ALBA - SPIES, ECONOMIC LIES AND POLITICAL SKULDUGGERY
Billed as: "The story of how successive Labour and Conservative governments up until the 1970s worked behind the scenes to discredit the Home Rule movement and the SNP - as revealed through once secret papers now available from official archives," Diomhair is a documentary on BBC Alba which shows the lengths that the British government and the establishment were prepared to go to in an effort to block and frustrate self determination in Scotland.
Intriguingly the programme using newly disclosed evidence gives an insight into the extent of British Security service surveillance of Nationalists since the 1920s. It is not too speculative to suggest that what has been applied to Scotland has also been in place in the other Celtic countries.
The documentary also deals at length with the skulduggery used to undermine economic arguments by the SNP in the 1970s about the true benefit of Scottish Oil and again one can only speculate as to where Scotland would be, economically, today if the value of this lost revenue had accrued to its people.
Diomhair is in Scottish Gaelic, with English subtitles. It has, to date, not been broadcast on any of the mainstream BBC Scotland channels but is available on the web, via BBC iplayer (Please note iplayer content has limited duration so please access asap) at:
J B Moffatt Director of Information Celtic League 08/03/09
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