\n As Disclosure reporter Myles Bonnar pointed out, the midweek start meant the first day of filming was likely to be quiet.\n<\/p>\n
\n But this wasn\u2019t just any Tuesday.\n<\/p>\n
\n It was June 9th \u2013 the day after a vicious knife attack in Belfast by an asylum seeker which blinded his victim in one eye. The stabbing prompted mayhem on the streets of Belfast, with ethnic minority residents forced from homes \u2013 almost exclusively in loyalist areas. Then Elon Musk<\/a> and Tommy Robinson swung in to urge widespread protests against immigration.\n<\/p>\n \n In the Disclosure film this sequence of events was noted, but not examined \u2013 surely, its biggest weakness.\n<\/p>\n \n There was a willingness to record every angry, drunken and violent incident (accompanied by the classic, slurred version of \u201cGlasgow belongs tae me\u201d) and interview quite a few perpetrators without seriously questioning their motives or bona fides.\n<\/p>\n \n READ MORE: Scottish city centre street taped off by emergency services amid incident<\/a>\n<\/p>\n \n Darren is introduced as a member of the \u201cself-appointed vigilante patrol group\u201d Scots Active. He sounds credible at first, claiming there are not enough police on the streets, so he and his gang are helping them out by \u201cwalking lassies home\u201d.\n<\/p>\n \n The reporter says the group links \u201cproblems on the streets\u201d with immigration but doesn\u2019t question this, and notes Scots Active members carry supplies for homeless people as well as drugs to reverse opioid overdoses. The impression for viewers is that these are regular Good Samaritans.\n<\/p>\n \n Darren\u2019s far right politics slip into view as he talks of two cultures in Glasgow \u2013 \u201cit\u2019s a race war\u201d \u2013 and claims the police can\u2019t call it out because they would be labelled racist. \u201cI don\u2019t care about that label.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n Clearly not. But why was the BBC pivoting coverage around the views of one man who boasts of punching a policeman and is later found to have orchestrated a masked, threatening, angry counter-demonstration to campaigners standing up for Glasgow\u2019s long anti-racist traditions?\n<\/p>\n \n Was there a point when any of the production crew wondered if they were being played? Did no-one remember the furore when BBC cameras followed the police during the Miners\u2019 Strike \u2013 \u201cnaturally\u201d conveying the police perspective during confrontations with strikers?\n<\/p>\n \n Clearly, it matters which perspective you seek out. And if that perspective is marginal, violent or racist, you should think twice about giving it centrality and should certainly seek out other points of view.\n<\/p>\n \n \n But the style of filming was simply to record what happened each night on the streets \u2013 though to be fair, they did have a police spokesperson and requested an interview with Glasgow Council leader Susan Aitken which was apparently refused.\n<\/p>\n \n So, we were super served with Darren and his angry colleagues. Women against the Far Right staged a pro-migrant protest, so there were at least a few women on screen who could mock the idea these wee lads would provide any kind of protection. Indeed, research suggests many men claiming to \u201cprotect women\u201d have records of domestic violence themselves. Sadly, this point was not examined.\n<\/p>\n \n Nor was the setting of that whole Tuesday night.\n<\/p>\n \n How does a violent confrontation in loyalist parts of Belfast spark violence on the streets of Glasgow (and elsewhere)? An interesting documentary would have examined the long-standing connection between right-wing extremists on both sides of the Sheuch and asked if that has also spawned the violence that spewed onto George Square<\/a>. But that would take a bit of smeddum and some wider insight.\n<\/p>\n \n I spoke to Will Linden, deputy head of the world-renowned Glasgow Violence Reduction Unit, who, surprisingly, were not asked to contribute to the documentary. I realise a film cannot have a cast of millions, but there\u2019s no more credible outlook on the changing patterns of urban violence and deprivation then these guys.\n<\/p>\n \n Anyway, Will Linden doesn\u2019t recognise the term \u201cno-go zone\u201d as a description of Glasgow. \u201cYes, it\u2019s a post-industrial city with challenges, but the documentary didn\u2019t touch on the systemic factors or drivers of deprivation and violence, focusing instead on culture wars.\u201d Will said the film\u2019s analysis was \u201cvery surface level\u201d and the picture of a city mired in constant violence was \u201cnot anchored in the evidence.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n Indeed, London has the highest total number and volume of knife crime offences in the UK by a wide margin, and measured proportionally per 100,000 residents, Middlesbrough exceeds any major metropolitan area, with Glasgow nowhere near top of the pile.\n<\/p>\n \n Of course, that\u2019s cold comfort.\n<\/p>\n \n But perspective on Glasgow violence really matters. Because it\u2019s taken Scots a long, long time to shake off No Mean City. And this film drags us right back \u2013 with a new racist twist.\n<\/p>\n \n There\u2019s long been a narrative that violence is an inherent part of the Scottish personality. Wars \u2013 we just couldn\u2019t stay away from them. And once opportunities for organised combat dried up, Scots divvied up cities and fought one another.\n<\/p>\n \n READ MORE: Crowds dispersed onto street as major Edinburgh Fringe venue forced to evacuate<\/a>\n<\/p>\n \n Now it\u2019s true. Gangs, hard men, swords and shocking everyday levels of violence made world headlines in 1968, when Frankie Vaughan arrived in Easterhouse with a weapons amnesty and hundreds of chibs, swords and blades were handed in, including kitchen knives \u201cborrowed\u201d by dozens of kids keen to meet the famous crooner.\n<\/p>\n \n But since then, there\u2019s been big change. In 2005, when Strathclyde Police created the Violence Reduction Unit (VRU), Glasgow was the murder capital of Europe with 137 homicides.\n<\/p>\n \n All sorts of crackdowns had failed, so Strathclyde tried a pioneering new approach treating violence as a public health issue. The VRU\u2019s empathetic outlook \u2013 working with deprived communities, talking to gang members and dumping old punitive, judgmental attitudes \u2013 produced results.\n<\/p>\n \n By 2018, Scotland\u2019s homicide rate had more than halved and police authorities from London to the Horn of Africa were copying the VRU approach.\n<\/p>\n \n As London burned in 2011, Glasgow and Edinburgh<\/a> did not. As copycat riots broke out in Birmingham, Bristol, Coventry, Derby, Leicester, Liverpool, Manchester, Nottingham, West Bromwich and Wolverhampton, the streets of Scottish cities stayed quiet. And eventually, the British riots were correctly renamed the English riots.\n<\/p>\n \n That\u2019s not to be complacent about Scotland \u2013 the plague of domestic violence, the ruthlessness of drug syndicates or the epidemic of self-harm.\n<\/p>\n \n Real progress needs a reduction in poverty and inequality and a return of community workers, youth clubs and funds to stabilise communities \u2013 hard but not impossible while Westminster<\/a> calls the shots.\n<\/p>\n \n It also needs hope of powerful social change through independence to stop the siren voice of Reform.\n<\/p>\n \n But importantly, Glasgow is no longer the murder capital of Europe.\n<\/p>\n \n That is progress, but it\u2019s so easily undone.\n<\/p>\n \n We\u2019ve been sold the idea of Scots fighting at the drop of a hat for so long, it\u2019s got under our skin and into our collective subconscious.\n<\/p>\n \n There was always another story \u2013 the inventiveness, the early literacy, the legions of doctors and engineers, poets and philosophers and the generosity and hospitality of ordinary people with next to nothing.\n<\/p>\nWhy was there no reference to the thousands of anti-racism protesters who rallied in defence of minorities and immigrants? (Image: NQ)\n<\/p>\n