Glasgow

by Alan Taylor

  What happened next? Did a crush barrier buckle under the intense pressure or did people further down the steps simply stumble under the huge weight of the fans above them? I don’t suppose we will ever know for sure but suddenly I was falling, amidst flailing, heaving fellow supporters, a mass of us collapsing on to people below and in turn, being buried by those above.

  I don’t remember how long I sat on the steps, as more police and rescuers began to appear. Eventually I got to my feet and realised I had lost my supporter’s scarf and both shoes and was starting to ache all over. I went back up the stairs and asked a policeman if I could do anything to help. He took one look at me and told me to go home. Cold, bewildered and probably in shock I walked slowly out of the ground. I cannot remember much about the next hour or so but someone in a supporters’ bus saw me wandering along the icy pavement in my stockinged feet and took me on board. I tried to explain what had happened, that there were dead and dying people lying on Stairway 13 but I don’t think anyone took me seriously. Then, as the bus headed for the city centre, reports started to come through on the fans’ radios and the previously cheery atmosphere disappeared. I was dropped off near Bridgeton Cross and eventually got a taxi back to my home in Hillhead. By this time the disaster was the main news item, with the death toll rising steadily.

  GORBALS MEMORIES, 1972

  Glasgow News

  The Gorbals is believed to derive its name from the Latin word ‘garbale’, which is a tithe paid to the Church in the form of grain. The history of the Gorbals stretches back centuries. In the seventeenth century, for instance, it was known for coal mining, and the manufacture of guns and worsted plaid. In the same century it was annexed by Glasgow, despite being a burgh in its own right. Throughout the eighteenth century it was as fashionable in its day as the Merchant City is at present. By the end of the nineteenth century its population had ballooned to over 40,000, mainly due to an influx of immigrants. After the Second World War the tenements in the old Gorbals were largely demolished and the inhabitants were moved to high rises, some more willingly than others . . .

  Woman – Cleland Street (20 years in Gorbals).

  Aye, I’ll have to go. I don’t want to go but I’ll have to go. I’ve got a good house. (Would she like to move to a modern flat?) No, I would not. Just look at those houses over in Crown Street. The rooms are too small – look at all those wee windows. And concrete stairs inside your house! I work as a home help in one of these multi-storeys and they all have these big long corridors from here to (gestures about 100 yards), and all these wee doors, it’s like a prison. You expect to see the prisoners coming out to empty – you know. Look at that one over the there (opposite the Citizen’s) – I don’t know what it’ll be like when it’s finished but just now it’s a thousand windows . . .

  Newsagent at Centre Street (25 years in the same shop).

  Oh, I’ll be glad to see it go. Well, it’s progress isn’t it? (Do you really think it’s progress?) Well, no, to be honest I don’t. The people here dread the high flats. I mean, we have all these planners and they build these schemes and there are no amenities, there are no public toilets and the roads are not wide enough for the traffic – where’s the planning in that? Just take around here – there were four schools here at one time, now the last one’s closing in June. There were four newsagents in this street and we were all making a living. Now I’m the only one left. There’ll be no shop left here at all – the people’ll have to go over to the shopping centre at Eglinton Street. They’ll be at the mercy of the supermarkets then . . .

  Pensioner, Abbotsford Place.

  The houses are rotten – too many years on them. Do you know I pay £4 for a couple of rooms here, here’s my rent book if you don’t believe me. I want an old person’s flat in a new block, that would suit me fine. Of course, there were beautiful houses once. I lived in Norfolk St when I was a girl and Abbotsford Place was all doctors then. But there’s been nothing done to them for years – I suppose they could be done up but they’d be too big for us. An old person’s flat, that’s what we’re looking for.

  Old lady, 44 years in Main St., Gorbals.

  (What do you think of redevelopment?) I think it’s great. But there’s some’ll miss it. There’s some go away from here and then they want back. No, I’ll not be going for a while yet. They’ll not be pulling down this building for at least six year. They’ll maybe be moving me out before that – feet first!

