Former council leader Susan Aitken has criticised a BBC documentary on Glasgow city centre for an “enormous misjudgement” in “platforming the far-right”.
A recent Disclosure programme investigated claims that areas of the city have become a no-go zone due to crime and anti-social behaviour.
Speaking at a full council meeting on Thursday, September 10, where she stood down as council leader, Cllr Aitken said: “It has long been a tactic of the far-right to paint cities as lawless and degenerate because cities stand for everything that they hate; diversity, cosmopolitanism, progress.
“The BBC platformed the people who have been responsible for the worst crime in our city centre recently, the most shocking crime. Masked thuggery, rampaging, targeting people of colour, deliberately designed to intimidate and to tell people that our city centre is a place of lawlessness.
“It is not, it has its problems but crime in Glasgow is no worse than crime in any other city in the UK and in actual fact it is considerably better than some of our peers.”
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The documentary focused on a one-week period in June, which coincided with anti-immigration protests in the city. It included interviews with people who had taken part in the protests.
No one from Glasgow City Council participated in the programme despite a BBC request.
Cllr Aitken, who was speaking during a Labour motion on crime and anti-social behaviour in the city centre, said: “Like any big city, Glasgow does have its pockets of crime and anti-social behaviour and some of it is severe. We also have an ongoing task of supporting vulnerable people.”
She added the council has had “close engagement with chief superintendent Emma Croft over many, many months on this now”.
“The police operations around Four Corner and St Enoch’s Square are complex, they’re intensive,” Cllr Aitken said. “They are having to respond to changing patterns of criminal behaviour and they also, by their very nature, sometimes have to be operationally confidential.”
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