![Ice cream van adjusted](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/38/Ice_cream_van_adjusted.jpg)
The ice cream wars were
turf war
A turf war is a fight over territory or resources, or may refer to:
Music
* ''Turf Wars'', a 2007 album by the Canadian band Daggermouth
* "Turf War", a song on the 2001 album ''Filmtracks 2000'' by American composer Bill
Television
* ''Turf Wa ...
s in the
East End
The East End of London, often referred to within the London area simply as the East End, is the historic core of wider East London, east of the Roman and medieval walls of the City of London and north of the River Thames. It does not have uni ...
of
Glasgow
Glasgow ( ; sco, Glesca or ; gd, Glaschu ) is the most populous city in Scotland and the fourth-most populous city in the United Kingdom, as well as being the 27th largest city by population in Europe. In 2020, it had an estimated popul ...
,
Scotland
Scotland (, ) is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Covering the northern third of the island of Great Britain, mainland Scotland has a border with England to the southeast and is otherwise surrounded by the Atlantic Ocean to the ...
, in the 1980s between rival criminal organisations selling
drugs
A drug is any chemical substance that causes a change in an organism's physiology or psychology when consumed. Drugs are typically distinguished from food and substances that provide nutritional support. Consumption of drugs can be via inhalat ...
and
stolen goods[ from ]ice cream van
An ice cream van (British) or ice cream truck (North American) is a commercial vehicle that serves as a mobile retail outlet for ice cream, usually during the spring and summer. Ice cream vans are often seen parked at public events, or near ...
s. Van operators were involved in frequent violence and intimidation tactics, the most notable example of which involved a driver and his family who were killed in an arson
Arson is the crime of willfully and deliberately setting fire to or charring property. Although the act of arson typically involves buildings, the term can also refer to the intentional burning of other things, such as motor vehicles, wat ...
attack that resulted in a twenty-year court battle. The conflicts generated widespread public outrage, and earned the Strathclyde Police
Strathclyde Police was the territorial police force responsible for the Scottish council areas of Argyll and Bute, City of Glasgow, East Ayrshire, East Dunbartonshire, East Renfrewshire, Inverclyde, North Ayrshire, North Lanarkshire, Renfrewshir ...
the nickname of "Serious Chimes Squad" (a pun on Serious Crime Squad) for its perceived failure to address them.
Conflicts
In 1980s Glasgow, several ice cream vendors also sold drugs and stolen goods along their routes, using the ice cream sales as fronts. A turf war erupted between these vendors related to competition over the lucrative illegal activity, including intimidation of rival ice cream van operators.[ During the conflict, rival vendors raided each other's ice cream vans and used ]shotgun
A shotgun (also known as a scattergun, or historically as a fowling piece) is a long gun, long-barreled firearm designed to shoot a straight-walled cartridge (firearms), cartridge known as a shotshell, which usually discharges numerous small p ...
s to fire into the windscreens of the vehicles.[
The peak of the violence came on 16 April 1984 with the murder by arson of six members of the Doyle family, in the ]Ruchazie
Ruchazie ( ) is a neighbourhood in the Scottish city of Glasgow. It is situated to the north-east of the city, bordered by Craigend and Garthamlock to the east and the open ground of Hogganfield Park and Lethamhill Golf Course to the north. R ...
housing estate
A housing estate (or sometimes housing complex or housing development) is a group of homes and other buildings built together as a single development. The exact form may vary from country to country.
Popular throughout the United States a ...
. 18-year-old Andrew Doyle, nicknamed "Fat Boy", a driver for the Marchetti firm, had resisted being intimidated into distributing drugs[ on his run, and attempts to take over his run – resistance that had already led to him being shot by an unidentified assailant through the windscreen of his van.][
A further so-called 'frightener' was planned against Doyle. At 02:00, the door on the landing outside the top-floor flat in Ruchazie where Doyle lived with his family was doused with petrol and set alight. The members of the Doyle family, and three additional guests who were staying in the flat that night, were asleep at the time. The resulting blaze killed five people, with a sixth dying later in hospital: James Doyle, aged 53; his daughter Christina Halleron, aged 25; her 18-month-old son Mark; and three of Mr Doyle's sons, James, Andrew (the target of the intimidation), and Tony, aged 23, 18, and 14 respectively.][
]
Court case
The ensuing public outrage at the deaths was considerable. Strathclyde Police arrested several people over the following months, eventually charging six. Four were tried and convicted of offences relating to the vendettas. The remaining two, Thomas "T C" Campbell and Joe Steele, were tried for the murders, convicted unanimously (unanimity is not required in Scotland) and sentenced to life imprisonment
Life imprisonment is any sentence of imprisonment for a crime under which convicted people are to remain in prison for the rest of their natural lives or indefinitely until pardoned, paroled, or otherwise commuted to a fixed term. Crimes for ...
