public. He and Steele were as driven as Slater and Meehan when they languished behind the very same bars.
Steele had an interesting history coming from a notorious Glasgow crime family (a genuine family, not in the mafia way!). His brother John, known in his frequent visits to Scotland’s prisons as “Johnnyboy,” was a headache when in Peterhead, being involved in the infamous dirty protests, the stories of which made regular headlines and outraged the readers of the tabloids. These protests were a feature of life in the jail for many years around the 1970s and ’80s. Cons with a chip on their shoulder about beatings and horrific treatment from the bad apples among the prison officers took to smearing the walls of their cells with excrement and urinated everywhere and anywhere. Dirty was something of an understatement. It is difficult to properly state the effect this nastiest form of protest had on the majority of arrow-straight warders who were only trying to do a job. What shocking memories these men took home with them at the end of a shift. Johnnyboy and Jimmy Boyle were two of the well-known criminals involved.
The Steele clan were just one of many criminal families in Glasgow. Evil thickened the blood of many a law-breaking dynasty – the Ferris, Thompson and Steele families prominent among them. One prison governor told me of having a grandfather, father and grandson of one bunch all in his nick at one time or another. John Steele was also a bit of a jail breaker, though not in the class of Johnny Ramensky when it came to the Houdini stuff.
Johnnyboy was also something of an amateur psychologist, with himself as the subject. In a book he wrote about his life of crime he dwelt heavily on a childhood of beatings from his father and the horrors of deprivation in a tough Glasgow scheme. One of the deprivations was psychological – the absence of a law-abiding role model. Like many another Glaswegian he had relatives galore who feared the cops and knew the jails of the country like the backs of their hands. When he finally ended up in Peterhead prison, life came as no surprise to him; he had listened to jail tales galore at the family fireside.
No crime in recent years has so horrified the Scottish public as that of the deaths of the Doyle family in their Bankend Street, Glasgow, home as result of a deliberate act of arson. James Doyle Snr, fifty-three; James Doyle Jnr, twenty-three; Tony Doyle, fourteen; Andrew Doyle, eighteen; their sister Christine Halleron, twenty-five; and baby Mark Halleron, aged one, all died when their flat was set alight. The deaths of the Doyles was a result of various gang feuds over the control of the many profitable ice cream vans that patrolled the mean streets of the Glasgow schemes. The honest traders were being attacked and driven out by ruthless gang lords who realised there was more money to be made by such vans than that generated by flogging mere confectionary. The sales of ice cream, lollipops and cigarettes was becoming a front for the distribution of hard drugs much in demand in these deprived areas. In the weeks and months before the fiery death of the Doyles, who had a son in the ice cream van trade, the city police were kept busy investigating attacks, and the threat of attacks, on the honest traders. The Bankend Street massacre was the final push to convince decent folk in the ice cream business to hand over vans to the neds who would promptly turn them into mobile illegal drug dispensaries. No prescription needed, just hard cash. And the best of “gear.”
When news of the deadly blaze first broke in 1984, the newspapers treated it as a not unusual Friday night fire. It made the splash in the Saturday morning front page of the Evening Times but there was no early hint of the real story behind the tragedy – that it was arson. Glasgow had the nickname “tinder box city” and to the veterans on the Saturday morning news desks the fire at first seemed pretty
Steele had an interesting history coming from a notorious Glasgow crime family (a genuine family, not in the mafia way!). His brother John, known in his frequent visits to Scotland’s prisons as “Johnnyboy,” was a headache when in Peterhead, being involved in the infamous dirty protests, the stories of which made regular headlines and outraged the readers of the tabloids. These protests were a feature of life in the jail for many years around the 1970s and ’80s. Cons with a chip on their shoulder about beatings and horrific treatment from the bad apples among the prison officers took to smearing the walls of their cells with excrement and urinated everywhere and anywhere. Dirty was something of an understatement. It is difficult to properly state the effect this nastiest form of protest had on the majority of arrow-straight warders who were only trying to do a job. What shocking memories these men took home with them at the end of a shift. Johnnyboy and Jimmy Boyle were two of the well-known criminals involved.
The Steele clan were just one of many criminal families in Glasgow. Evil thickened the blood of many a law-breaking dynasty – the Ferris, Thompson and Steele families prominent among them. One prison governor told me of having a grandfather, father and grandson of one bunch all in his nick at one time or another. John Steele was also a bit of a jail breaker, though not in the class of Johnny Ramensky when it came to the Houdini stuff.
Johnnyboy was also something of an amateur psychologist, with himself as the subject. In a book he wrote about his life of crime he dwelt heavily on a childhood of beatings from his father and the horrors of deprivation in a tough Glasgow scheme. One of the deprivations was psychological – the absence of a law-abiding role model. Like many another Glaswegian he had relatives galore who feared the cops and knew the jails of the country like the backs of their hands. When he finally ended up in Peterhead prison, life came as no surprise to him; he had listened to jail tales galore at the family fireside.
No crime in recent years has so horrified the Scottish public as that of the deaths of the Doyle family in their Bankend Street, Glasgow, home as result of a deliberate act of arson. James Doyle Snr, fifty-three; James Doyle Jnr, twenty-three; Tony Doyle, fourteen; Andrew Doyle, eighteen; their sister Christine Halleron, twenty-five; and baby Mark Halleron, aged one, all died when their flat was set alight. The deaths of the Doyles was a result of various gang feuds over the control of the many profitable ice cream vans that patrolled the mean streets of the Glasgow schemes. The honest traders were being attacked and driven out by ruthless gang lords who realised there was more money to be made by such vans than that generated by flogging mere confectionary. The sales of ice cream, lollipops and cigarettes was becoming a front for the distribution of hard drugs much in demand in these deprived areas. In the weeks and months before the fiery death of the Doyles, who had a son in the ice cream van trade, the city police were kept busy investigating attacks, and the threat of attacks, on the honest traders. The Bankend Street massacre was the final push to convince decent folk in the ice cream business to hand over vans to the neds who would promptly turn them into mobile illegal drug dispensaries. No prescription needed, just hard cash. And the best of “gear.”
When news of the deadly blaze first broke in 1984, the newspapers treated it as a not unusual Friday night fire. It made the splash in the Saturday morning front page of the Evening Times but there was no early hint of the real story behind the tragedy – that it was arson. Glasgow had the nickname “tinder box city” and to the veterans on the Saturday morning news desks the fire at first seemed pretty
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