Moral Panics and Glasgow Gangs: Exploring ‘the New Wave of Glasgow Hooliganism’, 1965–1970

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.

The Semiotics of the Evolving Gang Masculinity and Glasgow

“…4 Given the historical relationship that Glasgow shares with gangs and gang culture, it is perhaps no surprise to find that much of the literature on Scottish gangs more generally revolves around studies carried out in and around the city of Glasgow. 5 Yet despite the early razor gangs, with the exception of Sillitoe (1956), analysis of early gang formation in Glasgow has primarily been confined to the latter writings of a few scholars, namely Bartie (2010) and Davies (1998Davies ( , 2013 historical analysis. Bartie (2010) details the process whereby gang narratives came to dominate public concerns over what may in fact have been the situation on the streets.…”

“…Therefore, the purpose of the article is not to specifically critique existing literature, discuss other gang typologies, nor explain why the gang per se has been overlooked in the Scottish context when compared to our Anglo-Welsh counterparts, but rather the article aims to move beyond existing literature by providing a new qualitative analysis of Young Street Gangs (YSGs) in Scotland's 'gangland capital', Glasgow using fresh primary data (Bartie 2010;Davies 1998Davies , 2013. The article will do so by extending the meaning of territoriality and masculinity in their existing theoretical sense, and by listening to the youth voices of those having been involved in extensive YSG behavior.…”

Situating gangs within Scotland’s illegal drugs market(s)

“…The lack of a unified gang definition in Scotland is due in part to the ever-changing manifestation of 'gangs' (Densley 2014). Consequently, workable, rather than unanimous, definitions have been adopted to meet the needs of agencies or institutions that interact with or describe certain groups or segments of the population involved in 'problematic' behaviour (Bartie 2010). The result has been a blurring and consolidation of gang definitions, typologies, structures and behaviours all under the one umbrella term, which has undoubtedly created confusion and fear around all things labelled 'gang'.…”

Police and Community in Twentieth-century Scotland: The Uses of Social History

“…Our name for them, then and still today, was "neds"'. (Colquhoun 1962: 19) If the older animosities held by socialist, Catholic and Irish communities were eroding by the mid twentieth century, they were replaced with feelings of exclusion that were most obviously generational by the 1960s (Bartie 2010;see also Jackson 2014: 44). The Second World War may well have been a high watermark for trust in the police in Glasgow but the complexity of police-community relations in the city cannot be over-stated.…”

“…The social history of policing in twentieth-century England and Wales has been researched extensively (eg. Brogden 1991;Emsley 1991;Klein 2010;Jones 1996;Weinberger 1995) but equivalent work on Scotland is limited to work on Glasgow gangs and youth justice (Davies 1998(Davies , 2007(Davies and 2013Bartie 2010;Bartie & Jackson 2011;Jackson 2014). Banton's The Policeman in the Community (1964), seen as a foundational text within police studies, provided a snap-shot of the preventative and social role of police in one Scottish city division (taken to be Edinburgh) in the early 1960s.…”