Screening Nick Thomas ! Rockets Galore

You’ll be putting me out of a croft that I and my forefathers have held for 342 years! What Clan Rory could never do, what MacNeil of Barra couldn’t do once upon a time, what John Knox couldn’t do for 400 years, what the bloody Redcoats couldn’t do after Culloden! Take your notice back constable, to St Andrews House, Edinburgh 1, Waverley 5371 and tell them there that every crofter in Todday is telling them what to do with their little pieces of paper! - Duncan Ban, upon receiving a writ telling him to vacate his croft in Rockets Galore, 1957.

In a scene from the 1957 film Rockets Galore a group of locals from the fictional Hebridean Isle of Todday hold an outdoor ceilidh around the burning wreckage of a Ministry of Defence missile which has crash-landed on their island and with which they have subsequently made a bonfire. A subjective - and problematic - account of real events, the film tells the story of the islanders’ resistance to the militarisation of their island, with the Cold War technology just as much a victim of slapstick as any of the human characters.

In 1957 English-born former MI6 officer Compton MacKenzie wrote Rockets Galore!, the book upon which the film is based and a political satire of the events surrounding the establishment of the weapons facility on Uist. A kind-of sequel to the better known Whisky Galore!, the novel draws on MacKenzie’s libertarian politics and relates to the ‘childhood Jacobite dreams’ which led to his part in the foundation of the Scottish National Party.

In Rockets Galore, there seems to be a fair bit of whisky kicking around Todday, presumably left over from Whisky Galore!. In the spirit of the film there will be a limited amount of refreshments on offer (feel free to BYOB) - attendees may wish to drink along with the islanders, though this is not obligatory.