  NEVER SIT WITH YOUR BACK TO A DOOR, 1972

  T.C. Campbell

  Thomas ‘T.C.’ Campbell led a life of violent crime, as he describes in Indictment: Trial By Fire (2001). He is best known for the so-called Ice-Cream Wars, which culminated in 1984 in the murders in Ruchazie of five members of the Doyle family. Campbell, along with his co-accused, Joseph Steele, was found guilty but after a long campaign in which both men protested their innocence, the ‘Glasgow Two’ were released after spending eighteen years in jail. Here Campbell recalls an incident from his blood-spattered youth.

  At seventeen I was tall, with a Van Dyke beard, and everyone assumed I was older so sitting in the pub with Maggie and the troops was not unusual. On this particular occasion, it had been just a few days since someone swinging a sword had lost a few fingers and apparently wasn’t too pleased about it.

  Drinking bottled beer, large Whitbread or McEwan’s Pale Ale, pouring our own, the theory being that the bottles were always handy to have around in case of an unexpected attack. So much for the theory for, in reality, when an attack comes unexpectedly, it’s the last thing y’think of. I was just having a sip of a pint when I heard these three loud bangs simultaneous with bright flashes and my bobbing head rattling my teeth off the glass, spilling beer down my chin. Putting the glass down and looking up surprised and puzzled, feeling at my mouth for any damaged teeth or tissue. I could see everybody staring in wide-eyed shock, mouths opening and shutting, flabbergasted, while others made frantic hand signals, mimicking some TV show, What’s My Line, or something.

  ‘What? Three guesses?’ said I. ‘Eh? Hammer?’ Aye, right first time they nodded frantically indicating BIG hammer, pointing at the door behind me. Turning round as I put my hand to my head, seeing the exit door still swinging and feeling the bloody mush of my new hair-do I soon got the picture. Sure enough, I’d been battered over the head with a big Thor type hammer as they later described it. The assailant could only be identified by his bloody bandaged hand. I got a matching set of three nine-stitch zips in my concussed skull and a bloody good lesson about sitting with my back to doors. Everyone who had seen it thought they had witnessed my murder and couldn’t believe that I hardly felt it, putting it down to bravado. But I had, quite honestly, believed that it had been the room which shook and not I.

  THE MOST FOREIGN TOWN IN BRITAIN, 1973

  George Gale

  Few journeys have been more often reprised than that taken in 1773 by Samuel Johnson and James Boswell. Two centuries later, English journalists Paul Johnson (1928–) and George Gale (1927–90) set out to emulate the odd couple’s ‘Highland Jaunt’, travelling by car rather than the more rudimentary means of the eighteenth century. Johnson took the part of Boswell while Gale attempted to emulate the other Johnson’s sourness. They encountered a city in a state of flux, with many old buildings being torn down and many new, high, ugly ones being put up in their place. ‘We drove through most of it,’ reflected Johnson, ‘on a great concrete bridge, spanning demolished sandstone slums. This grim and beautiful city . . . was nobly conceived in the first fine flush of the industrial revolution, a vast classical artefact carved in stern local stone; now they are nailing upon it a high superstructure of fast roads, as in any large American town of the Middle West. It will soon be nothing more than a visual incident – a flash of urban scenery – on a rapid thrust to the hills and lochs.’

  We drove partly around and partly above Glasgow: the huge motorways through the city and across the Clyde were not then quite completed.

>   ‘This,’ I said to Paul, of Glasgow, ‘is the most foreign town in Britain.’

  ‘Yes, and they cleared the slums and put motorways in their places.’

  ‘The tenements of the Gorbals are fine buildings. They look ugly to us because we think of the Gorbals as being ugly. Glasgow’s slums are fine architecture. Its council is corrupt. Look at this motorway!’

  ‘Look,’ said Paul, ‘we’re in the middle of the lunch break. Look at all those shabby works buses.’

  ‘They are not works buses. Those are Glasgow Corporation buses. And it is dinner, not lunch.’

