Scottish History: 1975-present

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Scottish History Timeline: 20th Century: 1964-present

1964 -1971 AD: North Britain is no longer used to describe Scotland. The Highland Railway system ends and goods are sent by truck drivers called lorrie men. Britain enacts first Race Relations Act after Enoch Powell’s Rivers of Blood speech on immigration. Reporters are silenced. Tenement housing in Northern Ireland is given to Protestants only. Families squat. Viewers in Britain and Ireland see Londonderry housing protesters stoned and clubbed by police. Battle of the Bogside: Part time British police officers burn down homes in one night. The Cameron Report finds them guilty of assault, battery, verbal harrasment, and property damage. A curfew is imposed for all of Northern Ireland. Suspected terrorists are held in internment without trial, electricity and water installations are destroyed, civilians are shot dead by police, news is suppressed and newscasters are forbidden to interview internees. Father Hugh Mullan is shot dead by British troops while giving last rights to an injured man. It is aired on BBC One and is removed after a complaint from Lord Carrington. Harry Thorton is shot dead in his car. His friend is dragged and beaten by police until his skull is fractured. In November Panorama’s Alan Hart is told by Lord Ayelstone As far as I’m concerned, Britain is at war with the IRA in Ulster (Northern Ireland) and the IRA will get no more coverage than the Nazis would have done in the last war.
1972-1975 AD: Bloody Sunday: British Parachute Regiment kills 17 unarmed civilians in a civil rights march against internment without trial in Londonderry. The investigation is closed and reopened in 1999. Captain Derek Wilford, commander of the regiment is promoted to CBE: Commander of the British Empire. The British Embassy is burned to the ground and Aldershot military base is bombed. Baron Kilclooney is shot in the face. Ormeau Park Rally: March 18th Home Affairs Minister William Craig: ‘We are determined Ladies and Gentlemen to preserve our British traditions and way of life. And God help those who get in our way... .. We must build up dossiers on those men and women in this country who are a menace to this country because one of these days, if and when the politicians fail us, it may be our job to liquidate the enemy.’ Bloody Friday: Edward Heath imposes direct rule from England and declares martial law. IRA: Irish Republican Army sets off 26 bombs in Belfast killing nine people and injuring 130. Operation Motorman Offensive: William Whitlaw recruits 22,000 police officers to dismantle IRA barracks with tanks and bulldozers. Death Squad established by Charles Harding Smith in response to the Civil Rights Movement. British Army murder two eleven year old children and shoot dead two more children outside of Saint Brigid’s church. Cod War between Britain and Iceland. Secret mass graves are found in the city of Limerick. One containing 3,561 bodies stacked in order of presumed age is incinerated by the British Home Office.
International: 1972: Kurt Waldheim, former member of the Waffen SS and responsible for the mass genocide of Jews, Slavs, Greeks, and Gypsys in the Balkans, is at Earth Day. which happens to fall on Hitler’s Birthday. He is elected Secretary to the United Nations, exports UNDOF: United Nations Disengagement Observer Force forces to Syria, Israel and Egypt and becomes president of Austria in 1986. When he becomes knighted from the Vatican, the Serbs block a visit from the pope.
1975-1991 AD: Black Watch: shoot dead a child. British paratroopers kill two children on the way to church and burn the Gaelic Athletic Association to the ground. British SAS: Special Air Services shoot two children dead and are found not guilty. Bombs are set off in Liverpool, Bristol, Southampton, Brighton, Coventry, Manchester, Down, and Belfast. The Queen narrowly escapes the Belfast bomb. Airey Neave Conservative Party spokesmen for Northern Ireland is killed by a bomb at the House of Commons. Amnesty International investigates complaints of torture being used to gain confessions. The report is banned. Lord Christopher Ewart-Biggs, British Ambassador to the Republic of Ireland [lost right eye in Battle of El Elamein, got glass one] and Judith Cooke killed by a landmine 150 yards from his home in Sandyford, Dublin. The British Ambassador to the Netherlands, Lord Mountbatten [Louis Francis Albert Victor Nicolas Battenberg], his grandson, boatman, and Lady Brabourne are assasinated. Prince Charles & Lady Diana Spencer are married.
Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher: “We are not prepared to consider special category status for certain groups of people serving sentences for crime. Crime is crime is crime, it is not political.” IRA bomb the Conservative Party Conference intending to kill Thatcher and kill five. Ian Gow, Conservative Member of Parliament for Eastbourne, assasinated. Margaret Thatcher resigns. Prevention of Terrorism Act allows authorities to check bank accounts for paramilitary funds. Kenneth Baker, British Home Secretary, bans cable and satellite television coverage of Northern Ireland. Child Migrants Trust of the British Child Emigration Scheme to Australia 1947-1967 reveals child slavery and current witholding of birth records. 3-4 million Canadian descendants have no idea who they are. Cornish is re-instated in schools. Highlanders allowed to purchase land.
International: American Eugenics Society renamed Society for the Study of Social Biology. Ronald Reagan [neutron bomb] & Secretary James Brady [paralyzed for life] shot. Anwar el-Sadat assasinated. Pope John Paul II survives assasination attempt. Indian Prime Minister Indira Ghandi assasinated by two of her bodyguards. It is believed to be a response to her ordered attack on the Golden Temple in Punjab. James Watt, Secretary of State, forced to resign after a reference to a commission composed of ‘ a black, a woman, two Jews, and a cripple.’ USA for Africa /LiveAid. Klaus Barbie, the Butcher of Lyon, known for his torture and genocide of 26,000 people as head of the fourth legion of Gestapo [Secret Police] finally dies in French prison in 1991 after being extradited from Bolivia four years earlier after a government coup. Belarusian President Aleksander Lukashenko’s detractors dissappear.
1991- present: Unemployment reaches 3 million in Britain (1 in 8 of working population). Scotland’s sea port towns become a haven for international drug trade. Edinburgh becomes the AIDS capital of Europe due to IV needle use. Glasgow women stage a huge protest after 13 year old Alan Harper dies of a heroin overdose and becomes Scotland’s youngest victim. “The statistics of the change to alternative drugs are the sort of thing any booming business would kill for. There were 249 notified drug addicts in Scotland in 1981. In 1994, there were 3,691. Over the same period of time the number of seizures of controlled drugs by police and customs officers increased tenfold.” -Voices from Scotland
Colleges increase tuition and the population of Saint Andrews College is identified as fifty percent English. In the Student Union building in Queen’s University of Belfast signs which are in English and Gaelic are removed. A report claims that Gaelic alienates Protestant students by causing a chill factor A new virulent potato fungus emerges in Russia that is able to survive the winter after taking 150 years to evolve through sexual mating with fungus extracted from DNA samples of leaves saved by the English. Fungicides are not purchased. Mass famine graves are discovered in London and Achill Island. The Protestant Orange Order’s 191 year old Marching Season that begins the day after Easter and lasts until the end of August sets an all time high in 1998 with the murder of the Quinn brothers - Jason Age 8, Mark Age 9, and Richard Age 10. A Parades Commission is set up to investigate public drunkeness, church bombing, and citizens complaints after police officers are set on fire. Barry Levinson’s [director of Rain Main, Wag the Dog, Diner, and Good Morning Vietnam] film about Northern Ireland, An Everlasting Piece, is banned in America after chief executive Steven Spielberg is knighted by the Queen and is selected to do a $130 million dollar British television series.
20% of Scotland’s five million people live below the European decency threshold, many in urban ghettos. Sixty percent of Glasgow children are so disadvantaged that they get clothing grants. Drumpelier golf club turns down lottery money because equal rights for women members a requirement. Scottish women confined to: shopwork, secretarial jobs, institutional catering, hairdressing, clerks, and maidwork. Reforestation by pulp mills begins. The five wealthiest people in Britain are the descendants of landowners responsible for the Highland Clearances. Oil discovered on the land and international fishing creates their fortunes. The multinational corporation Diageo on the Isle of Skye controls 40 percent of Scotland’s entire whiskey output. Harris Tweed owns Shetland knitwear. The president of the Bank of Ulster is exposed in print and on the tv program “The Committee” as being responsible for organizing a death squad list.
After 288 years, Prince Michael Stewart, a descendant of James VI, moves to Scotland. His family is bankrupt, he knows no English or Gaelic on his arrival, and sleeps on a park bench. He believes it is his right to be King of Scotland. He states: With the Stuarts restored the American War of Independance would never have been necessary......No gallant young president on fiery steed has ever championed the honour and dignity of politically oppressed subjects - for this in life and legend, is the social realm of princes and their appointed knights. Eminent psychologists Doctor Thompson and Doctor Kindlon claim in their book: Raising Cain: Protecting the Emotional Life of Boys that one of the most destructive boy archetypes out there is the Entitled Prince who ...isn’t held accountable to the same moral standards as the rest of us... According to them the role is not only unhealthy, but undermines a boy’s development as a human being. (12, 13, 15, 16, 18)