I was told I was unworthy to be a mother, then they stole my baby

Marion McMillan was 17, pregnant and unmarried, when she made her first trip to England from her home in the south-west of Scotland.

It was 1966 and she was sent by her family to a maternity home run by the Salvation Army more than 150 miles away, in Newcastle-upon-Tyne.

The young mum spent nine months with her baby - a beautiful boy with "gorgeous wee black hair" - before he was taken from her.

She begged staff to let her keep him. "I said 'please help me keep my baby, don't let them take my baby, please' and he was gone," she told a new BBC documentary, Stolen Babies.

Warning: This story contains racist language and descriptions of sexual abuse and violence

It tells the stories of some of the 250,000 women who were forced to hand over their newborns for adoption between 1949 and 1976.

They were powerless against the will of the state, social workers and religious organisations, and the system which supplied infants to adoptive families.

"Let's face it, we were working class unmarried girls having babies that were being adopted by middle class women," another victim, Ann Keen, told the programme.

For years many of the women kept their ordeal - their shame - secret.

In July, outgoing prime minister Sir Keir Starmer issued a formal apology to those mothers, telling them: "The shame is not yours... the shame is ours."

Marion's story: 'They cannae take my baby away from me'

Marion grew up in Stranraer in the 1960s where she fell for an older man who had emigrated from Pakistan.

"I was in love at the time and it was so lovely, I never gave it a second thought," she said.

"We were only together just a few short times, and I'd never told my family but at 17 I became pregnant out of wedlock."

She hoped they would marry but her boyfriend knew their relationship would not be accepted.

"Nobody will want you to go with a black man, Marion," he told her.

In their last conversation, he suggested emigrating to Hawaii where he believed mixed-race marriages were more acceptable.

"I never saw him ever again after that," she said. "Didn't know what was ahead of me. The conveyor belt of 'unwed mother' took control, and that was when I lost control."

She gave birth at Hopedene, a home for unmarried mothers where conditions were austere and treatment could be brutal.

"Everything, from the minute you cross their threshold, is that you're unworthy to be a........

© BBC