Knife Crime - Winning the War

This programme contains some scenes which some viewers may find upsetting

This programme contains some strong language

I'm David Gillanders.

I'm a documentary photographer and film-maker.

Over a decade ago, prompted by my own experiences, I began a

photographic project documenting the violence in my hometown of Glasgow.

Back then, the press referred to Glasgow

as THE murder capital of Europe.

And a 2005 United Nations report named Scotland the most

violent country in the developed world.

The photographic project took me seven years to finish.

I used it as an educational tool through youth groups and in schools

and, as a result, met a small army of people working to change

the culture of violence I had encountered.

Ten years on, what I want to know is -

has anything fundamentally changed for Glasgow and for Scotland?

SIREN WAILS

At the moment, the only information we've got is that we're

going for a 25-year-old female.

It's coming down as a dangerous haemorrhage.

However, on the phone the controllers

have stated that maybe she's been slashed.

So, we're basically going to just need to wait

and see when we get there as to what we've got.

What time is it?

It is currently 0805.

Breakfast time!

Before some of us have had breakfast!

Someone's been slashed.

You're OK my side. SIREN WAILS

Still OK.

I'm halfway through six months of filming with

the paramedics of Glasgow East Ambulance Station.

I photographed much of the original project with these crews

and here, at the front line, is where I hope to find out

if anything has changed in the past ten years.

So, can you remember everything that happened?

Aye...

-OK. So you weren't knocked out or anything like that?

-No.

-OK.

Is my face that bad?

OK. Don't worry, the police are out there.

They'll deal with whoever it is out there.

Don't you worry about that, OK?

We'll get you sorted first, all right?

And then we'll get you out to the ambulance

and get a proper look at you, OK?

She's obviously going to need to go and get this stitched,

so we'll take her out and get a proper look at her, get it

cleaned up out there and we'll leave you to it.

You put your hand up to stop this, I take it?

Aye, nae bother.

-Get my fags out the cupboard.

-Get your fags out the cupboard?

We'll leave that just now, OK, and we'll get you sorted.

All right, pal?

Come on, we'll get you outside and get you seen to.

There you go, pal. All the way round here.

OK.

I've no' got anything, Crawford. Oh, you've got... Sorry.

Am I gonnae be scarred for life?

The plastic surgeons are great up there, OK?

What we're going to do is... Let me see this for a wee second.

Just take your time. SHE GROANS

No, no, no. Keep your finger there.

Was it big glasses of vodka?

No, it was the small ones.

Just small ones.

It's only been small glasses of vodka.

I'm going to just give you a wee clean up a bit, OK.

I'm going to clean your hands, OK, pal?

SHE MOANS

Let me have a look.

Right, pal.

Put your hand over for me, pal.

Watch the dried blood.

You going to sleep on me?

Who done your eyelashes?

-Eh...

-You?

You're no very good at it, are you?

INDISTINCT

All right, no bother.

So where were you last night?

In my house.

I hope to fuck they get him.

-I'm sure they will.

-I'm sure they will.

I take it you know who done it?

-Aye.

-Did you tell the police that?

-Uh-huh.

-Well, they'll get him then.

-They won't, but.

Erm, I've got an ASBO out, it's just...

-You've got an ASBO?

-I have.

-You been a naughty lassie?

-Mm.

Joe, are you OK?

Right, that's us going to head to the hospital, OK?

How long you stayed up here?

-Too long.

-You born and bred here?

Eh...

-Eh?

-I stayed in Stirling for two and half years.

-Stirling?

-Aye.

How was that?

-In the jail.

-Oh, in the jail?!

You cannae exactly say you stayed in Stirling for a wee two

and a half years and you were in the hoose!

Naw, but I've been good noo.

You keep that there.

Two and a half years in the jail?

INDISTINCT No bother.

We'll get that sorted.

-Aye.

-How did you find that?

Erm...

Very, erm...

Very therapeutic.

Therapeutic?

I've never heard of the jail being described as therapeutic

in my life before.

I'm just going to pop a wee dressing on this to stop it bleeding away, OK?

There you go.

Is that why you've...?

Well, when did you get out the jail?

Eight year ago.

And you've got an ASBO again?

-I'm freezing. Can I get my jacket?

-Right.

Right.

We'll get it sorted. I'm going to give you a blanket.

We need to get you on here first.

-Just turn yourself round, have a wee seat in there.

-You look much better.

-There you go.

