of soil outside the Chemical Defence Establishment at Porton Down in Wiltshire. A second container of soil was placed at Blackpool, a resort town where the Conservative Party was holding a conference. The first package was found to contain Bacillus anthracis (the causative agent of anthrax), while the second was uncontaminated, but of the same soil type as found on the island.

One news source claimed that a resurgent DHC collected spores from Gruinard Island for an attack on Prince William in December 2001.

In his novel The Impossible Dead (2011), author Ian Rankin mentions the clandestine events surrounding the removal of contaminated soils from Guinard Island by the Dark Harvest Commandos and the island's removal from maps by the British Government. It also features as the principal setting for the novel "El año de gracia" by Cristina Fernández Cubas, in which the protagonist spends a winter shipwrecked on the island. Originally published in 1985. (Tusquets Editores, ISBN ).

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