William Lobban - The Glasgow Curse

The Glasgow Curse

To my beautiful daughter, Tamara, my grandparents, William and Easter Manson, and all those who have lost their lives due to the Glasgow Curse

This eBook edition published in 2014 by
Birlinn Limited
West Newington House
Newington Road
Edinburgh
EH9 1QS
www.birlinn.co.uk

Copyright William Lobban 2013, 2014

The right of William Lobban to be identified as the author of this book has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Design and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form without the express written permission of the publisher.

ISBN: 978-1-78027-237-5
eBook ISBN: 978-0-85790-609-0

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Version 2.0

Contents

Acknowledgements

Id like to say a special thank you to all the staff working at Birlinn Limited, especially Hugh Andrew, Andrew Simmons, Neville Moir, Tom Johnstone, Jan Rutherford and Edward Crossan. Id also like to thank Peter Urpeth for all his hard graft in the early stages of bringing this book to life. Thank you to Patsy and Christine, Donald Findlay, Jillian Powery, Kirsten McCormick, Mark and Anmarie, Kate Higgins from Children 1st, and last, but certainly not least, to Kelly, for her love, support and understanding while the pages of this book came together.

Introduction

Glasgow people are amongst the warmest and most humorous on the planet, but underneath the surface of a friendly, vibrant community lurks a brutal criminal underworld that has blighted the city and its inhabitants for generations. Glasgow is, in fact, one of the most violent places in the UK in fact a recent article on the BBC News website shows that Scotlands largest city ranks as the most violent part of Britain, with 2.7 homicides per 100,000 of population as opposed to 1.0 for the rest of the country.

Over the years thousands of people have been drawn into this vile and insidious underworld. Once entered, it is almost impossible to escape; many who have been sucked into it have paid for their involvement with their liberty and, in many cases, their lives. This is what I mean by the Glasgow Curse, and I should know what Im talking about, as I was born into one of the most notorious crime families in the city: the Mansons. Back in the day my uncle, Billy Manson, was a criminal boss who controlled a tight ship and, along with his loyal friend and partner in crime, Scotlands most notorious gangster Arthur Thompson, had an iron grip on an underworld dominated by fear, armed robbery and protection rackets. Vincent and Robert Manson, my other uncles, were equally hardcore villains with a proclivity for lawbreaking and violence. It was their way of life and nothing could change that.

Crime was my way of life from as far back as I can remember; over the years, I have been responsible for all manner of offences fraud, armed robbery, grievous bodily harm, drug dealing, prison riots. You name it, Ive done it.

Except for one thing I have never killed anyone.

This highlights another facet of the Glasgow Curse: you can trust no one; the person you regard as a brother can turn round and stab you in the back.

One of the main reasons for writing my life story is to clear up all the lies and inaccuracies that people have written about me over the years in a number of tabloid newspapers and books, most notably Paul Ferris, a criminal I first met decades ago when we were teenagers together in a Young Offenders Unit. Ferris and I crossed paths many times, and I worked closely with him when he was at the height of his career in crime, during the early 1990s. In contrast to what Ferris would have everyone believe, he had no code of honour. In his books The Ferris Conspiracy and Vendetta, Ferris accuses me of all sorts of things, while I have also been linked by some to the death of two other Glasgow criminals, Joe Hanlon and Robert Glover. Neither accusation has any basis in fact.

This is my chance to repudiate their claims, and to put forward my side of the story. But this is not the only reason. If by writing a book that tells the truth about the consequences of a life of crime, that doesnt sensationalise what is truly an awful, degrading and hopeless way of life, it might in some small way help finally break the curse that has destroyed too many Glaswegian lives for far too long.

Chapter One

Born in a Prison

The first six months of my life were spent in Exeter Prison, at that point a female only borstal, where my mother was incarcerated for her part in a family plot to steal valuable antiques and the contents of a safe inside an English country mansion.

Although I dont know all the ins and outs relating to the wild scheme, I do know it was well planned but went spectacularly wrong. My mother was keeping lookout while her brothers tried to get into the property, and it was at this stage the police turned up and she was quickly apprehended. During a fierce struggle with the arresting coppers, my mother thought it was wise to sink her teeth into a police sergeants hand, almost severing his thumb in the process. She received a two-year borstal sentence for her stupidity.

While most newborn babies come into the world in a hospital setting with possibly their fathers or other family members there to witness the event, I arrived surrounded by prison guards. What a dreadful thought, and how unpleasant it wouldve been for any woman to give birth in that way. My mother, Sylvia Manson, was only 19 years old when she had me in February 1968, but she never did talk much about this episode in her life. I never really took the chance to ask her about it when I was growing up because, frankly, I wasnt that interested. Over the years I did pick up certain details relating to my mothers incarceration, and I do know she served the full two years of her sentence the maximum length of time that any borstal inmate could serve.

For many years I knew next to nothing about my father, David Lobban. A respectable and quiet man who never had any criminal leanings, he must have found my mother extremely difficult to live with. At any rate he left us when I was 18 months old.

In contrast to my fathers law-abiding ways, my mothers family were always disrespectful towards the law and they wholeheartedly stood by the criminal code of silence. In my mothers case, while she was no angel, during the court proceedings against her she never once incriminated any of her brothers. She took it on the chin and was sent down on her own.

Was the court aware of my mothers pregnancy before passing sentence? Surely not, as her borstal sentence was punitively steep. Prison rules of the time stated that a female prisoner could keep her baby with her for up to six months, after which time a family member had to take over the care of the infant.

In my case, my grandparents, who lived in the East End of Glasgow, travelled all the way to Exeter to collect me and, like some little parcel, shipped me all the way back home with them. Oblivious to what was going on around me at the time, I now look back and find it hard to imagine what it mustve felt like for everyone concerned.

It wouldve been heartbreakingly difficult for my mother when the time came for her to hand me over to my grandparents, but this was typical of a hardened family, just doing whatever it was they had to do and simply getting on with it. Ive no idea if Sylvia saw me again during the remainder of her sentence; perhaps not, since the distance from Glasgow to Exeter and back is approximately 900 miles quite a trek.