-Come on. Watch out.

Put your bum straight on, there you go.

-We'll get you covered up, OK, pal?

-I'm freezing.

Here. Just take that. All right, guys?

Thank you.

-There we go.

-Try and look a bit sick, right?

Girls do get attacked unfortunately.

In the main, statistically, it's young men who are victims of

assaults, but, no, it can be anyone,

any range of age - anything at all.

It brings it home a wee bit more, she was only a young girl,

and she's now marked for life.

In three months of filming with the paramedics,

this is the first truly violent incident I've attended.

Ten years ago, incidents like this, and much worse,

happened several times a week and sometimes, several times a day.

CHATTER ON WARD

'Unfortunately, Glasgow's always had a reputation for a culture

'of violence,'

and I think that here at The Royal Infirmary, we've probably

seen more of it, due to the deprived areas that are within our catchment.

Erm...

When I first started as a consultant and as a senior registrar,

I was on a one in three rota at the weekends,

and I can honestly say that every weekend,

I would be called in late at night

because somebody had been stabbed through the chest

and required to have their chest opened

in the resuscitation room.

I remember, one night, coming in and the nurses telling me

that resus was a bit busy with some stabbings, and I came in to find that

the patient in the first cubicle was already undergoing

a thoracotomy - having their chest opened -

and the cardiothoracic team were in attendance.

The patient in the next cubicle had a sword sticking out of his eye,

and the patient in the third cubicle -

all three were from separate incidents -

had suffered a horrific number of machete

wounds all over his body and unfortunately he died.

In fact, all three of them died.

I recall one where two brothers arrived

simultaneously from the same gang fight.

Typically, they both had the injury which we very often see,

which is a fairly small one to two centimetre length wound,

usually on the left side of the chest,

and they both had an identical wound in virtually identical places,

on the left side of the chest.

One of them had a collapsed lung, and the other one was dead.

They were in separate rooms.

I think the hardest bit was

when the brother who was not dead was asking me how his brother was.

And all I could really say was, "He's next door."

Erm...

Eventually, of course, you have to break it to them,

but very difficult.

It's always difficult when it's young people.

Erm...

One of the hardest bits of the job is telling any family member that

an another family member has died.

It's difficult enough telling a young person that a parent or

a grandparent has died,

but it's really difficult telling a parent that a child has died.

Erm...

Just have to do it.

So much of the violence I saw ten years ago was a tragic

waste of young life.

In 2007, I photographed the location of one such incident.

I had just finished night shift, actually,

I had just finished night shift at the Queen Mother's Hospital.

My sister lives facing me, so she lives across the road.

And she came running, about 20 past 12, I think,

and shouted that James had been stabbed.

So we drove, frantically, and got to the street that it was on and

knew instinctively that that's where he was, because the crowd of people,

and lots of screaming and James lying in the street,

with somebody behind him holding a towel,

and two police hovering over him.

And, I think, screaming at them, "What's happened to him?"

And at that point, somebody said that he'd been stabbed.

I didnae know where, didnae know how many times.

And I think I automatically must have went into nurse mode and was just

thinking, "Oh, my God, he's injured." I knew by his face - he was pale,

and his eyes were rolling slightly.

I couldn't find a pulse at first.

I remember that, I remember feeling his neck and thinking,

"He's got to have a pulse cos I can see his eyes."

But I think it was just me, my adrenaline was too high

and I definitely...

I look back at that now and I think, "Where was my instincts as a mother?

"Should I just have taken him in my arms and let him

"know I was there as his mum?"

And I never. I totally went into nurse mode and...

If I could stabilise him in any way, or anything we could have done,

so I know my brain switched to some automatic mode that somebody's

injured and I need to help them.

Five times he stabbed him.

He stabbed him in the clavicle, I think.

I think a rib.

And he stabbed him in the back,

which went through his aorta, so he stabbed him in the big,

major aortic artery of the heart.

And that's why he bled and bled and that's what killed him,

the last stabbing was the one that killed him.

That's why he collapsed where he fell.

And then fortunately someone came and got us, and took us to the Royal.

I just had this belief that they'll save him,

and things started to get better and he started to become more stable

and they were moving him, and everybody left,

and when everybody left, it's like a sigh of relief.

"If all these important people don't need to be there, he's fine."

And I remember the picture of a lone nurse over him,

taking off the machines, as I left.

