The Ice Cream Wars

BBC1 Scotland, 9pm, Monday 10 October and Tuesday 11 October/iPlayer

****

 

If there is one city in Scotland that is haunted by the deeds of the past it is Glasgow.

The not so dear green place was home to the “Ice Cream Wars” of the early 1980s, which culminated in the murder of six members of the Doyle family.

The crime and the times are brought back in vivid fashion in an outstanding two-part documentary which starts tonight on BBC1 Scotland.

Made for BBC Scotland by Two Rivers Media, the Glasgow-based production company behind War and Justice: The Case of Marine A, and Killing Escobar, the series is produced and directed by Robert Neill.

With a clip of Selina Scott reading the headlines on BBC Breakfast on the morning of 16 April, 1984, the viewer is transported back to the Glasgow of the day, a place that advertised itself as “miles better”.

It was a different story in the housing schemes that spread along the city boundaries.

In these “deserts wi windaes”, as Billy Connolly called them, there were no shops, so vans toured the streets selling ice cream, sweets, and other goods. Rumour had it heroin was available, though one contributor to the documentary says there was no evidence of that.

There was certainly money to be made, and it was not long before the gangsters moved in.

Andrew Doyle, an ordinary, hard-working Glaswegian trying to provide for his family, was one of the drivers targeted and terrorised by the thugs. A shotgun was fired through the windscreen of his van. Still he would not give in.

The murders shocked a city that thought itself unshockable. Using a mix of footage from the day and contemporary interviews, the documentary recreates a world that feels at once distant yet instantly recognisable.

As in a trial, any documentary stands or falls on the quality of the testimony, and the contributors here are first rate. Besides hearing from police and lawyers, the series draws on the views of some of the best crime reporters and writers in the business, from Marion Scott to Denise Mina by way of Douglas Skelton and Ken Smith. More powerful still is an eyewitness account of the night from someone who lived opposite the Doyle family.

Topping everything is the interview with Joe Steele, one of the men wrongly jailed for the murders alongside Thomas Campbell.

While the story inevitably hits a slower pace as it documents the legal goings on, it comes tearing back to the present day with the Steele interview, an encounter that is handled with due sensitivity, like much else in the documentary.

What the viewer is left with is a feeling of unfinished business, a chasm where justice for the Doyle family should have been. Sometimes there is only journalism to fill such gaps, and it is hard to see any documentary doing a finer job than this one.