In the 60's, I grew up in Easterhouse, a housing estate on the north-east of Glasgow where the ice-cream wars of the title of this two-part BBC documentary later partly took place and so was especially interested in watching it. I vividly remember as a boy in the late 60's the chimes of the Marchetti ice-cream van ringing out to attract customers in the Provanhall scheme where I lived with my family.
It seems crazy that something so banal as the route of an ice-cream van through some of the poorest estates in Glasgow could lead to the death of six innocent members of one family but this horrific crime did indeed take place in 1983 and shocked the nation.
The victims were six of eight members of the Doyle family who lived together in a three-bedroom flat in the Ruchazie part of Glasgow, adjacent to Easterhouse. The perpetrator had poured petrol through the letterbox of their front door and callously set light to it, setting off a horrendous fire which saw six people, including an 18-month-old baby lose their lives. The murders and manner of the deaths made for headline news, the moreso when the apparent motive for the action was to "frighten" Thomas Doyle, an 18-year-old young man whose only "crime" it seemed, was to have the enterprise to own and drive his own ice-cream van through disputed territory contested by criminals from Glasgow's underworld.
What followed was an intensive police investigation which eventually centred on six individuals, two of whom were then convicted of the six murders but who immediately and thereafter protested their innocence. Eventually, almost 30 years later, both were freed with the blame for the misdeed being laid at the door of another violent criminal who had died in the interim, the upshot being that, as of today, the crime still remains unsolved.
Told over two hour-long episodes, this well-made programme did a good job explaining the creation of these housing estates built on the suburbs of Glasgow but with minimal amenities for its inhabitants to enjoy, like shops, pubs, sports facilities or really any kind of significant infrastructure for their social benefit. Unsurprisingly, crime moved in, with gang warfare rife in the area and later the dispute over the routes of profitable ice-cream vans which led to this heinous crime being carried out.
Making extensive use of TV and press coverage of the day and modern-day interviews with many of the parties involved in the original police investigation and media coverage, it made for compulsive viewing. Significantly, though, I felt, there was no participation by any representative of the Doyle family, anyone related to Thomas Campbell one of the two men originally convicted or Thomas McGraw, believed to be its real perpetrator. Claims are made that the police "set-up" the two admittedly shady characters for the crime which took years to finally expose as a miscarriage of justice.
To be murdered over such a minor matter seems almost unthinkable as does the scale and horror of the crime itself. Sadly it seems as if we will never truly discover who carried out this despicable act which saw a go-ahead teenager and most of his family wiped out over for trying to make an honest living from the simple running of an ice-cream van dispensing confectionery to mostly young kids just like me at the time.