And within seconds of leaving,

she came and he had went into cardiac arrest

and somebody's over him doing CPR,

and other people start to come back again,

and you still don't believe,

and you're watching them, and...

..the next minute, everybody stops,

and his heart stops,

his life stops and your life stops somewhere then as well.

And he then becomes part of a crime scene,

and you're thrown into something

that is the most unimaginable process you'll ever experience.

And...

..they quite easily take off all the drips

and take off all the machines

and you're left with James, but it's no' James.

Nothing's ever the same again, I suppose.

Part of your heart stops when his stops.

The murder of Joyce's son James

wasn't an uncommon event in the Glasgow of that time,

and the level of serious violence I encountered only a decade ago

was truly horrific.

That violence is still out there,

only now it seems it's happening much less frequently.

SIREN WAILS

Just before I finished filming with the Glasgow paramedics,

we were called to a serious assault involving a bladed weapon.

It was only the second incident of its type

I had witnessed in six months.

We're responding to...

We're responding to a call just now

where it's reported that two males have been stabbed at an address.

It appears one of them may not still be alive at this point in time.

All we're being told is that the place is covered in blood

and someone is either unconscious or in cardiac arrest.

Right, onto the couch. Come on.

-All right, I'm going.

-Come on up.

-Go and get a wee seat.

Come on, you're losing a lot of blood. Sit up on the couch, eh?

We'd never harm each other in any way.

Right, so what happened tonight, then?

His wife left him, eh... four months ago.

-What's happened to your hand?

-I don't know. He attacked me with a knife.

-He attacked you with a knife? Where is the knife?

-I've no idea.

Do what the guy tells you!

Do what the person tells you.

Do as the paramedics are telling you, they've got a job to do, right?

There was a difference between you and your pal.

I don't even know if I've got pressure on where it is, John.

Where is it?

Is it his thumb? OK.

I can't feel the thumb.

I'm not surprised.

It's a bit severed. You know?

-You're joking.

-We can see your bone.

Oh, no.

-Up. Stand up.

-What are you doing?

-You need to stand up. OK?

Everything is absolutely covered.

MAN WHIMPERS

You're gonnae be fine.

HE TALKS, MUFFLED THROUGH OXYGEN MASK

You're going to be fine, right?

You've lost an awful lot of blood, pet.

You're just going to feel a sharp scratch in the back of your hand.

-Why did he do that?

-I don't know.

I need you to sit nice and still for me.

-Nice and still.

-OK.

Well done.

-You've had an awful lot to drink tonight, eh?

-Yeah.

But I don't know what happened to him.

He just turned psychotic.

A lot of blood.

Do you see this wee chair here?

That's what you're going to need to sit on, pal.

You keep your arm up. Can you manage to stand?

Watch. It's awful slippy, right?

-One step forward.

-Right.

I know, these things happen when you're least expecting it.

Hello, GRI. Just to advise you, we're bringing a stand-by in.

It's a male in his 50s, knife wounds to his right hand.

He's lost quite an extensive amount of blood on the scene.

He is conscious but intoxicated,

still bleeding at the moment.

ETA, four minutes.

RADIO CRACKLES

He's GCS 15, saturating at 99,

pulse of 88, blood pressure 106/91.

Roger.

-Watch the swing.

-Watch your toes.

Awful high up, so keep the seat...

-You watch what you're doing.

-On you go.

You can have situations some nights in this job

where four, five, six ambulances are all off-loading one after the other.

And each person, each patient

that's being brought into the casualty department,

in some shape or form,

has arrived there due to the amount of alcohol they've consumed.

Either they've injured themselves

or they've become unwell or they've been involved in a violent incident,

they've got into a fight, but in some shape or form...

..the root cause of it is the misuse of alcohol or the overuse of alcohol.

Can you bend the tip of it down?

An awful lot of times...

..what I find hardest to deal with is mindless violence,

I tend to call it mindless violence,

where there's just no motive, there's no reason for it,

but for some reason,

a violent incident has taken place, someone is seriously injured,

someone's lost their life and just for no apparent reason.

Back when I started the original project,

none of the violence I encountered seemed to make sense either.

And for once, it seemed the press weren't sensationalising the situation.

In fact, many incidents went unreported.

But fast-forward ten years

and I've only encountered two serious knife assaults

in six months of filming.

It seems to me that the city has had enough, and something is changing.

I think as a city, we've moved on significantly.

See, with Easterhouse, one of our local housing schemes,

there used to be... well, there still is,

but gangs and areas up there that were defined by gangs.

