Compelling documentary series, The Ice Cream Wars, reveals the inside story of a vicious gang war which tore through Glasgow’s tough housing estates in the early Eighties, an infamous miscarriage of justice and a crime which still remains unsolved.
Using archive, first-hand testimony and dramatic reconstruction, the two-part series tells the story of a gangland battle over the most unlikely of things – ice cream van routes. This battle would result in the murder of six completely innocent members of the same family, including an 18-month old baby.
In the early 1980s, Glasgow was a tale of two cities – one which was “Miles Better” and the other, a battleground of criminal warfare. The city’s sprawling new housing schemes such as Easterhouse and Ruchazie, housed thousands of people who had little or no access to shops, pubs or other facilities. Against this backdrop, ice cream vans thrived, making so much money that they quickly attracted the attention of the city’s gangsters. Competition was fierce and would often escalate into violence, becoming deadly on the morning of the 16th April 1984.
In the early hours of the morning, a fire engulfed a top floor flat in Bankend Street, Ruchazie, a three bed flat housing nine members of the Doyle family. One of the victims, Andrew Doyle, was a young ice-cream van driver who had, in the weeks running up to his death, received threats and intimidation. The police would quickly link the fire to organised criminal gangs trying to muscle in on the city’s ice cream trade.
The trial that followed would be the biggest of its kind in Scotland and a 20 year fight for justice that gripped the nation.
Featuring testimony from police officers, members of the ice cream business, reporters from the Eighties and eyewitnesses, the first episode also hears from Joe Steele – one of the men convicted of the Doyle family murders.
Along with Joe Steele, one of the men jailed for the murders of the Doyle family, contributors include Archie McDougall, manager of one of Glasgow’s biggest ice cream businesses; writer & campaigner Douglas Skelton; crime author Denise Mina; and lawyers John Carroll and Aamer Anwar, amongst others.
The Ice Cream Wars, BBC One Scotland, 9 pm, Monday 10th and Tuesday 11th October.
