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Abstract
Between 1965 and 1968, gangs ‘reappeared’ in Glasgow. Perceived as younger, more violent and more dangerous to the public than their interwar predecessors, concern quickly grew in the media, police force, local and national government and the public domain more generally. This article uses the sociological concept of ‘moral panics’ to explore ‘the New Wave of Glasgow Hooliganism’. It demonstrates the social construction of ‘deviance’ in practice, placing escalating concerns and debates over solutions to ‘the gang problem’ in the wider context of fears about increasing levels of youth violence in the 1960s Britain. In Glasgow, popular perceptions and ‘folk-lore’ about gangs affected opinions and responses, and often conflicted with empirical evidence conducted at the time.
Keywords:
Acknowledgements
Aspects of this research were developed as part of the Policing Youth in Post-War England and Scotland (ESRC RES-000-22-2644) led by Louise Jackson, while Callum Brown supervised the Honours dissertation that sparked my interest in this subject. Both have consistently supported and encouraged my interest in youth gangs. I'm also grateful to Susan Batchelor, Alistair Fraser and my partner, Andrew Perchard, for supporting my work, sharing my enthusiasm, and to all mentioned for reading and offering comments on drafts of this article as it developed.
Notes
Angela Bartie is a Lecturer in History at University of Strathclyde. She has published on aspects of her doctoral research (which examined the Edinburgh festivals in their wider historical context) and, with Louise A. Jackson, on the policing of youth in post-war Britain.
[1] The Glasgow Herald (GH), 12 July 1968.
[2] Daily Record, 12 July 1968. Note: Vaughan was not present, but in Bournemouth as a part of his tour.
[3] Young, ‘The Role of the Police as Amplifiers of Deviancy’; Cohen, Folk Devils and Moral Panics.
[4] Cohen, Folk Devils and Moral Panics, 1.
[5] Changes in the nature of the media and social relationships mean that the term should be used cautiously—see McRobbie and Thornton, ‘Rethinking “Moral Panic”’, 560; Thompson, Moral Panics; and Goode and Ben-Yehuda, Moral Panics.
[6] See, for example, Critcher, ‘Widening the Focus’; Krinsky, ed., Moral Panics over Contemporary Children and Youth, 10.
[7] Cohen, Folk Devils and Moral Panics, vii.
[8] See Shore, Artful Dodgers.
[9] Pearson, Hooligan, 157. See also Magarey, ‘The Invention of Juvenile Delinquency’.
[10] McRobbie and Thornton, ‘Rethinking “Moral Panic”’, 561.
[11] Pearson, Hooligan, 9. For a Scottish perspective, see Smith, ‘Official Responses to Juvenile Delinquency’.
[12] Osgerby, Youth Media, 9. For more on youth in post-war Britain see, for example, Brake, Comparative Youth Culture; Osgerby, Youth in Britain since 1945; and Hall and Jefferson, Resistance through Rituals.
[13] For the pre-history of the ‘teenager’ see, for example, Fowler, The First Teenagers; Savage, Teenage; and Todd, Young Women, Work and Family.
[14] Osgerby, Youth in Britain since 1945, 1.
[15] Stuart Hall, cited in Cohen, Folk Devils and Moral Panics, 150.
[16] Chibnall, Law-and-Order News, 84.
[17] Ogersby, Youth in Britain since 1945, 13; Rock and Cohen, ‘The Teddy Boy’, 288–320.
[18] Cohen, Folk Devils and Moral Panics, 32.
[19] Shields and Duncan, The State of Crime in Scotland; GH, 4 May 1965. This article focuses on the Glasgow Herald newspaper.
[20] GH, 23 March 1965.
[21] Patrick, Glasgow Gang Observed, 20.
[22] GH, 10 January 1966.
[23] Cohen, Folk Devils and Moral Panics, 66–71.
[24] GH, 10 January 1966.
[25] GH, 31 January 1966.
[26] Davies, ‘Glasgow's “Reign of Terror”’, 406; McArthur and Kingsley Long, No Mean City.
[27] GH, 27 June 1966.
[28] Patrick, Glasgow Gang Observed, 154.
[29] Both the studies were based on 1349 boys who left school in January 1947 at the minimum school-leaving age of 14 years, and followed their progress until Jan 1950. Ferguson, The Young Delinquent; Ferguson and Cunnison, The Young Wage Earner.