And now, I mean, I was born and bred in Easterhouse,

I lived my life there, and when I was growing up in the '70s and '80s,

there was a lot of gang culture,

but now you go up, you go back and you speak to some of these folk,

or you go into one of the surgeries to speak

and you mention the name of any gang, and it's frowned upon.

It's like, "No, we don't talk about gangs here any more."

I mean, you could name loads of different initiatives there

that are all chipping away

and collectively, they're making a big difference.

Since you were last in doing the photographic projects,

violence has reduced.

We've been counting it, and we are able to demonstrate

an actual reduction in the number of violent attenders.

I think the work of the Violence Reduction Unit has been key

and I think information sharing we had been involved with earlier on

allowed them to target specific areas where violence was occurring.

Furthermore, I think the Medics Against Violence initiative

where doctors have been going into schools

and speaking to young schoolchildren

and showing them the devastating effect on individuals and families

of violent activities. Added to that, I think

the courts are taking a much tougher line with knife carrying,

and I can only assume that all these things combined

and other community projects

and the work of the youth groups working with young people

has all combined to have a positive effect,

and I can definitely say that we are seeing a difference.

Back when violence in Glasgow was at its worst,

a body was set up to devise a strategy for murder reduction

in the city, and it became known as the Violence Reduction Unit.

The VRU has largely been responsible for a complete overhaul

in the way violent crime is tackled in Glasgow today,

and violence prevention has become its key objective.

John Carnochan, a former murder detective,

was involved in setting the unit up.

Criminal justice is the service of last resort.

By the time it comes to policing and prisons, it's all over.

I heard a great expression

the other day when someone said,

"Building more prisons to deal with violence

"is like building more graveyards to deal with AIDS."

It's absolutely stupid and it doesn't make sense.

Changing attitudes to violence amongst young people

is at the heart of what the VRU is doing,

and amongst many schemes started by the unit

is the Community Initiative to Reduce Violence, or CIRV.

CIRV was founded in 2008

initially to target gang violence in the East End of Glasgow.

We decided to speak to the gang members

because we knew who they were.

We decided to tell them to stop doing it because we'd had enough

and they were having a bad effect on their committees,

and we decided to offer them alternatives,

and that was the simple message with CIRV.

Of course, the complication was,

we had to get all the partners around the table to coordinate

the services they delivered, and that was a challenge,

but we managed it with most of the partners.

And as a result, you know,

gang fighting in the East End of Glasgow at the end of CIRV

was evaluated by the University of St Andrews and Peter Donald's team.

It was down 53%. 53%!

The CIRV initiative wouldn't have been a success

without the involvement of a host of organisations

and individuals striving to change the culture of violence in Glasgow.

Over the past ten years, I've had the privilege of working closely

with a number of such groups across the city.

The Argo Boxing Club is one such organisation,

based in Drumchapel and run by Davey Savage and his team.

Another is FARE - Family Action in Rogerfield and Easterhouse.

Founded 25 years ago, FARE was started by local people to provide

social amenities in a neighbourhood that previously had none.

In 2003, aided by a grant from Comic Relief,

FARE took the unprecedented step of creating a position

for someone to explicitly target the issue of gang violence.

That someone was Jimmy Wilson.

When the council built these houses in the '50s,

they were fantastic houses,

but there's more to building a community than just houses.

About 80,000 people moved from the slums of Glasgow

into Easterhouse with absolutely no amenities,

nothing that could bring them together as a community.

There was no youth clubs, there was no churches.

The police station wasn't built until the '70s,

the Shandwick Shopping Centre wasn't built until the '70s,

there was no employment, people had nothing to do,

youths had nothing to do,

they would get bored and therefore territorial divides were raised.

And the territorial divides have plagued not only Easterhouse

but other areas of the West of Scotland and beyond for decades.

It's the reason why FARE is here, because there was nothing to do

and the local residents wanted something within their community,

to have and hold, to be a community.

However, by that time, the gangs were already here,

and generation after generation got involved in the gangs

and unfortunately, many, many, many young people lost their lives

through knife crime and various other forms of violence.

SEAGULLS CAW

FARE engage with young people in a variety of different ways.

In addition to school programmes, youth clubs and residentials,

FARE also work closely with housing and police

to target specific areas and groups of troubled youths.

My involvement with FARE has been to run photographic workshops

with groups of young people.

