This is an extract from an article, published in the Observer on 19 May 1968, entitled ‘Where the violence is as casual as the smile of a pretty girl’, by Patrick O’Donovan
The City of Glasgow was once called the Second City of the Empire. It remains superb.
Its streets are wide and nobly lined with mansions and offices that would flatter a capital. It has rich museums, universities, theatres and 50 dance halls. It has well-kept parks and a graceful river. This is a great city with a character as strong and pleasing as its national drink.
But it is also a city that considers itself in trouble. It believes itself to be in the grip of a crime wave, not so much of robbery as of a degenerate, mindless, pointless violence. This week, for example, a 16-year-old boy, who could not run away because he had an artificial leg, was stabbed three times by young strangers in a park. They ran away, shouting “Shamrock”. A 12-year-old boy, the son of a policeman, waiting at a bus stop, was slashed down his jaw-line with a razor. And again there was no reason for an attack that was as casual as a smile at a pretty girl. A girl looking into a shop window with friends was stabbed in the back, apparently because she had refused to kiss a strange young man.
The worst of Glasgow’s recent experiences came over the Easter weekend. Then there were 21 serious assaults and 25 robberies with violence. Nearly 100 people were injured. A boy coming home from church on Good Friday was stabbed by a youthful gang and died on the pavement in his father’s arms. There were 132 brutal attacks in Glasgow in March. There were 56 in the same time a year ago.
It is a mysterious business and it is not clear if the situation is worse than in other comparable cities. Violence and its punishment was a major issue in the recent local elections and the Tories first and then the Labour candidates made it one of their chief claims to authority. There are demands for sterner punishments and for more powers of search and arrest for the police, though they would seem to have all that a civilised policeman could require.
There were famous fights in the 1920s and 30s when gangs of up to 300 fought each other on the streets. Now Lord Carmont, a judge who handed down punishment like an outraged god, is remembered with longing. He is accorded the honour of having diminished razor slashing. The knife has taken its place and the convenient broken bottle remains.