  * * *

  Scottish national newspapers are parochial in the way that English local newspapers are parochial. Scotland possesses a pride in itself which constantly requires replenishment. Scotland, too, is aggressive about its Scottishness in the way that little men, when drunk, sometimes seek fights with bigger and stronger and sometimes sober men. The Glaswegianality of Glasgow is different: Glasgow is a big fellow who has made himself ugly; a handsome man of almost classical features, disfigured by an inherent wildness, a propensity for violence and disaster.

  Glasgow is a city built in stone; and although it may be difficult to build modest domestic apartments of stone, it is almost impossible to build ugly buildings in dressed and unpainted red sandstone. Glasgow is built of such stone, which seems to enforce the dignity of decent proportions on the windows and doorways of the great tenement blocks. Their tiled passageways are different. The ugliness or beauty of anything depends partly on what it is and partly on what it looks like: it is what they are much more than what they look like which makes the ugly parts of Glasgow ugly.

  They drink heavily and fast in Glasgow, conscious that it is never far from time being called; and nastily, mixing lemon juice with whisky, and pouring their ‘heavy’ beer or their draught lager on top of the whisky. Belfast is Glasgow’s daughter, or twin, city; and Belfast apart, no other city in the kingdom has so much the feel of vehemence. It is the most foreign and potentially the most frightening (which may be saying the same thing). There are plenty of places in Glasgow where it would not strike me as ridiculous to be given the advice the metropolitan magazine New York gave to its readers – ‘Walk along the curb of a sidewalk and avoid shadowy doorways or building recesses . . . If you think you’re being followed and your building is not served by a doorman, keep on walking . . . Have your keys ready when you enter your building . . . Organise tenant or street associations . . . If you are mugged, don’t resist . . . Don’t hesitate to help someone in distress.’ I do not mean to say that Glasgow is a dangerous place. I mean that it is a place I could imagine becoming dangerous, like the Chicago I imagine, or the New York which I know and liked. It is Glasgow’s capacity to produce such imaginings that makes it the most foreign of towns I feel not lost and abroad in.

  GANGS, 1973

  Anonymous

  Gangs have been a fact of Glasgow life for decades, perhaps centuries. Historians record that the Penny Mob in Townhead may have the claim to be the city’s first gang. The period after the First World World is reckoned to be their heyday, when gangs such as the Redskins, the Norman Conks, the Billy Boys and the Antique Mob ran amok and caused grievous bodily harm, usually to themselves and their rivals. What was their point, other than to defend themselves and their territory? Who knows, but they certainly struck terror into otherwise peaceful neighbourhoods. Here a 15-year-old boy explains their appeal. A gemme was someone who was ready to fight whatever the odds, ‘even if defeat or physical punishment is inevitable’.

  ‘Most of the Gangs in Glasgow are Gemmies. I think if you are in a Gang you just go for the fun of it. When you are in a Gang it is very easy to get birds whereas if you’re not you don’t get so many because most of the birds go for boys in Gangs because it makes them feel big. I go about with a Gang called the Possil Uncle; it used to be called the Fleet, then Border Troops, the Rebels and the Possil Pigs. The Maryhill Fleet boys go about with us. Sometimes we go to the Granada dancing or go up to the Milton to fight the Tongs or the Thrush from Kirkintilloch. I get a lot of fun going about with a gang because we smash aw the bam-pots up that try to get fly when they get you by yourself with their mates.’

  CONNOLLYMANIA, 1973

  Colin MacFarlane

  The impact Billy Connolly (1942–), otherwise known as ‘The Big Yin’, made when he metamorphosed from a folk singer to a stand-up comedian is incalculable. With his flowing locks and beard, he had the appearance of a Glaswegian Merlin. Unlike other comedians of that period, he did not tell jokes. Rather he spun tall stories which grew more ridiculous and surreal the longer they went on. Often they were concerned with bodily functions, drunkenness and religion. He seemed effortlessly to cause offence which, in turn, made him all the more popular. He had worked in the shipyards and, as a consequence, had a bottomless well of anecdotes to draw upon. Regularly touted as one of the greatest comedians ever, he is also a notable actor, starring in many films and television programmes. Here, Colin MacFarlane remembers Connolly shortly before his career went into another orbit.