, of which they were to serve no fewer than twenty years according to the judge's recommendation. Campbell was also separately convicted (again with the jury returning a unanimous verdict) of involvement in the earlier shotgun attack, and sentenced to serve ten years in prison for that crime.
What ensued was a twenty-year court battle by Campbell and Steele, one of the more contentious in Scottish legal history, and, in the later words of Campbell's solicitor, Aamer Anwar
Aamer Anwar (born 30 December 1967) is a Scottish political activist and lawyer of Pakistani background. He was an active participant in the Stop the War Coalition, and campaigned against the 31st G8 summit at Gleneagles. He has been a longst ...
, "twenty years of hunger strikes, prison breakouts, demonstrations, political pressure, solitary isolation, prison beatings, ndlegal fight after legal fight".[
]The Crown
The Crown is the state in all its aspects within the jurisprudence of the Commonwealth realms and their subdivisions (such as the Crown Dependencies, overseas territories, provinces, or states). Legally ill-defined, the term has different ...
's case against Campbell and Steele rested on three pieces of evidence:[
*A witness, William Love, stated that he had overheard Campbell, Steele, and others in a bar discussing how they would teach "Fat Boy" Doyle a lesson by setting fire to his house.
*The police stated that Campbell had made a statement, recorded by four officers, that, "I only wanted the van windaes shot up. The fire at Fat Boy's was only meant to be a frightener which went too far."
*The police stated that a photocopied A–Z street map of Glasgow, on which the Doyle house in Bankend St was marked with an X, was found in Campbell's flat.
According to the Crown, Campbell was a man with a record of violence, having already served separate prison sentences in the 1970s and early 1980s, who had entered the ice cream van business in 1983 and had been keen to protect his "patch" against the rival Marchetti firm; and Steele was Campbell's henchman, a sidekick recruited to help with the dirty work in Campbell's planned campaign of violence against Marchetti drivers and vans.][
The ]defence
Defense or defence may refer to:
Tactical, martial, and political acts or groups
* Defense (military), forces primarily intended for warfare
* Civil defense, the organizing of civilians to deal with emergencies or enemy attacks
* Defense industr ...
rejected the Crown's evidence during the twenty-seven day trial, and afterwards Campbell continued to assert that he had been "fitted up" by both Love and the police. Campbell described Love during the trial as "a desperado" who had been willing to be a witness, pointing the finger at (in Campbell's words) "any one of us" to avoid going to prison himself, having been granted bail in exchange for testimony. Campbell denied that he had made any such statement to the police as was claimed, asserted that the police had planted the map in his house, and claimed that when he had been arrested and taken to Baird Street police station, a senior police officer had told him, "This is where we do the fitting up. I am going to nail you to the wall." He stated that at the time of the fire he had been at home with his wife. Steele also gave an alibi
An alibi (from the Latin, '' alibī'', meaning "somewhere else") is a statement by a person, who is a possible perpetrator of a crime, of where they were at the time a particular offence was committed, which is somewhere other than where the crim ...
for the time of the fire.
