29/03/2026
On this day, 22 March 1974, Scottish workers in the East Killbride Rolls Royce factory refused to work on engines from planes belonging to right-wing dictatorship of general Augusto Pinochet.
Engineer Bob Fulton, a Christian and a trade unionist, spotted an engine in the factory to be repaired, and noticed it was Chilean. He raised it with his colleague, Stuart Barr. Knowing how Pinochet had seized power in a military coup the previous September, and begun massacring workers and trade union activists, Barr responded “Let’s black [boycott] the f**kers.”
They took a marker and wrote “black” on the components of four engines they could find, which then meant that other workers in the plant, all members of the Amalgamated Engineering and Electrical Union, would not touch them.
The refusal would continue for the next four years, as the engines rusted outside, until one day they just disappeared overnight.
Their story is told in the 2018 film, Nae Pasarán.
More information, sources and map: https://stories.workingclasshistory.com/article/9498/rolls-royce-chilean-engine-boycott