[30] Cited in Patrick, Glasgow Gang Observed, 166.
[31] Mack, ‘Crime’, 644; National Archives of Scotland (NAS), HH 60/923, University of Glasgow School of Social Studies. Research into Gangs and Violence, John A. Mack.
[32] The Glasgow areas were Dennistoun (an ‘old inner-urban’ area) and Drumchapel (a 10-year-old housing estate on the outskirts). The third was Armadale (a small industrial town in West Lothian). Jephcott, Time of One's Own, 92–101.
[33] Patrick, Glasgow Gang Observed, 13, 21–3.
[34] Key sociological accounts include Cohen, Delinquent Boys and Thrasher, The Gang. Also see the Eurogang Network website
[35] Downes, ‘The Gang Myth’, 61, 70.
[36] Rock and Cohen, ‘The Teddy Boy’, 299.
[37] Fraser's ethnographic study of youth in contemporary Glasgow shows how young people's gang identities ‘bear little resemblance’ to definitions of ‘the gang’ given by the police, media, community and so on. Fraser, ‘Growing up in Glasgow 2008: Young People, Gangs and Identity’.
[38] Mitchell Library (Glasgow) Archives and Special Collections (ML-ASC), SR22/40/15-21, Reports of the Chief Constable of the City of Glasgow for the Years 1964–1970.
[39] ML-ASC, SR22/40/16 (1965), 7.
[40] GH, 29 April 1966; GH, 3 May 1966; GH, 14 May 1966.
[41] Damer, Glasgow: Going for a Song, 5 (see for reflections on the changing image of Glasgow across the twentieth century). On de-industrialisation, see Payne, ‘The Decline of the Scottish Heavy Industries, 1945-83’ and Growth & Contraction.
[42] Davies, ‘The Scottish Chicago?’, 511-27.
[43] GH, 27 June 1966.
[44] GH, 17 April 1968.
[45] Davies, ‘Glasgow's “Reign of Terror”’, 407, 421. Also see Davies, ‘The Scottish Chicago?’, 511-27.
[46] Cohen, Folk Devils and Moral Panics, 51.
[47] ML-ASC, SR22/40/16 (1965), 17.
[48] GH, 18 October 1967.
[49] Boston, ‘The Glasgow Gangs’, 150.
[50] Batey and MacBain, ‘Injury by Stabbing’, 251, 255.
[51] Cohen, Folk Devils and Moral Panics, 16–34, 74.
[52] GH, 27 June 1966.
[53] Ibid.
[54] GH, 7 June 1968.
[55] GH, 21 June 1968. This may reflect the continuing popularity of the film West Side Story (released 1961).
[56] Cohen, Folk Devils and Moral Panics, 25, 149.
[57] Chibnall, Law-and-Order News, xi.
[58] See Pearson, Hooligan, for the long history of ‘hooligans’ in Britain, and accompanying fears about increasing violence among juveniles.
[59] The Dundee Courier & Advertiser, 1965 (surveyed for Policing Youth project—see note 66).
[60] GH, 6 March 1968.
[61] NAS, HH60/922.
[62] Glasgow Herald Index, 1960–1970.
[63] NAS, HH60/922.
[64] Taylor, ‘The Politics of the Rising Crime Statistics’, 25. See also Taylor, ‘Rationing Crime’.
[65] Institute for the Study and Treatment of Delinquency (ISTD), ‘The Carrying of Offensive Weapons’, 257.
[66] Ibid.
[67] Figures obtained from Criminal Statistics Scotland, 1960-1970.
[68] Nine per cent of those charged with serious assault were named in gang lists, and four and a half per cent of those charged with assaults and robberies. NAS, HH60/923.
[69] GH, 12 January 1966.
[70] NAS, ED27/464, Social Action Against Delinquency in Glasgow.
[71] GH, 8 December 1967.
[72] This Party was made up of unofficial Liberals, Unionists and independents, who operated in opposition to the Labour Party at municipal government level in Scotland (from the late 1920s to early 1970s).
[73] GH, 27 June 1966.
[74] GH, 28 June 1968.
[75] GH, 19 January 1968.
[76] GH, 3 May 1968.
[77] See, for example, Armstrong and Wilson, ‘City Politics and Deviancy Amplification’ and Noble, ‘In Defence of Easterhouse’
[78] Cohen. Folk Devils and Moral Panics, 92.
[79] GH, 8 March 1967.
