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@ HebrideanUltraTerfHecate
2025-02-25 12:52:54
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c3rndz513xzo
Seventy years ago, in the early years of the Cold War, East and West were locked in a nuclear arms race. The UK government needed somewhere to test its first rockets capable of carrying a nuclear warhead. It picked South Uist, a Hebridean island of a few thousand inhabitants on Scotland's rugged Atlantic coast. What the government did not expect was resistance from within the community led by a Catholic priest, Fr John Morrison. The huge scale of the military scheme soon revealed itself.
Crofters were to be evicted to make way for thousands of military personnel and their families. Fr Morrison was horrified. He feared a way of life was at risk of being lost. Many islanders were deeply religious with Catholic the dominant faith, and for most of them Gaelic was their first language rather than English. "You were talking about the removal of basically all the crofters from Sollas in the north to Bornais in the south," says Fr Michael MacDonald, a priest who looks after Fr Morrison's parish today. The distance between the two locations is more than 30 miles.
"This was draconian stuff," Fr MacDonald adds. "A huge village was to be planted in there. "I think he felt the faith would be swamped. That the Gaelic culture would be swamped."
The rocket range did go ahead, although on a smaller scale than planned due to cost savings. But Mr Bruce says Fr Morrison's campaign should be credited for achieving important concessions.