Through photography, they are encouraged to articulate

the positive and negative aspects of their lives.

I see it as a positive.

-The bridge.

-The bridge.

THEY LAUGH

Berry.

Berry's ma!

That's both.

-Gangs?

-Why's it both?

Because you get into trouble.

-What's this?

-That's cool, man.

-That's brilliant.

-Wicked.

-Wicky-wicked!

Keep that in there for another wee...

STAPLER CLICKS

THEY LAUGH

-Staple that onto him.

-No, don't fucking staple it on!

That'd be funny.

Hey, can I put it in there now?

-Is that about a minute?

-That's about three minutes.

-Can I?

-Put it into the stop bath, then.

-12, 11,

ten, nine, eight, seven, five, four, three, two, one, is that it?

Is that it?

You take your printout first.

I just sat on that. What if it burns me?

-Can I hairdry it?

-Yeah, go for it.

Looks good.

So what is the significance of the bridge, then?

-What's the signifisence...

-Significance!

HE COUGHS

What does it mean? I'll tell you.

The bridge? Why did you photograph the bridge?

Because it's a negative.

-Why is it negative?

-Because people fight on it.

Some of the young people we've worked with over the years

have come from nothing short of horrendous backgrounds

and one of the main issues that FARE have as an organisation

is that if a young person is involved in gang violence,

then society only see the tip of that,

ie they see that the actual violence which is going on that

that young person is involved in.

What society potentially don't see is the horrendous life and background

that that young person has come from.

My name's Dean Crawford

and I'm just going to tell you a bit about my life.

When I was obviously just a baba and I had a stable family,

a mum and dad, my three big sisters, everything was fine.

I had a house, my family was brilliant.

When I turned three, it was my First Communion

and we all went to my auntie's house, had a big party and things.

Stuff just kicked off outside.

My dad went out to try and sort it, and things just went upside-down

and my dad got murdered that night.

Ever since then, things just had a bad cycle, kept going worse

and worse and worse, so when I was starting school and things,

I started to notice that my mum was drinking every day

and it was getting worse, soon she was waking up,

there was a bottle of vodka beside her on the couch

and things like that, and I started to realise this

and I started to realise that she wasnae stable enough to get up

and check me for hings and stop me frae doing hings,

so I just thought I could be bad all the time and get away with it.

One of the things that FARE do is that once we get to know a group,

and we get to see who maybe the leader is of that group,

we try and recruit him.

We were running a Friday night, Friday and Saturday night project

called Op Phoenix, and I was running that one night

and in walked the bold Dean.

And when he walked in, he had everybody walking behind him,

so he was quite clearly one of the main dudes.

I was in primary seven, and I was away on a residential for a week,

and we went away on the Monday and on the Wednesday, my mum had died

with obviously alcohol and things,

and I came back to my auntie's house and everybody was in,

and I thought they were all there to see me, but they werenae.

It was just to tell me that obviously my mum had died.

I just thought the best thing to do was just hang about with my pals

and cause fights with everybody else,

and it was just constant children's panels, children's panels,

getting involved with the polis, getting suspended frae school.

Going into fourth year, just afore my exams,

and the teachers, just going, "Aye, yeah," the way I was with them,

and trying to pick fights with them and things,

and they just had enough of me and they kicked me out.

When you're walking through the gorge,

it's very important that you face the wall...

Jimmy found out that I'd been kicked out of school,

and phoned me up and asked me if I wanted to come and work for FARE.

He sat me down afore it,

and he said to me, "Look, you've got to just

"think about all the things that you're doing and let them all go."

He said, "You can't do it any more, you're going to be a role model,

"to, obviously, the younger kids that you're going to work with."

And he was like that, "I'll give you half an hour to think about it.

"Go and take a walk, and then

"come back to me and tell me if you want to continue on with it."

My heid was going 90

just trying to figure out how is this going to be possible

to stay out of trouble, and things like that.

But I went back and I said, "Aye, I'll take it."

I went in for the interview and I was successful in it.

And I had got the job,

and that's just when my life started to get better.

Look at Andrew.

THEY LAUGH

Andrew!

No, no!

JIMMY: He was close to taking the wrong road.

He's had a bit of a rough ride in his life,

and he's now using that rough ride to work with young people...

Oh, my babby.

..and help them in their lives. And a couple of months ago,

he won the Unsung Hero Award from the Sunday Mail

for the whole of Scotland, which was fantastic for him, you know,

he got dressed up in a kilt, had a really, really nice night.