[80] NAS, ED27/464.
[81] GH, 15 December 1967.
[82] ‘Crime, Scotland (Police Powers)’, 1330–77.
[83] GH, 27 March 1968.
[84] ‘Crime, Scotland (Police Powers)’, 1344–5.
[85] The Scottish Office also raised concerns that new powers could encroach on civil liberties and damage police/public relations, and pointed to the difficulties in defining offensive weapons, since many items are inoffensive unless used in a particular way. NAS, HH55/1503, Offensive Weapons: Powers & Penalties.
[86] NAS, ED27/464.
[87] Ibid
[88] Noble, ‘In Defence of Easterhouse’, 328.
[89] Armstrong and Wilson, ‘Delinquency and Some Aspects of Housing’, 64, 75.
[90] GH, 26 April 1966.
[91] GH, 14 January 1967.
[92] GH, 6 June 1968.
[93] Garland, Punishment and Welfare.
[94] Gelsthorpe and Morris, ‘Juvenile Justice’, 957. The period leading up to the divergence in juvenile justice models between Scotland and England and Wales, and reasons for it were explored in: Policing Youth (ESRC RES-000-22-2644)—see Jackson with Bartie, Policing Youth: Britain, c. 1945–1970 (forthcoming).
[95] GH, 3 June 1968.
[96] Armstrong and Wilson, ‘City Politics and Deviancy Amplification’.
[97] GH, 31 May 1968.
[98] The Scotsman, 31 May 1968, cited in NAS, HH55/1503.
[99] GH, 14 May 1968.
[100] GH, 21 May 1968.
[101] Armstrong and Wilson, ‘City Politics and Deviancy Amplification’, 74.
[102] Dundee Courier and Advertiser, 4 October 1965.
[103] The Times, 15 July 1968.
[104] Daily Record, 2 July 1968.
[105] GH, 16 July 1968.
[106] GH, 24 September 1968.
[107] GH, 16 July 1968.
[108] NAS, ED27/464; GH, 8 October 1968.
[109] GH, 27 June 1966.
[110] GH, 11 November 1968.
[111] Osgerby, Youth in Britain since 1945, 145.
[112] Blairtummock Housing Association Ltd, Glasgow, Easterhouse Project Deed of Trust between Frankie Vaughan and Sir James Anderson Robertson and others, dated 7 and 8 February and registered 31 March 1969.
[113] GH, 4 March 1969.
[114] SR22/40/19 (1968).
[115] NAS, HH60/923. Media attention was quickly focused on the Easterhouse Project, and more specifically on the difficulties and ‘failures’ it experienced as it became surrounded in controversy.
[116] Although, of course, it was not just young people who were involved in these events and movements. See, for example, Klimke with Glassert, 1968: Memories of a Global Revolt.
[117] Chibnall, Law-and-Order News, 76–8, 85, 93. This developed in the 1970s with the ‘mugging panic’. See, for example, Hall and Jefferson, Resistance through Rituals.
[118] Chibnall, Law-and-Order News, xii.
[119] NAS, HH60/923.
[120] Yablonsky, The Violent Gang.
[121] Boston, ‘The Glasgow Gangs’, 151.
[122] Cohen, ‘Mods, Rockers and the Rest’, 125.
[123] NAS, HH60/923.
[124] Armstrong and Wilson, ‘Delinquency and some Aspects of Housing’, 76.
[125] Armstrong and Wilson, ‘City Politics and Deviancy Amplification’, 67.
[126] Noble, ‘In Defence of Easterhouse’, 328-9.
[127] Armstrong and Wilson, ‘City Politics and Deviancy Amplification’, 62.
[128] Armstrong and Wilson, ‘Delinquency and some Aspects of Housing’, 73. This was echoed years later, when the tactic of saturation policing provoked local animosities and hostility against the Police during the Brixton riots in 1981. See Hall and Jefferson, Resistance through Rituals.
[129] Cited in Young, The Drugtakers, 108.
[130] GH, 31 July 1970.
[131] ISTD: GWP, ‘The Carrying of Offensive Weapons’, 266; See also Patrick, Glasgow Gang Observed.
[132] See NAS, ED27/464.
[133] See Chibnall, Law-and-Order News, 26.
[134] NAS, ED27/464.
[135] See the websites of both the Scottish Government and the Home Office for recent initiatives and policies relating to these issues.
[136] Sunday Herald, 15 July 2007.