Tongs Ya Bas: The Explosive History of Glasgow's Street Gangs

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It was a recipe for disaster and the only mystery was whose mum would be visiting a cemetery and whose mum would be visiting a prison. He said: "My wife's brother had to tell the local gang here that I needed a free pass because I was marrying into the family. A saying, a war cry, a slogan that at one point seemed to appear on walls in every corner of the city. Over the years it has become universally linked to the city of Glasgow and the gangs that have lurked within. Read More Related Articles In nearby Bridgeton, locals are enthusiastic about the regeneration and the dwindling presence of gangs. Allan Kelly, 49, was born in the area and believes that it has improved dramatically. I caught this film late night on the Sundance channel. It is extraordinarily well done. It's good to see more and more cinema from the UK showing on cable here in the US.

By 2007 there was still a remarkably high murder rate of 4.5 per 100,000 people against a UK average of 1.0 per 100,000. But tensions were starting to rise. A few shouts rang out, food was thrown and then, at the end of the film, the Calton gang leader McCabe, who would go on to become known as Terror McCabe, stood up and shouted the immortal lines “TONGS YA BASS” at the top his lungs before leading a charge towards the outnumbered Spurs. Read More Related ArticlesI think I'm reasonably well qualified to write about the accuracy and veracity of this 1996 film based on the Glasgow gang wars of the mid-60's. I was born and raised in the East End of Glasgow although I was a little too young to be affected by any of the gangland issues of the times. Our family lived out in the suburbs where the Council liked to dump the less well-off in a neighbourhood or scheme as we called it, named Provanhall in the district of Easterhouse. I do remember seeing the graffiti of the different gangs sprayed on the walls and also the big amnesty spearheaded by popular singer Frankie Vaughan where all the gang-members were invited to lay down their weapons. Martin said: "These gangs are held together often just by loyalty, so as soon as the main ones who hold that together are out the picture, that is a time for those on the to get the breathing space something with their lives." Small Faces doesn't insult your intelligence, and it doesn't have any affectations. Its setting in the 60s is almost incidental; as someone else mentioned, there's no attempt here to glorify or overstate the setting for stylistic reasons.

In the 30’s the name had evolved to San Toi with another Calton razor gang The Calton Entry also appearing on the scene. If a possibly-fictional child-eating vampire wasn’t bad enough the 60s brought a real monster into the Gorbals.This year Glasgow can finally shed the tag as the UK’s violent crime capital as it was revealed that violent crime has dropped by more 50% in little more than a decade, putting Glasgow behind London, Manchester and Liverpool in reported incidents of violence. It was also confirmed this year that active gangs in the city were at the lowest in living memory and had almost become completely non-existent. It was only a Gorbals thing at first. Then you had a few of the Pollok and Castlemilk boys starting to copy us and before ye knew it, it was all over the east end. It was everywhere. However by the 1960’s both gangs from the relatively small area were easily outnumbered by larger rival gangs from areas like Parkhead and The Gorbals, so gradually San Toi and The Calton Entry joined forces, merging into the one gang. The writing on the wall (Image: Glasgow Live) Billy Fullerton died in poverty in 1962 aged 57 years in a single roomed tenement home in Brook Street, Mile-End, just to the north of Bridgeton Cross. He was given a spectacular send-off as around 1000 marched in his funeral cortege - including flute bands - from Bridgeton Cross to the cemetery at Riddrie in the north east of Glasgow. There were even a few Catholics from Glasgow's east end and the city's boxing fraternity - including Peter Keenan - who quietly attended his funeral, such was their begrudging respect for this Glasgow hard man.

The Tongs started in Easterhouse. They took their name from the secret societies active in China, Vietnam, Singapore and the United States. The most famous Glasgow Tong was the "San Toy" named after a battle between the French and the Chinese in Vietnam. The Tongs financed themselves by levying protection money on local shops. They would mark out their territories with graffiti such as "San Toy Ya Bass". Rumours were rife about West and his inappropriate behaviour with kids and the young female van assistants he employed. He also ran over and killed a young boy, although the death of Michael O’Keefe in the Stravanan area of Castlemilk in 1965 was deemed a tragic accident with no suggestion of guilt towards the man driving the van.That day, led by McCabe, the Calton gang dished out a terrible beating to the Spur inside the picture hall. It left nobody in any doubt who the victors were. And who the new power in the east end was. Tongland (Image: Wikipedia) The most recent released puts Glasgow 4th in a list of the UK’s most violent cities behind London, Manchester and Liverpool with violent crimes in Glasgow altogether dropping from 80 per 100,000 in 2004 to 30 per 100,000 last year. If you see this in the TV listings, local videoshop, wherever, Get It! You will not find a more accurate movie that conveys the state of Glaswegian upbringing as it was and still is today. The violence, the course language and the way the young 'gangs' live and breathe on machismo and fights. The film shows an artist boy who is somewhat out of place in the world he finds himself living in. With his rather maniacal brother Bobby who just loves to go and fight the 'TONGS'. There is a younger brother in this family who becomes more of a central character as the film progresses. I don't want to give the story away so I will just say, if you want a true drama with no frills, fluff or effects, violence shown as it is, brutal and frightening (although I dont mean to put you off as it is highly watchable and not TOO brutal) -the utter desperation that some people live in and not only when this film is set in but today too. I know, I have lived in a similiar world. Nothing has really changed. If you want to find out just what this is like..GET THIS MOVIE! If you are from Glasgow or most places in central scotland - GET THIS MOVIE! Thats all :) In the late 1930s, Billy Fullerton joined Oswald Mosley's British Union of Fascists and he even started a Glasgow branch of the Ku Klux Klan. As well as despising people of colour, the KKK was also an anti-Catholic and anti-Semitic organisation and many of its founding members in America had been of Scots and Ulster-Scots (Scots-Irish) ancestry, the original Hillbillies. Ya bass" is generally taken as Glasgow slang for "you bastard", though it has been proposed it could be the Gaelic war cry aigh bas meaning "battle and die". [7] Another Glasgow gang slogan was "Spur ya Bass" (this was the name of one of the two rival gangs from the Barrowfield area). [8] "Tongs Ya Bass" arguably became Glasgow's unofficial motto in the 1960s and 1970s. [9]