  When I was out seeing Charlotte [his girlfriend] in Carfin one day, she said to me, ‘There’s a new Glasgow comedian performing at a hotel just up the road. Do you fancy going?’

  ‘Whit’s his name?’ I asked.

  ‘Billy Connolly.’

  An article in the local newspaper said that he was to perform at the Tudor Hotel in Airdrie and that the gig would be recorded for a live album. When we turned up at the hotel the following night, the place was jam-packed and the performance was a sell-out. There was an absolutely incredible atmosphere. Even before Connolly appeared, it was electric and when he arrived on stage he did the most hilarious sketches I had ever heard. One of them, about the Last Supper taking place in the Gallowgate rather than Galilee, had everyone falling about laughing. When I listen to the album, I can distinctly hear my own laugh during a couple of the sketches.

  The Solo Concert album went on to sell more than a quarter of a million copies. After its release, Connolly’s rise to superstardom began in earnest. He even had his own comic strip in the Sunday Mail called The Big Yin written by him and artist Malcolm McCormick. It was an instant rival to Oor Wullie and The Broons. In one such strip, Billy’s uncle comes down from Uist and is told, ‘If ye’re jist gonnae sit scrounging bevy, ye can away back where the animals run aboot an’ streams run doon the slopes.’

  ‘Ye mean Hampden?’

  Connolly’s big achievement was to make the Glasgow dialect something that people loved, appreciated and found hilarious not only in Scotland but the world over. Some people, though, were not amused by his strong language and sketches about religion. Connolly recorded a religious-affairs programme for BBC Scotland in which Moses said things like, ‘Nip hame and git yir people . . .’ And short jokes like the following did not endear him to Christian fundamentalists: ‘Whit are the three most unnecessary things in life? A nun’s tits, the Pope’s balls and a round of applause for the band.’

  Religious zealots such as Baptist minister Pastor Jack Glass started to mount demonstrations outside his shows. Connolly wasn’t surprised, and shrugged. ‘Ah, well, it’s not every day you get a demonstration in your honour’, adding that the pastor was ‘an ass’.

  He had other detractors as well. Tony Blackburn, a Radio 1 DJ at the time of the Solo Concert’s release, told his millions of listeners that he couldn’t see anything funny about the Glasgow patter merchant. But Connolly’s management said that Blackburn slagging off the album was one of the highest recommendations a comedy record could get. Others found Connolly’s humour too lavatorial for their liking, while many people in Glasgow believed that their patter was just as good and that Connolly had made it big only because he was lucky and had a pushy manager. He even got poison-pen letters.

  Connolly mocked the typical Scottish reaction to success in a joke about the Second Coming: a man rushes down the street to tell his neighbours, ‘He’s here! He�
��s here! He’s come!’

  ‘Who has?’

  ‘Jesus Christ!’

  ‘Aye, Ah kent his faither.’

  But Connolly was quite adept at dealing with hecklers during his shows. He’d say things like, ‘The last time I saw a mouth like yours, pal, Lester Piggott was sitting behind it’, or ‘The more I hear of you, the more I believe in birth control.’ When one heckler shouted ‘IRA!’ in Dublin, he replied, to rapturous applause, ‘Aye, you’re very brave down there in the dark, pal. Try shoutin’ that in the middle of Ibrox Park some time.’

  Connolly was slightly different from other Scottish comedians around at that time as he had been influenced by the outrageous story-telling of American comics like Lenny Bruce. A story that had a big impact on Connolly was about Lenny Bruce on stage in San Francisco. There were policemen in the audience waiting to arrest him for using obscene language. Bruce got up on the stage and explained to the audience that because the police were there, he’d use alternative words. For example, when he wanted to say a four-letter word that started with C and ended with T, he’d say ‘tulip’; when he was going to say a word that started with F and ended with K, he’d say ‘daffodil’; and the word that started with B and ended with D would be ‘rhododendron’. He checked with the audience to see if they’d got the code – tulip, daffodil, rhododenron. Then he started off, ‘There was this Mexican c***s****r . . .’