Glasgow Ice Cream Wars

The Glasgow Ice Cream Wars were conflicts in the East End of Glasgow in Scotland in the 1980s between rival ice cream van operators, over lucrative territory and suggested use of ice cream vans as a cover for selling drugs. The conflicts involved daily violence and intimidation, and led to the deaths by arson of several members of the family of one ice cream van driver and a consequent court case that lasted for 20 years. The conflicts generated widespread public outrage, and earned the Strathclyde Police the nickname the "serious chimes squad" (a pun on Serious Crime Squad) for its perceived failure to address them. However, more than just the sale of ice-cream was involved. Several ice-cream vendors also sold stolen goods and drugs along their routes, using the ice cream sales as fronts, and much of the violence was either intimidation or competition relating to these.

A further so-called frightener was planned against him. At 02:00 the door on the landing outside of the top-floor flat in Ruchazie where he lived with his family was doused with petrol and set alight. The members of the Doyle family, and three additional guests who were staying the night 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, and Tony, aged 23, 18, and 14 respectively.

The court case

{| class="wikitable" style="float:right;width:30%; margin:0 0 0.5em 1em;" |+ Chronology of the court case), and sentenced to life imprisonment, of which they were to serve not less than 20 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 10 years in prison for that.

A witness, William Love, stated that he had overheard, in a bar, Campbell, Steele, and others 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 [sic] 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 (He had already served several years in prison in the 1970s, and had been back in prison from 1982 to 1983.) who had entered the ice cream van business in 1983, and who had been keen to protect his "patch" against the rival Marchetti family; 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 rejected the Crown's evidence during the 27-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", in order 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 stated an alibi for the time of the fire.

As a result, both Campbell and Steele engaged in campaigns of protest to attempt to publicize their cases. Steele escaped from prison several times, in order to make high profile demonstrations, including a rooftop protest and supergluing himself to the railings at Buckingham Palace. Campbell protested whilst remaining in Barlinnie prison, going on hunger strike, refusing to cut his hair, and making a documentary. After a lengthy legal argument, the Secretary of State for Scotland referred the case to the appeal court, granting Campbell and Steele interim freedom pending its outcome.

The appeal failed. The three appeal 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.

Three years later, the appeal was heard by the appeal court, and it succeeded. Lord Gill, Lord MacLean, and Lord Macfadyan 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. The new evidence, which was not contradicted by the Crown, was from Brian Clifford, a professor of cognitive psychology, who testified that the recollection of Campbell's statement by the four police officers at the time of the original trial was "too exact". Clifford had performed studies where he tested people in Scotland and England on their ability to recall things 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 trying to recall what Campbell was supposed to have said was 17 words out of the 24 used. He concluded that people process utterances for "meaning rather than [for] actual wording". 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". 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". Campbell (represented by Maggie Scott QC) and Steele were freed.

Notes

In popular culture

The 1984 Bill Forsyth movie Comfort and Joy was a humorous riff on the ice cream wars.

References

Further reading

— The Scotsman's 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. — Campbell's own account of his trial and subsequent incarceration

Category:20th-century in Scotland Category:20th-century conflicts Category:Crime in Scotland Ice cream Category:Ice cream Category:Illegal drug trade in the United Kingdom Category:Business rivalries Category:Organized crime conflicts Category:Organised crime in the United Kingdom