Redskins and Conks
By COLM BROGAN IF the news of melodramatic goings-on in Soho came as a shock to many Londoners, it is a fair assumption that it was received with quiet satisfaction by the more touchy citizens of Glasgow. In the years following the First World War, gang warfare in Glasgow was so heavily played up by popular writers that some gullible visitors from the south quite seriously asked if it would be entirely safe to walk down Sauchiehall Street.
In fact, the gangs of Glasgow were never a menace, though at times they were an intolerable nuisance. I once saw a strong contingent of the Redskins battling on a piece of waste ground with another gang. Fusillades of bottles and stones were exchanged in a spirited manner, with entire disregard for the interested spectators. This was remarkable enough, consider- ing that the fight took place, evidently by arrangement, on a Sunday afternoon; the elders of the Kirk would certainly con- sider that the Sabbath had been at least infringed.
But more remarkable was the fact that the fight was about nothing in particular and victory for either side could produce nothing more substantial than a glow of manly pride. That was the pattern of most of the Glasgow gang fights and assaults. Sometimes the fights vaguely reflected the social tensions of the city. One group might do battle for the principles of the Protestant Reformation, while their opponents would fight to the last bottle or piece of paving stone in,defence of the findings of the Council of Trent. However, it would be idle to pretend that either side had any firm grasp of even the broadest theological issues, or that they were at all notable for the fervour and regularity of their church attendance.
The Celtic-Rangers fights had a rather clearer justification. The most enthusiastic supporters of each team followed their heroes in motor-coaches all over Scotland wherever they might be playing. There were many harmless citizens among them, but there were others whose feelings were too intense to be expressed by mere shouting and waving of club colours. They wore steel helmets, painted blue for the Rangers and green and white for Celtic. They sang what are politely called 'Party songs' and when they clashed they spread indignation and terror among those who had come merely to see a football match. But, strictly speaking, the brake clubs were not gangs at all. The members were men employed in ordinary useful work and they seldom behaved worse than other enthusiasts except when the two teams played each other. Outsiders who knew when to duck were never in any danger in these affrays.
Even the authentic gangs were mostly content to maul each other. They certainly bullied shopkeepers to raise the money for fines and they were quick to resent real or imagined inter- ference in their activities, but the great majority of the Glasgow bourgeoisie had no contact with them at all. Once I did have personal contact that turned out quite happily. In. the middle of a black and pouring wet night I came to a bridge across the Clyde. As I approached the bridge, a number of men spread themselves in a line across the roadway and one came up to me to ask for a light. I struck a match and held it to my face before offering it to him. He nodded and said, 'Thanks, Mac.' and the row of silent men moved back against the parapet of the bridge, to wait for the man they really wanted.
The quarrels that moved the gangs to warfare were as obscure as the reasons for forming gangs at all. There was almost no money in the business, and the chief rewards were an outlet for feelings of primitive violence and a local prestige for the leaders. The man who could walk into a dance hall with a razor in each waistcoat pocket and two score of other razors ready to leap from other pockets in his defence could be sure that his invitation to the waltz would not be lightly rejected by the haughtiest miss.
But the whole thing had no roots and has left nothing behind. The Redskins, the Baltic Fleet and the Norman Conks are as dimly and uncertainly remembered as the xesult of a Celtic-Rangers match or a by-election in the 1920s. They had no solid reason for existing and there is no solid reason why they should be remembered.
On one occasion cold reality penetrated the Glasgow scene. A number of Birmingham thugs came to Scotland for the races. They went at night to a Glasgow gambling club, in the belief that a sinister show of force would entitle them to cheat. But the proprietor, perhaps haunted by memories of Tranby Croft, was shocked. He sat in on the game, holding an excep- tionally heavy poker ready in his hand. His presence was deeply discouraging and the sharpers soon went away like lambs, perhaps like Nottingham Lambs.
Yet these men had a much better claim to the title of gangster than any Redskin or Conk. They were, in a sense, constructive men, for they were acting for the furtherance of a serious interest, the interest of 'protection,' blackmail and a highly subjective shuffling of the cards. That is what makes the Soho gangs something more than a nuisance. They are a menace because they are a business. The racecourse has always been the most fertile ground for the breeding of British gangsters. Bookmakers are an unfortunate lot. If they are not vulnerable to attacks by the law, they are vulnerable to the enemies of the law, and often enough they are vulnerable to both. No wonder their professional bonhomie so often appears to be forced.
The 'protection' of shopkeepers is not, so far as I know, well advanced in this still rather Victorian land. The people whose business is on the shady side of legality have always been subject to the 'touch,' but presumably they got some value for their money. There is now some reason to believe that tribute is being exacted from perfectly law-abiding citizens of Soho, not a special levy to find some thug's bail or to pay a fine, but a regular exaction as remorseless and inescapable as rent or taxes. This is a development which the police will doubtless do their utmost to discourage. When protection is a tribute which vice pays to vice, that is one thing. When protection is a tribute which virtue pays to vice, that is quite another.
Why does virtue pay the tribute? Simple fear of physical violence is by no means the whole of the story. It is doubtful if violence would be a sufficient threat among a homogeneous and native population, but the population of Soho is neither one nor the other. There are many law-abiding merchants in Soho whose ancestry gives them no inspiration to offer defiance in the name of the law they are happy to obey. All they ask is to be left alone by both the law-breakers and the law- enforcers. This is the soft spot in our resistance to gang extortion.
. The only way to secure peace and order in these uneasy and ambiguous communities is to make the law feared, to make the most peaceable citizen understand that he cannot live in peace if he retires to his own private funk-hole as soon as his peace is threatened. That is the fundamental problem which faces the police in Soho: it is not different, in essence, from the problem in Kenya or Malaya.
Nor is it less difficult. Well may the citizens of Glasgow loudly thank Providence and themselves that this special evil ' of serious gangsterism has never afflicted them.
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