Scotland's Godfathers: Real story behind Ice Cream wars horror flat fire that killed six trapped inside

Daily Record

2 days ago

In 1984, six members of the Doyle family were killed in a petrol-bomb attack on their Glasgow flat, a tragedy at the heart of the notorious 'Ice Cream Wars.
In the 1980s, Scotland's crime scene was marked by audacious attacks, with the shootings and car bombings of rival gangsters a constant threat.
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But the most shocking was an arson attack in which a family of six perished in their own home.
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Glasgow street photographer Brian Anderson lived in the same area – and the tragedy was the beginning of his life-long involvement in documenting the city's underworld.
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On April 16, 1984, the front door of a flat on Bankhead Street, Ruchazie, had been doused with petrol and set alight.
James Doyle, 53, sons James Jnr, 23, Andrew, 18, Anthony, 14, and daughter Christina Halleron, 25, plus her 18-month-old son, Mark, all perished.
The attack had come at the height of a petty turf war which became known as the ' Ice Cream Wars'.
As the police investigated, outlandish claims were made including that ice cream vans had been a front for drug dealing and stolen goods.
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Public outrage followed, and Strathclyde Police, who were derided as the 'Serious Chimes Squad' for botching the case, arrested several suspects.
Thomas 'TC' Campbell, who died aged 66 in 2019, and Joe Steele, 62, were tried for the murders and convicted.
Campbell, who was considered the ringleader in carrying out the fire at the Doyles' flat, claimed he had been 'fitted up' by the police. His enforcer, Steele, also protested his innocence.
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The pair served 18 years and were freed in 2004, their convictions quashed.
The murders of the Doyles remain officially unsolved, but crime photographer Anderson has his own theories about that fateful night.
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As a child, he heard the dreadful screams of those trapped in the Doyle household as the fire took hold.
He went on to snap Campbell and Steele and many more notorious criminals, giving him insider knowledge.
He said: 'There had been an attack on one of the Doyles' ice cream vans a nd the tyres were slashed. But they had spare tyres in the van and were back on the road in no time.
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'I was informed that the Doyles also kept tyres in a lock-up adjacent to the front door of their flat and that it was that door which was set on fire because the attackers wanted to torch the stock of tyres. It spread to the door of the main flat and the Doyles, trapped inside, died as a result.'
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Anderson says the information came from a very good underworld source. He also doesn't buy the narrative that ice cream vans were a front for the drug trade.
Anderson said: 'There is no actual evidence of that. I was a kid in the area and we never saw anything like that.
'If it had been going on, the parents would have stopped the kids from going to the vans.
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'I think that's just a story the police came up with. The ice cream van trade was lucrative enough on its own selling confectionery and cigarettes without having to bring drugs into play.'
One man who cast a shadow during the Ice Cream Wars was Tam McGraw, dubbed 'The Licensee'.
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McGraw was never convicted in connection to the Doyle murders though throughout the probe claims and counter-claims were made over whether he had ordered it.
Born in 1952, he had built a criminal empire across Glasgow in the 1980s, running pubs, taxi firms, security businesses and ice‑cream vans which provided a perfect way to launder cash.
Another suspect was Gary Moore. Once described as the most violent gangster in Glasgow, he had been an enforcer for the Glasgow godfather of crime, Arthur Thompson Sr.
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In the Ice Cream Wars saga, McGraw loomed large as a silent puppet‑master. Campbell faded into the legal system, and Steele remained vocal, claiming he knew more than he could reveal.
Heroin had flooded into Scotland in the 1980s, much of it from Afghanistan after the 1979 Islamic Revolution.
So addictive was the drug that Edinburgh's crime rate soared, with burglaries and robberies and women turning to prostitution to feed their habit.
The Ice Cream Wars illustrated how organised crime had become intertwined with communities and, as the decade came to a close, many of these networks appeared to be on the wane, but their scars remained. And Scotland's illegal drugs trade was just getting started.