cousin Stephen was also caught by the blast while Tommy, the boss of the trio, escaped unscathed as glasses shattered, tables toppled and McGovern blood marked the walls. A third man aged thirty-four, with no connections to the family or what was behind this particular feud, also felt the shotgun’s blast. His injuries were not serious.
The gunman, who had fired from point-blank range, fled before anyone could react. Within a few moments, the spring evening was filled with the wail of sirens. Most of the drinkers tried to escape into the night before the CID arrived to lock them in the pub and ask questions they had no intention of answering. Tommy didn’t hang about either. Police would say that the rising hard man had lost his bottle and abandoned his stricken brother but it is perhaps more likely that he went to rally the people and the weapons that would be required for instant retaliation.
James and his cousin were taken to the nearby Royal Infirmary but medics there took one look at their injuries and sent them to the specialist Canniesburn Hospital for emergency plastic surgery. Stephen, from the ‘poor relations’ side of the family, was to die of a drugs overdose in later years. The surgeons did what they could to rebuild James’s badly damaged face but, when he was eventually allowed home to the familiar surroundings of Blackthorn Street, he was scarred for life. From that moment on, James was nicknamed ‘Elephant Man although the cruel jibe was never made to his face. One associate said, ‘He has a nasty scar which distorts one side of his face. For that to happen to a teenage boy must have been very hard to deal with.’
In the higher levels of Strathclyde Police, a decision was made to put a lot of time and effort into investigating who was behind the pub shooting. The motivation was partly as a way of finding out as much as they could about the increasingly powerful McGoverns. One officer said:
We decided to throw everything into the shooting enquiry because we wanted to get into the family and gather as much knowledge as we could. It turned out that the person who did it was in his late teens and unknown to the police yet he had got hold of a weapon and had done the business. He acted after Stephen had threatened or assaulted his brother over something to do with drugs. He intended to shoot Stephen but James got the worst of it.
This crime would have been remarkable had it been inflicted on almost any other family but, for the McGoverns, the shooting of James and Stephen was just one incident in a maelstrom of serious violence. Sometimes they are the victims but more usually the perpetrators.
In the lawless Balkan state of Albania, blood feuds are an ancient custom whereby families avenge previous murders with murder. This lawless approach causes a perpetual chain of violence. In parts of Glasgow, families like the McGoverns seem to have adopted the same tribal blood-feud mentality.
One officer said:
If you want to get to the top and stay at the top of the Glasgow drugs trade you cannot afford to lose face. You must always come out on top. For many years, the McGoverns would attack anyone who crossed them or got in their way but often they were far too extreme in their reaction which bred a lot of hatred towards them.
The boy who did the Vulcan Bar shooting was charged but it never got to court as the McGoverns refused to cooperate. The intelligence at the time was that the gunman left the country shortly afterwards because it was certain the family would seek revenge.
Less than two years later, on 5 November 1989, James’s younger brother Paul McGovern inflicted a frenzied fatal knife attack on popular and hard-working forty-seven-year-old school janitor Thomas Cushley. Thomas was heading to Santi’s chip shop that afternoon when he was jostled outside Springburn Sports Centre by McGovern and two of his pals but it was more serious than that and Thomas shouted to passers-by that he
The gunman, who had fired from point-blank range, fled before anyone could react. Within a few moments, the spring evening was filled with the wail of sirens. Most of the drinkers tried to escape into the night before the CID arrived to lock them in the pub and ask questions they had no intention of answering. Tommy didn’t hang about either. Police would say that the rising hard man had lost his bottle and abandoned his stricken brother but it is perhaps more likely that he went to rally the people and the weapons that would be required for instant retaliation.
James and his cousin were taken to the nearby Royal Infirmary but medics there took one look at their injuries and sent them to the specialist Canniesburn Hospital for emergency plastic surgery. Stephen, from the ‘poor relations’ side of the family, was to die of a drugs overdose in later years. The surgeons did what they could to rebuild James’s badly damaged face but, when he was eventually allowed home to the familiar surroundings of Blackthorn Street, he was scarred for life. From that moment on, James was nicknamed ‘Elephant Man although the cruel jibe was never made to his face. One associate said, ‘He has a nasty scar which distorts one side of his face. For that to happen to a teenage boy must have been very hard to deal with.’
In the higher levels of Strathclyde Police, a decision was made to put a lot of time and effort into investigating who was behind the pub shooting. The motivation was partly as a way of finding out as much as they could about the increasingly powerful McGoverns. One officer said:
We decided to throw everything into the shooting enquiry because we wanted to get into the family and gather as much knowledge as we could. It turned out that the person who did it was in his late teens and unknown to the police yet he had got hold of a weapon and had done the business. He acted after Stephen had threatened or assaulted his brother over something to do with drugs. He intended to shoot Stephen but James got the worst of it.
This crime would have been remarkable had it been inflicted on almost any other family but, for the McGoverns, the shooting of James and Stephen was just one incident in a maelstrom of serious violence. Sometimes they are the victims but more usually the perpetrators.
In the lawless Balkan state of Albania, blood feuds are an ancient custom whereby families avenge previous murders with murder. This lawless approach causes a perpetual chain of violence. In parts of Glasgow, families like the McGoverns seem to have adopted the same tribal blood-feud mentality.
One officer said:
If you want to get to the top and stay at the top of the Glasgow drugs trade you cannot afford to lose face. You must always come out on top. For many years, the McGoverns would attack anyone who crossed them or got in their way but often they were far too extreme in their reaction which bred a lot of hatred towards them.
The boy who did the Vulcan Bar shooting was charged but it never got to court as the McGoverns refused to cooperate. The intelligence at the time was that the gunman left the country shortly afterwards because it was certain the family would seek revenge.
Less than two years later, on 5 November 1989, James’s younger brother Paul McGovern inflicted a frenzied fatal knife attack on popular and hard-working forty-seven-year-old school janitor Thomas Cushley. Thomas was heading to Santi’s chip shop that afternoon when he was jostled outside Springburn Sports Centre by McGovern and two of his pals but it was more serious than that and Thomas shouted to passers-by that he
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