In 1974, warplane engines arrived for repairs at a Rolls Royce factory in the Scottish town of East Kilbride, just outside Glasgow. Factory worker Bob Fulton recognized the engines as coming from the Hawker Hunters that attacked Chile's presidential palace during the coup of September 11, 1973. He refused to work on them on moral grounds. By the end of the day, all 4,000 factory workers had joined him in his act of solidarity.
The CIA-backed military coup was led by army chief Augusto Pinochet and toppled the democratically-elected socialist government of Salvador Allende. British-built Hawker Hunters bombarded La Moneda, the presidential palace where Allende, refusing to surrender or accept exile, made his final speech before taking his own life. Within hours, a military junta was sworn in and Allende's supporters and anyone against the coup were arrested, tortured, or forced into exile. Left-wing political activity was suppressed until Pinochet's dictatorship ended in 1990, but one of the most efficient acts against his rule took place, without violence, in Scotland.
The Rolls Royce factory workers refused to service the engines or to let them leave the factory, leaving them outside for years in the harsh Scottish weather. Four years later, the engines mysteriously disappeared in the middle of the night leaving the workers in the dark about what happened to them for decades. They eventually began to believe that their actions had been meaningless.
Last year, their story was told in a short film by Felipe Bustos Sierra, who was born in Belgium to exiled Chilean parents and has been based in Scotland for ten years. The film, Nae Pasaran,featured interviews with three of the surviving workers—Bob Fulton, Robert Somerville, and John Keenan.
Miguel
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