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Felipe Bustos Sierra: Well, I am Chilean and I grew up in exile. My father was a Chilean journalist who was on the blacklist for 15 years. We used to go to lots of solidarity events in Brussels, and this was one of the tales we heard of international solidarity. It was one of those stories that was passed along for years and so I heard it years after it was all over. I had heard that at the time the planes were in Scotland, that the workers were refusing to let go of the planes, and that they had barricades and were fighting with the police every day—all quite overblown. So, when I got to Scotland, ten years ago, I started digging in.How did news of the Scottish action get to people? Not just to those in exile, but I've read that even people in Chilean torture centers heard about it.
I have heard from a couple of people who were in prison at the time that they overheard the news on a guard's radio or from newly arrived prisoners. It was in the papers at the time and when I was in Chile I did find some very small articles on, like, pages 15 or 20, buried as much as possible.
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Did any of the workers in Scotland know this at the time?Clearly, 40 years later, there's something still quite sensitive about this.
No, they hadn't a clue.They were told that basically their action meant nothing?
Yes, three months after the engines disappeared, the Rolls Royce management let them know that a General in the Chilean Air Force said that the engines were back in full operation and that was it.That was a disappointment but they thought: Well, that's just not possible. They had left the engines for a year in the factory and three years [outdoors] in their crates with nothing to save them from corrosion. The idea that the engines could be back in operation so soon afterward just didn't make sense.Your short film ends on a note of mystery, like no one really knows what happened to the engines. So, did you find out more after the film was made?
Yes, it was really when the short film premiered in Chile that our doors opened in an incredible way. All the information up to that point was from the National Archives in London, the Scottish National Archives, and the Rolls Royce archives. There's still loads of documents that are classified. Clearly, 40 years later, there's something still quite sensitive about this.
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It's hard to say. Definitely in the last year of Pinochet's government, he became quite paranoid about the information that was out there.How exactly did the protest take shape?
It was very simple, which I think makes it so powerful. It was really Bob Fulton saying: "There's a Chilean engine on my desk. I'm not going to work on it. You can fire me, but I'm not going to touch this." The workers knew about the coup, they had condemned it on the day it happened. So, by the end of the day, they'd inventoried all the equipment from Chile and passed it on to each representative of each of the factory's sections and they all voted to say nobody would work on it.For a whole year, all these bits and pieces were scattered across the factory. It blocked some assembly lines, [so] after a year Rolls Royce convinced them to move them so they just roughly assembled them, put them in crates, and put them outside.They were such big pieces of equipment that professionals were needed to move them about, but they all decided they wouldn't do it. That's when the trade unions got involved. The transport trade union said, "None of our companies will assist with moving them out of the factory." That's what allowed the action to last for so long.
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It's hard to say. There was quite a bit of pressure but at the same time, they knew they had the backing of the whole factory. And the trade unions were still quite a formidable force at the time.They made sure that the story stayed in the papers for as long as possible. It was a time when commitment to causes like that was much stronger so they received personal letters from people all over the country, saying: "I'm writing to my MP about this."Post-Thatcher, now that the trade unions have been decimated in Britain, do you think something like that could happen today?
No. I asked the guys the same question and they just laughed. I think they'd be fired on the spot. Either that or day workers would be hired to do the work.It doesn't seem to be a very well-known story.
One of things, I think, is that the engines left Scotland in 1978 and Thatcher came to power in 1979 and crippled the trade unions completely over the next few years. So, any stories like that just wouldn't be heard. Trade unions lost a huge part of their power—and then there was the bigger news of the miners' strikes.In March, the three workers were honored by the Chilean government at a ceremony in Glasgow that was attended by former political prisoners and solidarity activists. Was there ever any prior recognition?
No. The only thing was when Pinochet was arrested in London in 1998, there were some stories about it coming out, but [they were] superficial. There was no effort to find out what actually went on.
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Absolutely. The short film focused on Scotland but [with the feature] I am trying to connect with Chile. The story of the coup was so bleak, this is one of the few stories that have a positive ending. All these people are of a certain age [Fulton is 92] and so many documents have been destroyed, all the stuff that gives nuance to the story lives only in these people's heads.The film will feature music from Victor Jara. Tell me about him.
Victor Jara was my point of entry to the whole story. I grew up with Jara's songs and there came a time, as a teenager, where I said I was sick of it. It's such a dark story, so I disconnected from it for a few years. Later, I found out more than what I had been told. Growing up in exile, you hear all these really colorful, overblown stories like: Victor Jara died while singing with a guitar in his hand and he just wouldn't stop singing. That wasn't true, but that was the propaganda that was carried at the time because it raised morale. It's like with this story [the story of Nae Pasaran, which had been exaggerated in its retellings]. I think, 40 years later, we need something better. We need the truth before it's completely lost. The dictatorship is over, there's no point pushing a direction, what is important is having a proper history.This is a small story but people seem to get so much satisfaction, or relief, out of hearing that it is true. At the screening in Chile, I asked people to leave messages on camera afterward. People lined up for an hour to leave their messages. So many people said: "We heard about this, but we thought it was just a rumor. We thought it had just been made up to give us hope."Nae Pasaran is being funded partly through a Kickstarter campaign, which you can support here.Follow Karen Gardiner on Twitter.