His three sisters came to the event. It was brilliant.

So it was massive, it was massive for the community. He's from Easterhouse.

He's a local boy from Easterhouse.

There's not many local boys from Easterhouse who can say

they've won the Unsung Hero Award.

In Drumchapel, on the other side of the city, is the Argo Boxing Club.

It's run by Davey Savage and his mate Paul McCann.

I've known Davey for over 30 years, when at the age of ten,

I started boxing, and he was just turning professional.

He's been an Argo club member one way or another

for most of his adult life.

They opened the club up when I was young. I was about 13, 14.

And my first time in the club was to join the dancing,

the Kansas City Rockers.

I was in the Kansas City Rockers for three weeks, but Jimmy Harvey

had opened a boxing club at the same time as well, so I joined the boxing.

Because my dad was a boxer and I always liked boxing,

so I joined the boxing and the dancing.

So either we came to boxing or dancing, and unfortunately,

I stuck to the boxing.

And that has been my life ever since.

This is what is left of the old Argo Centre.

In 2010, council funding was removed

and the club was burnt to the ground shortly afterwards,

depriving the community

of a much-needed amenity for its young people.

That was from 1974 until 2010. It shut down.

And within two weeks, it was set on fire and burnt,

and now it's lying empty.

A big ground lying empty that they could use for youth clubs kids.

And now they've got nothing.

Lack of money on the council, they have.

A lack of trying, the council have!

Davey didn't take the loss of the old Argo Centre lying down.

New premises were leased and eventually,

a new Argo Boxing Club emerged from little more than a burnt-out shell.

Home!

This is the club, this is the building we got when we came in.

So you can see, that it looks pretty good, so this is...

When we came in, there was no ceiling. This is a new build.

New doors, new lighting, new everything.

This was just a shell,

so we've taken over and we've done well with it so far. So...

-It was just brick walls?

-It was just brick walls.

Just brick walls, no ceiling. No lighting. No nothing.

There was three inch of water in here,

cos the vandals came in and they had the copper pipes for scrap,

so we managed to get the flooding out and get that sorted.

So, this is coming on good now. It looks the part.

In my early youth, staying in Kendoon, tenements everywhere,

gangs everywhere.

So the boxing gave me an escape to maybe get away from the gangs,

but I did get involved with some young boys

and we did things that young boys done.

When we were about 15, we used to go into the Clydebank and fight

with boys of the Clydebank, and boys of the Clydebank would fight us.

Because I think then, a Friday night, if I wasn't at boxing,

the boxing was on a Monday and Thursday then.

So it was four different gangs in the Drumchapel areas

and a lot of the boys I knew involved with weapons,

and some of them got stabbed, some of them got chipped.

But that was one thing which I was never involved with.

I didn't like weapons, I always used my hands and fought with my hands,

but as I got to about 16, I was getting in more and more fights.

I was getting wee chances of winning championships and that,

so it was the boxing kept me away from a lot of the violence.

It really done me good.

Ten, nine, eight,

seven, six, five,

four, three, two, one.

Go faster! Ten, nine, eight,

seven, six, five,

four, three, two, one.

The kids from Drumchapel, the kids from Clydebank,

kids from Bearsden, kids from Maryhill,

and most importantly, it's to get all these kids involved

with each other, and so they've got pals everywhere.

No enemies, no-one has a fear to go from Drumchapel to

Clydebank to Maryhill.

They've got the confidence,

because they know different people from different areas.

It's Thursday night. Fight night. Fight night Thursday.

That's at the Albion Social Club in Yoker,

they're having an amateur show.

All of these boys, they're all fighting on this show,

so we're just getting them prepared for Thursday.

Hopefully, we'll have four winners or five winners.

One of the boys isn't here yet. Hopefully, five winners.

Keep going! That's it!

Keep going!

An event on this scale means several months of organisation over

and above the coaching commitments of the Argo team.

No-one is paid for what they do,

and it's this hard work at a grassroots level,

here and in other parts of the city, that is making a difference.

Against all odds, the Argo club has not only been rebuilt,

virtually from scratch,

but they have doubled the club's opening hours to five nights a week.

More young people than ever, now benefit from this essential

service to the community.

And across the ring in the red corner,

wearing black shorts with white trim, official weight 43.2 kilos,

boxing right here for the Argo, here's Kieran Smith!