After conviction, Campbell and Steele tried to have their conviction overturned in 1989, but failed. Several years later, in 1992, journalists Douglas Skelton and Lisa Brownlie wrote a book, ''Frightener'', about the conflicts and the trial. They interviewed Love for the book, who stated, and later signed affidavit
An ( ; Medieval Latin for "he has declared under oath") is a written statement voluntarily made by an ''affiant'' or '' deponent'' under an oath or affirmation which is administered by a person who is authorized to do so by law. Such a statemen ...
s attesting, that he had lied under oath. In Love's own words: "I did so because it suited my own selfish purposes. The explanation as to why I gave evidence is this: The police pressurised me to give evidence against Campbell, who they clearly believed was guilty of arranging to set fire to Doyle's house."[
As a result, both Campbell and Steele engaged in campaigns of protest to attempt to publicise their cases. Steele escaped from prison several times, to make high-profile demonstrations, including a rooftop protest and supergluing himself to the railings at ]Buckingham Palace
Buckingham Palace () is a London royal residence and the administrative headquarters of the monarch of the United Kingdom. Located in the City of Westminster, the palace is often at the centre of state occasions and royal hospitality. It ...
. Campbell protested whilst remaining in HM Prison Barlinnie
HM Prison Barlinnie is the largest prison in Scotland. It is operated by the Scottish Prison Service and is located in the residential suburb of Riddrie, in the north east of Glasgow, Scotland. It is informally known locally as The Big Hoose, ...
, going on hunger strike, refusing to cut his hair, and making a documentary. After a lengthy legal argument, the Secretary of State for Scotland
The secretary of state for Scotland ( gd, Rùnaire Stàite na h-Alba; sco, Secretar o State fir Scotland), also referred to as the Scottish secretary, is a Secretary of State (United Kingdom), secretary of state in the Government of the Unit ...
referred the case to the appeal court, granting Campbell and Steele interim freedom pending its outcome.[
The appeal failed when the three judges reached a split decision on whether the fresh evidence relating to Love's testimony (and relating to a potentially exculpatory statement made to the police by Love's sister, which had not been disclosed to the defence at the trial) would have significantly affected the outcome of the original trial and thus should be heard. Lord Cullen and Lord Sutherland both opined that it would have not, with Lord McCluskey dissenting. Campbell and Steele were returned to prison.][
The legal fight continued. A further petition was presented to the Scottish Secretary asking for the case to be referred back to the Court of Appeal. Donald Dewar refused to refer the case, because he did not "believe that they present dgrounds for a referral of the case to the appeal court". Solicitors for Campbell and Steele then took the case to the then newly created Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission, which took up the case.
The Commission first requested and received material from the Crown Office. It then went to court to obtain further Crown paperwork relating to the case, including government correspondence. The Crown fought against the release of the paperwork, on the grounds that the Commission had not justified it gaining access to the paperwork and that the papers were in the same category as paperwork that the Commission had already been denied access to by Scottish Executive's Justice Department. Lord Clarke ruled in favour of the Commission being granted access to the paperwork, stating that "The commission asa statutory obligation to carry out a full, independent and impartial investigation into alleged miscarriages of justice" and that "Legislation under which t actswas clearly designed to give the widest powers to perform that duty."]
Appeal
The Commission decided that the case should be referred back to the appeal court. Pending the outcome of the appeal Lord Justice Clerk, Lord Gill, granted Campbell and Steele interim freedom a second time.
Three years later, the appeal was heard by the appeal court, and it succeeded. Lord Gill, Lord MacLean, and Lord Macfadyen quashed the convictions as a result of hearing new evidence and because of what they stated to be significant misdirection of the jury by the judge at the original trial. Dr Gary Macpherson, a consultant forensic clinical psychologist instructed by the Crown, questioned the ecological validity of the laboratory studies, however the new evidence, which was not contradicted by the Crown, was from Brian Clifford, a professor of cognitive psychology
Cognitive psychology is the scientific study of mental processes such as attention, language use, memory, perception, problem solving, creativity, and reasoning.
Cognitive psychology originated in the 1960s in a break from behaviorism, which ...
, who testified that the recollection of Campbell's statement by the four police officers at the time of the original trial was "too exact", centering on an identical 24-word phrase which featured in every account: "I only wanted the van windaes shot up. The fire at Fat Boy's was only meant to be a frightener which went too far." Clifford had performed studies where he tested people in Scotland and England on their ability to recall a statement that they had just heard. His results were that people only recalled between 30% and 40% of the actual words they heard, and that the highest score obtained by anyone in the experiment on a 24-word phrase was 17 words out of the 24 used. He stated that these results "strongly suggested that it was not at all likely" that the officers would be able to record Campbell's statement "in such similar terms" without having compared or collaborated on their accounts. The appeal judges concluded that "any jury hearing Prof. Clifford's evidence would have assessed the evidence of the arresting police officers in an entirely different light" and that the evidence "is of such significance that the verdicts of the jury, having been returned in ignorance of it, must be regarded as miscarriages of justice
A miscarriage of justice occurs when a grossly unfair outcome occurs in a criminal or civil proceeding, such as the conviction and punishment of a person for a crime they did not commit. Miscarriages are also known as wrongful convictions. Inno ...
