When I was a boy in Dundee’s Kirkton the first rule was: Don’t mess on your own doorstep.
The neds who turned the scheme into a mini Beirut on Monday night would have been run out of the place back then – either by other residents or the council.
The land of the Huns could be a tough old place.
There were big families and lots of hardy folk. But generally there was a sense of respect for each other.
I passed through it last week and parts of it resembled the Wild West.
Knee-high grass in overgrown gardens, clorty curtains, and a general unkempt, down at heel feel gave lie to the notion of community spirit.
Dress it up how you like, a small minority of tow-rags are making decent residents’ lives a nightmare.
Their anarchic approach to life is unhindered by any notion of common decency or respect for others.
There are no excuses.
Kirkton residents know excuses for violence won’t wash
As a laddie when I lived there plenty of folk struggled to make ends meet.
But turns were taken keeping the closes and bin recesses tidy, and neighbours helped each other out.
Last night feral kids ran amok setting the streets ablaze and wrecking property.
They create nothing, but they destroy with abandon, delight, and malice.
We talk a lot about human rights but not nearly enough about duties.
These Kirkton malcontents are proof that we’ve got the balance between the two completely out of kilter.
There are no excuses.
Unemployment or poverty aren’t reasons to wreck your own gaff.
The nihilism on display by young rockets forced the majority of good folk in Kirkton into silent subjugation, fearing for their safety and their property.
The riotous assembly saw streets ablaze, cars vandalised, and cops attacked with fireworks.
Any excuses being made for their behaviour come from lazy, patronising, middle-class, liberal attitudes towards crime and punishment.
Glasgow hard men feared ‘the Kirkton kiss’
This is no dewy-eyed reminiscence about the good old days.
When I lived there until the age of 16 the scheme could be a roughhouse.
I clearly remember, as a boy, racing to see the local gang, the Huns, fighting with the police down at the Claverhouse bar, where tales had reached us of an overturned Panda car and exercised our febrile young minds.
And I remember clearly three Glasgow “hard men” who had come through late at night “to sort out” a well known local in the next tenement.
They ended up face down as he dispensed the Kirkton kiss to them.
But setting fire to your own streets wouldn’t have entered the minds of even the hard nuts like him.
There were some genuine hard cases; brought up in big families with not much to go around.
And certain individuals definitely walked on the wild side.
But the cops who patrolled the streets from the solitary police box at the terminus in Balgowan Avenue were men who were feared and respected in equal measure.
Good folk of Kirkton kept us in check, they’ll do the right thing now
The name of PC Willie Bell struck fear into us as laddies.
And it took the merest hint from your mum or dad that they’d be calling on him to deal with your errant ways to bring you quickly into line.
What the hell is going on in Dundee tonight? Oldest daughter just sent these videos pic.twitter.com/BPCKihvlxC
— YourWullie (@YourWullie) October 31, 2022
The scheme has changed immeasurably from my youth.
The Copper Beech and Claverhouse pubs are long gone.
The shops in Balgowan Avenue are a distant memory, as are the two Co-ops or the Soshes as we called them, in West March and Beauly Avenue.
Last night it looked like any sense of pride in the scheme has gone too.
But there are still too many good folk there to allow the neds to run the show.
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