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FROM a distance, Bob Fulton, Robert Somerville and John Keenan bear a strong resemblance to Jack and Victor from Still Game.

Bob is 92, Robert 78 and John 75. But these auld fellas in bunnets and zip-up jackets are folk heroes in South America.

They have already been the subject of a short film and director Felipe Bustos Sierra is raising cash to make it a feature-length documentary.

In 1973, the trio worked in the Rolls-Royce factory in East Kilbride.

They watched the coup in Chile on TV and were horrified as general Augusto Pinochet’s fighter planes bombed president Salvador Allende out of the royal palace.

The elected left-wing president committed suicide and Pinochet installed himself as head of state.

The Hawker Hunter jets that reduced Chilean democracy to rubble were built in Scotland and, a few days after the coup, arrived in East Kilbride for a service. Bob was one of the first workers to see one.

He said: “I came in on day shift and there was a compressor shaft on the big surface table. When I picked up the card,

there it was: Chile engine.”

He realised immediately what he was handling – and having none of it.

Bob added: “I’m a Christian and thought, ‘I’m blacking these on moral grounds’. A number of us in my age group spent years fighting dictatorships. It was a dirty word to us.”

Bob alone couldn’t dictate what engines the factory did and didn’t service but the trade union committee could.

Robert and John sprang into action and all 4000 workers agreed, unanimously, that they wouldn’t work on Pinochet’s jets.

The engines were crated up and stored in the factory then moved into the yard, which John could see from his back door.

They sat there for four years, rusting inside basic wooden boxes as the rain and snow seeped in. Meanwhile, Pinochet continued his regime of torture and murder, using his military force to stamp down on every form of dissent.

Then, on August 26, 1978, three lorries with phony licence plates and a fake company livery arrived at the factory and a Rolls-Royce solicitor waved them through the gate.

The engines were driven away, leaving the men at the factory with no idea what happened to them and how much impact they had made with their incredible gesture of support for Chile.

“Management denied knowing anything about it, which I didn’t believe,” Bob said.

“The engines were of no use to anybody. They were a solidarity thing, a symbol of oppression and that was what they were trying to get rid of.”

The brutal coup in Chile was a huge issue in the 1970s. Refugees fleeing Pinochet’s brutal regime arrived in Scotland and Robert, from Motherwell, was involved with six families. He is still in touch with some of them.

He said: “They didn’t talk about it much. We had to piece together how bad it had been for them. It was horrendous but the community looked after them.”

Throughout the decade, Chilean culture became a part of the Somerville family’s lives.

His children ate empanadas (a kind of South American bridie) and learned the songs of Victor Jara, the folk singer who was killed in the first days of the coup.

Motherwell Trades Council adopted a political prisoner, Manuel O’Campo, who now lives in Poole, Dorset. Robert is still in touch with him, too.

Felipe Bustos Sierra’s parents ended up in Belgium. He said: “Dad was a journalist and had to escape fairly early on. He went into hiding, got fake papers and we left. We had a connection to Belgium so went there.”

Growing up in the 1980s in the Chilean refugee community, Felipe attended solidarity events and heard tales of the Scots who refused to work on the Hawker Hunter engines.

“There were so many stories about boycotts by workers, marches and people refusing to buy Chilean goods,” the film-maker, now 38, recalled.

“For many years, there was hope that once people knew how horrible the coup had been, there would be an

international reaction.

“All these stories formed together like stepping stones: The engines are there, they are refusing to work on them and it’s going to help in some way.”

(Image: Getty Images)

When Felipe came to Scotland 10 years ago, the images of these engines were still in the back of his mind.

He said: “I thought it must be an anecdote blown out of proportion. To meet these guys and discover that some of it was incorrect but other parts were true was extraordinary.”

From his new base in Scotland, making a film about the men who blacked Pinochet’s engines was the obvious thing

to do.

He met Bob, then aged 90, at his sheltered housing complex in East Kilbride. The OAP had macular degeneration and

failing hearing.

“The fire alarm was going off,” Felipe said. “I was yelling in his face, ‘I’m from Chile.’”

Slowly, there was recognition. “He said, ‘The Chilean engines’ and burst into tears.”

Felipe made a short film about what happened in 1973 and its aftermath. It was well received at film festivals around the world – including the prestigious Tribeca in New York, where it was shown with English subtitles. Taking it to Chile was a revelation.

He said: “Part of reason these stories haven’t been told is that there wasn’t a major triumph or victory.

"Pinochet got out when he decided to have his own referendum without having elections. He was defeated but it was almost on his own terms.

“I realised people had been starved of positive stories from the coup.”

Felipe filmed the audience’s reactions to the film and their tributes to what the workers in East Kilbride had done.

He said: “One guy told me he’d grown up with images of these planes bombing the palace.”

He also managed to unlock the mystery of what happened to the engines once they left East Kilbride.

Felipe said: “I heard from a Chilean air force officer who had been in prison after the coup because he refused to take part.

“He had been tortured and threatened with death.

“Then he heard he was being released in exchange for some engines.

“At the time he thought, ‘No, this is them just teasing me’.

“Then he heard it was actually real, that he was to be released because of the actions of these Scots. That gave so much meaning to a part of his life.”

Now, Felipe is asking anyone who likes the story to help him raise £50,000 to make the feature-length version.

To be called Nae Pasaran – a Scottish take on the Spanish Civil War anti-fascist rallying cry No Passeran – it will tell the story of what happened to the engines as well as the Scots who stood up to Pinochet.

He said: “The biggest solidarity stories happened in Scotland and the action in East Kilbride triggered a British government arms embargo.

“Dock workers in Greenock refused to finish submarines that had been commissioned before the coup and there was a bid to boycott a football match.

“In 1977, Scotland were the one of the first teams to play in the stadium in Santiago after it had been used as a

concentration camp.”

● Donate to Nae Pasaran at www.kickstarter.com/projects/debasers/nae-pasaran-an-untold-story-of-chilean-solidarity