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SURVIVORS of Britain's worst maritime disaster have taken their battle for recognition to the Scottish parliament.
The war heroes, who survived the sinking of the troop carrier HMT Lancastria, have accused the government of covering up the full facts of the tragedy by withholding official documents.
As many as 6,000 British soldiers and civilians died when the Clyde-built ship was sunk in June 1940 by German dive bombers as it evacuated allied soldiers, airmen and civilians from France in the wake of Dunkirk.
The scale of the catastrophe was such that Winston Churchill, the prime minister, ordered a news blackout fearing that civilian morale would be damaged. As a result there has been no official recognition of the disaster, which claimed more lives than the sinkings of both the Titanic and the Lusitania.
Last week Christine Graham, the nationalist MSP who is backing the campaign, called on the government to acknowledge the disaster and for a commemorative medal to honour its victims.
In a motion set down in the Scottish parliament, Graham said that the circumstances of the disaster were still shrouded in secrecy and claimed that international law was broken when the ship's Scottish captain was ordered to load about 9,000 people on board the ship built for just 2,000.
Charles Napier, 87, from Inverurie, a survivor of the disaster, said the ship was a "death trap" and that people would have stood a better chance of survival if they been left in France. "All the documents should be made public," he said.
"It's of public interest. Why shouldn't they be released? It would help to solve the mystery and give an idea of the full scale of the disaster."
The ship, originally a Cunard liner, was requisitioned by the navy and sent to Brittany as part of Operation Aerial, which aimed to rescue the 150,000 troops left in France following the Dunkirk evacuation.
The vessel was sunk by Nazi bombers and Stukas as up to 9,000 servicemen and civilians were loaded on board. According to witnesses, those who were unable to escape the doomed ship sang Roll Out the Barrel and There'll Always Be an England as it went down.
Mark Hirst, 35, from Abernethy, Perthshire, whose grandfather survived the tragedy, said: "There are no security reasons why these documents are not being released."
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