". Campbell (represented by Aamer Anwar
Aamer Anwar (born 30 December 1967) is a Scottish political activist and lawyer of Pakistani background. He was an active participant in the Stop the War Coalition, and campaigned against the 31st G8 summit at Gleneagles. He has been a longst ...
and Maggie Scott QC) and Steele were freed.
The original trial judge, Lord Kincraig, who had told Campbell and Steele in court at the original trial that he regarded them as "vicious and dangerous men", at that point in his 80s and having been retired for 18 years, spoke out against the ruling of the appeal court days afterward, stating that he could not "accept there was a conspiracy among the police". At the original trial he had instructed the jury that to believe Campbell and Steele's assertions was to accept that "not one or two or four but a large number of detectives have deliberately come here to perjure themselves, to build up a false case against an accused person" and to accept the implication that there had been a conspiracy by police officers of the "most sinister and serious kind" to "saddle the accused wrongly with the crimes of murder and attempted murder, and a murder of a horrendous nature". After the convictions were quashed, he criticised the appeal court for " surpingthe function of the jury" in that " e function of the jury is to decide questions of fact not law" and that the appeal court "seem to have said that evidence is not believable, which is the jury's province. That's a decision in fact. The court of appeal has decided in fact the jury was wrong."
Campbell called for a fresh investigation of the murder of the Doyle family, accusing Tam McGraw
Thomas "Tam" McGraw (19 February 1952 – 30 July 2007), also known as "The Licensee" or "Wan-Baw McGraw", was a gangster involved in organised crime including extortion and drug trafficking in Glasgow, Scotland.
Once one of the wealthiest b ...
both of the original murders and of instigating a campaign over 20 years to ensure that Campbell remained in jail and was silenced, including repeated attempts on Campbell's life. But commentators considered it unlikely that a fresh investigation would be launched as a result of the convictions being quashed and the fresh evidence that had been presented since the original trial. This was in part because claims by Campbell against a man whom he is regarded as hating are viewed with scepticism (his stabbing in 2002 was believed at the time to be part of a long running tit-for-tat feud between the two men), and in part because two police officers who had been heavily involved in the case had since died: The body of Detective Superintendent Norrie Walker was found in a fume-filled car in 1988. Detective Chief Superintendent Charles Craig, head of the Criminal Investigation Department
The Criminal Investigation Department (CID) is the branch of a police force to which most plainclothes detectives belong in the United Kingdom and many Commonwealth nations. A force's CID is distinct from its Special Branch (though officers of b ...
at the time of the murders, died in 1991 aged 57.[
]
Later developments
Thomas "T C" Campbell died in June 2019.
Notes
References
Further reading
*
* – ''The Scotsmans index of its coverage of the Glasgow "ice cream war" case.
* — a detailed study of Clifford's research and testimony, its analysis during the appeal hearing, its consequences, and several related cases
* – McGraw was arrested as a suspect for the killings of the Doyle family at one point.
*
*
*{{cite book, title=Indictment: Trial by Fire, author=Campbell, T. C., author2=McKay, Reg, publisher=Canongate Books Ltd, date=11 April 2002, isbn=1-84195-235-4 – Campbell's own account of his trial and subsequent incarceration
1984 in Scotland
1980s in Glasgow
1980s conflicts
Crime in Glasgow
Ice cream
Ice cream is a sweetened frozen food typically eaten as a snack or dessert. It may be made from milk or cream and is flavoured with a sweetener, either sugar or an alternative, and a spice, such as cocoa or vanilla, or with fruit such as str ...
Ice cream vans
Illegal drug trade in the United Kingdom
Business rivalries
Organised crime conflicts in the United Kingdom
Organised crime in Scotland
Drugs in Scotland