GLASGOW'S GANGSTERS
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
[Correspondents are requested to keep their letters as brief as is reasonably possible. The most suitable length is that of one of our "News of the Week" paragraphs. Signed letters are given a preference over those bearing a pseudonym, and the latter must be accompanied by the name and address of the author, which will be treated as confidential.—Ed. THE SPECTATOR.] [To the Editor of THE SPECTATOR.] SIR, --" Janus" is concerned lest Glasgow acquire the reputation of a Scottish Chicago. That reputation it already possesses, but on the basis of only a few very lurid facts. Out of a population of over a million a handful of roughs, numbering perhaps not five hundred in all, conduct their internecine feuds so crudely that a singularly douce, even drab, city seems on paper—or, rather, on newsprint—to be as lively as the Loop in the brave days of Al Capone and O'Banion. One almost wishes that it were Then, at least, the problem could be more effectively tackled and the police legitimately given the powers of hard-hitting the gangster most readily appreciates. As it is, the Lord Justice-Clerk, presiding over the trial that inspired " Janus's " concern, was fain to observe that the statistics, purged of offences by "Billy Boys" or" Savoy Arcadians," reveal the city to be Almost painfully law-abiding.
This is not to minimise the gravity of the gang menace in
Glasgow, but to explain its unhappy notoriety. It is a case of quality rather than quantity. In effect, the industrial processes of the last hundred years or so have resulted in the herding into one small, dark corner of a sombre city the chronic cases of failure to resist the pressure of the system. There are always bugs in slums. Glasgow's gangsters are bugs fed up with sticking to the wall.
The generalisation, to be sure, calls for all sorts of qualifica-
tions. Ostensibly, the gangs separate on sectarian issues. It may be dOubted, however, if one Glasgow gangster could give' even it. schoolboy's impression of the inwardness of Transubstantiation. We are dealing here with brute ignorance —as well as with animal cunning. The sectarian excuse, again, is often translated into racial terms, but even that Will not do. It is itot a blunt issue of Orange and Green. The flashy rani4 of the gangs include scions of the Lowland Scottish, the Southern Irish, the Northern Irish, the Highland Scottish, the Italian, and, strange as it may seem, the English races—a pretty bunch of society's castaways : as cosmopolitan as Stevenson's beachCombers. The man over whose undersized body the recent inquiry was held was a Pole. His mother has only an imperfect command of even Glasgow English.
Stankovitch, as they called him, was a Pole by birth. But he was a true child of Glasgow's worst slums. He was undersized, but he had the physique of a gorilla. Environment had made a brute of him. In a very fair charge to the jury the Judge made it clear that " Stankie " had a bad criminal record behind him and had given those who assaulted him— so crudely that he died--a lot Of proirocation: For once in a while, dog had eaten dog. Therein lies the pity of the whole dirty business.
Glasgow is not Chicago for the plain reason that its gangsters tte dull creatures and lack an economic motive for their acts. Capone after all—and making all allowances for the little ways of popular journalism—had a certain air of spaciousness about him. A Latin, he could do things on the• grand and gilded scale. His exploits in Big Business had a certain grace and grandiose artistry. The Glasgow gangster is inn& more like the prototype bug—a dull and repulsive fellow.
He is, like" Stankie," almost invariably undersized, but with
a great breadth of shoulder as a rule : the typical anthropoid development. When you see him in the dock of the High Court, you are almost sick to think that such a specimen should attract wide and quasi-romantic attention. On his public appearances his clothes are " posh " enough on the thirty-shilling scale--elean collars, smart ties, and pointed shoes de rigueur. He has his topical lingo, albeit delivered in the sluggish, slovenly tempo of West Scotland. As often as not he is a dancer of fascinating expertise. His gang-leader may have brains of a sort—brains that could assuredly be employed to considerable advantage in a happier society— but the rank and file are bone-headed, by and large.
The slums of Glasgow do not suggest romance, so we may womler how these unhappy :boys - devzloped the Chicvoan*
tendencies. Given their environmental need to express themselves, it seems fair to say that the movies did the rest. The gangsters are imitative of the more legendary Wops, Bohunks and Irish. Their clannish instinct is as much theatrical as cowardly. A dramatic necessity of their lives is to appear as tough guys before their Molls. (The feminine responsibility in the business would merit particular inquiry.) They love the publicity their clumsy exploits earn them. They are playboys in the shabby melodrama of their own creation—a creation that is a way of escape. They have nothing of the happy-go-lucky quality one can reasonably admire in the hobo and the bunt of those United States.
Observe the fact that they never kill if they can help it. High Court trials for murder are symptoms of error and excess, probably with drink superimposed on the raw area of dark passion in every Scot, aboriginal or naturalised. The technique is one of mutilation, as with the cruder sort of Teuton. A dexterous slash down the cheek with a razor ; a jab with the ragged end of a broken bottle ; a kick in the pit of the stomach . . . But no sub-machine guns, no bombs, no blue-shining Gas. The war is not on Society at large ; it is clan warfare, gang against gang—with an occasional " nark " marked down for punishment. The elementary finance of the business is contrived by petty terrorism of local shopkeepers, cinema managers, and such. These contribute blackmail towards the sinking fund for fines against the threat of smashed windows and other acts in restraint of trade.
Immediately, the problem is one for the police. It may be that extreme violence has tended to increase since any Scottish jury is extremely uuwilling to convict for murder. Our good men and true can always be relied on to reduce a charge of the kind to one of *` culpable homielde term for manslaughter. There has been no flaking hi Scotland since 1928. There has also arisen, within municipal circles in Glasgow, a tendency for one party to slang the other for alleged tenderness towards offenders of this sort in the interests of political or sectarian advantage : such charges being both stupid and irrelevant. Firm men in the Clubs say it is a bad show" and declare that "the cat" would dispose of the problem overnight. Meanwhile, the authorities have at least contrived it that gang offenders of the minor sort shall not be offered the option of a tine, exigible front the local grocers. They are credited with other, more spectacular plans for what our graver organs of Opinion call "abating the menace."
But when all that is said and done, Glas,gow's rivalry of Chicago is a simple social phenomenon, a matter of health and housing, and as such quite simply soluble.—I am, Sir, Zie., gelensburgh, Dumbartonshire. GEORGE BLAKE..
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