ON “the other 9/11,” in 1973, General Augusto Pinochet led a coup against the democratically elected government of Chile, overthrew it, and started a campaign of mass imprisonment, murder and torture of his political opponents.

While the so-called “free world” was silent on this (where they had not already actively encouraged the coup), the international labour movement took a leading role in trying to rescue Pinochet’s targets.

In Britain, Edward Heath led a Tory government when the coup took place, but he was replaced in 1974 by Harold Wilson’s Labour government.

Judith Hart became minister for overseas development and played a very positive role in supporting labour organisations in Britain that wanted to sponsor Chilean refugees, a way of extricating people from Chile as well as helping refugees in third countries.

In the 1970s, Sheffield was a major labour movement centre, with a network of shop stewards’ committees based in its engineering and steel plants.

Sheffield Trades Council worked hard to bring Chilean refugees to the city, and some 300 came over the next few years.

I was a young student in the city, with my partner working at the university, and like other Sheffield Labour Party activists, we volunteered to take part in the trades council-organised settlement of refugees.

So far so good, and a heartwarming story you may think. But for a refugee, resettlement is not the end of a story but a beginning.

Making a new life in a country whose language you do not speak after many months or years of trauma is no picnic. And though, like other activists, we were keen to help, we lacked experience and understanding of how to help a vulnerable person settle.

Silvia came to us with her two children, both very young. Alejandro was under the age of two and Scarlett was only about five.

Silvia’s experience was not typical compared to many refugees — not in terms of trauma, but because she herself had not been a political activist; the Pinochet regime also went for the families of activists, and that had made her a target.

Her children had come from two different relationships, and that, alongside her lack of political involvement, cut her off from nearly all the other Chileans who came to Sheffield — some 300 in all, over several years.

Her children had also had a very bad time, affecting their behaviour. So Silvia had parenting problems on top of everything else, committed to them though she was.

After her daughter misbehaved one morning before school, Silvia hit her with a belt and the bruises led to social worker involvement at the school and the threat to take Scarlett into care.

Silvia was distraught and ran all the way to the school, with me puffing in her wake in case a violent situation developed. It did not, but neither did the kind of social support she really needed happen either.

After six months, Sheffield rehoused Silvia, giving her priority because of her young children. But the trauma and isolation remained, and the difficulty in making new relationships.

Three years later, after a relationship breakdown, Silvia threw herself from a window, as much a victim of Pinochet as all the outright murders the regime committed.

Of course, the story does not end there: lives go on, and Silvia’s children returned to Chile after a few years, though to a divided family.

But both of them, with remarkable resilience, rebuilt their lives, and I have spoken with Scarlett, who is now in Patagonia, several times. She has positive memories of Sheffield and learning English as a child opened up work opportunities for her.

Some Chileans stayed in the city when their children married locally, and there is still an active cultural association. Others returned to become part of post-Pinochet Chile.  

But in this year, the 50th anniversary of the coup, let’s remember the crimes of that regime, the murders, the torture, the children they stole, the lives they wrecked, of which Silvia’s was just one. And let’s also remember that Thatcher welcomed Pinochet as a good friend.