Diomhair(secret)

[albannach]

In your wildest dreams could you imagine a BBC TV programme which began with this provocative statement:

"For the past fifty years, Labour and Conservative governments have shared a common agenda - stopping Home Rulers and Scottish Nationalists from breaking up Britain and making Scotland independent. This programme will show you how both parties have resorted to spying and underhand tactics to discredit the SNP, its members and supporters. We will show you how official documents which supported independence were kept hidden. How politicians and civil servants tried to obstruct independence and keep the country united. In this programme we reveal how, in the past, civil servants, MI5 and Special Branch were used by Westminster to obstruct and even sabotage the Scottish nationalist movement."

No? Hardly surprising. It has never happened before in my lifetime. Could you then imagine the same programme concluding with these findings:

"In this film we've revealed how successive governments have used and abused their power to keep Scotland in the union and sabotage the causes of devolution and independence. We have also discovered government files that show how the police were diverted from catching criminals to spy on legal and peaceful demonstrations; how the will of two million Scots was defied by simply ignoring their demand for devolution; how Edinburgh Police encouraged young Nationalists to commit bomb outrages and supplied them with dummy explosives, and how evidence that an independent Scotland could be among the richest countries in Europe was stamped "Secret" and buried in the archives."

This wasn't a dream. It did actually happen. The programme was re-broadcast on BBC Alba (in Gaelic with English subtitles.) Now the full 60 minute programme Diomhair can be watched here (in 10-minute segments:

http://tinyurl.com/da7uou
http://tinyurl.com/bn825y
http://tinyurl.com/bmfhkt
http://tinyurl.com/d2l6x8
http://tinyurl.com/ap7332
http://tinyurl.com/bk2tc8

[Alba]

Thanks Al, I'll be watching it this week.

Imagine the Brits trying to undermine the legitimate political aspirations of voters in a democracy.

Surely not...