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

BELL RINGS

SHOUTS OF ENCOURAGEMENT

Come on, Kieran! Fight, Kieran!

The most important thing is for kids to get involved with sport

and get fit. Whether I get a boxer or a football player,

but if I get a kid from the ages of 11 to 15, 16, they are away

from that drug and alcohol system, and that is the bad age.

From 15 - 14, 15, 16, they are starting to try things

with their pals, alcohol, drink, smoking, drugs.

If you can get them in the club at that age,

get them involved with the sport, get them training,

get them away a couple of weekends, then they know,

there's more to life than drink

and drugs, hundreds of things to do in life.

The plan for this morning is, we're going to run a DVD to show,

really, the bits that we see that possibly you don't see.

The bits that people who have carried out violence,

who have had violence carried out on them, who've had family members

that were affected by violence, professionals trying

to treat people affected by violence,

to show what it looks like.

Medics Against Violence, or MAV,

is another group I've been involved with.

It's a charity set up in 2008 and runs programmes that visit schools

with the aim of educating young people on the impact of violence.

I'm proud to have some of the original project photographs

as part of the programme.

Michael Murray is a consultant anaesthetist who has been

involved with MAV from its outset.

We introduce ourselves, we show a DVD,

and the DVD contains stories of people who have been

involved in violence, you know on the receiving end,

been the perpetrators,

been professionals that have been dealing with violence.

They show the impact it makes.

A 14-year-old boy had taken a bottle of Buckfast from one

of the other gang members, from the opposite gang.

And he took a drink of it.

Therefore, that gang then pulled a screwdriver out on this young

boy and stabbed him several times,

one of which went in the front of him and out the back.

He's screaming for his mum. He just kept saying, I don't want to die.

I don't want to die. And his clothes were soaked with blood.

By that point, we contacted the ambulance and they came

and it was just at that point, it was too late, the wee boy had died.

You know, right in front of my eyes.

Part of the school talks are also to dispel myths that carrying

a knife keeps you safe.

We've probably spoken to something like 13,000 children

across the West of Scotland in particular so far,

but we have covered larger areas as well.

And really, it seems to have had a significant impact.

If you ever go out at night, does your mother ever say,

are you going out, son or hen? Take a machete with you.

Or take a handgun.

You know, mums are usually people that try to keep you safe.

But if you're carrying a weapon, what it does is,

it does the opposite. It makes you...

Carrying a weapon changes your behaviour.

And they put you at risk.

Like many of his colleagues involved with MAV,

Michael's motivation for volunteering in the programme

stems from his personal experiences,

prepping victims of violent assault for surgery.

There was one particular case, a boy had been standing at a bus stop.

Another man had been in a fight earlier,

decided to go out with a baseball bat and get revenge on who

he thought perpetrated the initial incident.

He couldn't find him,

so this boy, who was about 21, 22, was standing at a bus stop

and this guy struck him over the head with a baseball bat.

Just one blow, walked off, the chap was found.

He had died about four or five days later,

and at some point, you suddenly think, this is just insane!

It achieves nothing and it is happening all the time.

When you going to work on a daily basis, and half of your very

expensive to run intensive care unit is full of assault victims

and people who, frankly, are going to need to be

cared for for the rest of your life at enormous cost to the

taxpayer. And at that stage, and a few weeks after that,

Medics Against Violence almost happened to run

their official launch here. And I thought, if we could change

and prevent this from happening,

this would be a much better way to go, so when Medics Against Violence

launched, I thought it seemed like the ideal opportunity

to actually move in to try to stop some of these things happening.

Well, that's eight years since you were here.

And in that eight years, there's a huge leap forward.

That's not saying it won't go back, that we

won't ever have wee spurts, we always will,

but in the main, I think it is going in the right direction.

Medics Against Violence was thought up by a few doctors.

In other words, they were a bit fed up with patching folk up,

young men, patching them up,

sending them out and then the same men are re-presenting again

a few months later with more slashing, stabbing wounds,

anything like that.

In the main, it's just all doctors and us being paramedics,

we were thinking, we're the ones in the forefront of this,

we're the ones that are the first contact that these patients have,

and we thought we have something we could give to this.

And they accepted us,

they put us through the training and we've been going into schools.

Hopefully, that does change people's perceptions.

There's no point talking to adults who walk about with knives,

because you're not going to change all their minds,

they're going to be walking about with knives.

