THE Russian Prime Minister, Alexei Kosygin, arrived in Scotland on Saturday, February 11, 1967, as part of an official visit to Britain.
Stepping out of a special train that had brought him to Glasgow Central Station, he made a beeline for overall-clad workers standing near platform 11. He shook hands with most of them, including 60-year-old scaffolder Lachlan McCrimmon.
“He asked me how old I am and when I said, ‘I am on the borders of 60’, he said to me, ‘I am older. I am 62”, Mr McCrimmon told reporters.
The Russian Premier was then driven to the City Chambers, where, with security men watching from the rooftops, he was greeted by a 2,000-strong crowd in George Square. Sheena Mahon, clutching her four-month-old son in her arms, presented Kosygin with two posies of snowdrops – one for himself and one for his daughter, Ludmilla, who was travelling with him.
Kosygin’s day-trip to Scotland also included official engagements in Edinburgh and a visit to Hunterston nuclear power station, in Ayrshire (above), where again he attracted considerable interest from wellwishers and the media.
While in Ayrshire he took in the Kilmarnock-Rangers league game at Rugby Park. Watched by some 23,000 fans he was presented to the teams before kick-off. It was a breathtakingly exciting match; both sides, remarked the Glasgow Herald’s football writer Glyn Edwards, “went at it hammer and tongs (perhaps it would be more appropriate to say hammer and sickle)”.
During his British visit Kosygin said in a TV interview that his country would be “very glad” if the Queen could visit the Soviet Union.
He also had extensive talks at Chequers with the Prime Minister Harold Wilson on such subjects as trade, the Vietnam War, peace and security in Europe, and a proposed treaty of friendship and peaceful co-operation between Britain and the Soviet Union.
Read more: Herald Diary
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