  We carry out an exploratory weak gravitational lensing analysis on a combined
VLA and MERLIN radio data set: a deep (3.3 micro-Jy beam^-1 rms noise) 1.4 GHz
image of the Hubble Deep Field North. We measure the shear estimator
distribution at this radio sensitivity for the first time, finding a similar
distribution to that of optical shear estimators for HST ACS data in this
field. We examine the residual systematics in shear estimation for the radio
data, and give cosmological constraints from radio-optical shear
cross-correlation functions. We emphasize the utility of cross-correlating
shear estimators from radio and optical data in order to reduce the impact of
systematics. Unexpectedly we find no evidence of correlation between optical
and radio intrinsic ellipticities of matched objects; this result improves the
properties of optical-radio lensing cross-correlations. We explore the
ellipticity distribution of the radio counterparts to optical sources
statistically, confirming the lack of correlation; as a result we suggest a
connected statistical approach to radio shear measurements.