But if you get to youngsters

and change their perceptions young enough, hopefully, they'll grow

up to be sensible young men that won't need

to walk about with a knife.

We only ever hear about the bad things in Glasgow,

how violent it is, and it is violent.

But it's getting better, and there are so many young, inspirational

people in Scotland, and especially in Glasgow, young men and women that

are making a difference to their lives and other people's lives.

And it's trying to take that forward and just give them a chance,

just let young people have a chance, let them get an education,

let them experience things that are there to be experienced.

And let them live.

And hopefully, let their parents see them

grow up and enjoy them until they're old and grey.

And that is just something I will never have the chance to do.

It's a passion for me, it is

a passion for most of the people that work for FARE.

And it's a little bit of passion for most youth workers.

It's not about the money.

It's very poorly paid, in my opinion, for what we do.

But it is a crucial part of society now,

that youth workers can have an influence on young people's lives

and get them to the next stage in life.

But it's not just about the worker,

it's about that youth worker working in partnership with schools

and education and police and housing and a whole host of other things.

But the young person needs to be able to trust you.

To get the benefit out of the relationship,

the young person needs to be able to trust you.

And young people do like rules in their life. They like boundaries.

Because that is why they try to overstep them.

If there's no boundaries there, then the game is not as fun.

I've had lots of bad days, young people getting killed,

stabbed, wounded.

Having an impact on people,

sometimes it falls on deaf ears, you know, and one of my worst days was

when a young person I worked quite closely with got 17 years for murder.

I found that quite sad that I had the possibility to influence that

young person and yet, when they were 18 years old,

they felt the need to go out and stab somebody.

Quite horrendously, actually.

And that is sad. Pretty sad.

So they're not good days.

We see young people getting on in life and doing really,

really well for themselves. Magic.

They come back to you years later and thank you. Thanks very much.

That's my way of looking at the negatives,

if I look at the negatives, there are far more positives.

So, although sad at the time, you need to get on,

because if you don't get on,

you can't help other young people in future, and that's the way I see it.

Tonight, there's going to be a rave in the Bridge, there's

going to be over 400 young people from how many areas?

-From 16 different areas.

-16 different areas.

There's going to be six different, 68 different acts performing. GBX.

-GB Experience!

-George Bowie.

The main act, so that's attracting all of these young people.

-What about James Kerr?

-Aye, James Kerr.

This is probably about the 10th, 8th, 10th rave?

Numbers have been quite good in the past,

but this is the biggest rave we've had. So...

It will be, it should be good.

These raves that we're going to tonight only started about two

years ago. When I was younger, it was the project raves,

which were very small-scale, compared to these.

You probably had about 30 wee dafties in a wee hall for the one

scheme, sometimes two,

but they are very small compared to what we can do now,

because you couldn't obviously integrate so many rival areas.

HE TOOTS THE BUS HORN

But ten year ago, some of us saw the work that happened

in the past years, we can now bring all these different areas together.

LOUD MUSIC PLAYS

HE LAUGHS AND SINGS

THEY LAUGH

I think it was about 20 organisations,

all working together for the same goal, to ensure that young

people had a great time, and that is what partnership work is about,

and that is the community spirit that we have now

in the north-east about all of these organisations coming together,

for the benefit of the young people

and the communities that we serve in.

DANCE MUSIC PLAYS

What's happening here tonight is amazing.

400 young people are here from 16 different areas of the city,

all having a great time.

Back when I started the knife crime project, an event like this

couldn't have happened without some kind of violence kicking off.

There's no doubt that Glasgow still has its problems, especially

when alcohol and weapons are combined.

But since I have finished the project,

knife attacks in Glasgow have dropped by 57%,

and in the last year, fatal stabbings are down by 23%.

Tonight proves that the interventions

coming from a diverse group of organisations and individuals,

are working better than anyone could have hoped for.

# And I said hey, yeah, yeah, yeah

# Hey, yeah, yeah... #

It was a great night. You know, fantastic night,

and that's what it's about. Young people enjoying themselves.

You don't need to be running about with a knife in your hand

and a brick and a bottle to enjoy yourself.

It's showing young people an alternative to violence.

# I said hey

# What's going on? #

# And I cry sometimes when I'm lying in bed

# Just to get it all out, what's in my head

# And I, I am feeling a little peculiar

# And so I wake in the morning and I step outside

# And I take deep breath and I get real high

# And I scream from the top of my lungs

# What's goin' on?! #