The Talking-up Scotland fund raiser closing on Friday, primarily to enable the recruitment of some research assistance, in order to take pressure off me [74 in June and tiring] and hopefully to further improve the blog, has made a good start. To contribute, only if you can (!) go to: Talking-up Scotland - a Politics crowdfunding project in Ayr by Professor John Robertson
By Professor John Robertson OBA, former Faculty Research Ethics Chair, UWS
BBC Scotland Highlands & Islands had this very brief report last night.
Police say they are treating a blaze at a house in Inverness as a wilful fire-raising incident. Emergency services were called to the property on Wyvis Place at about 19:00 on Monday. A police spokesperson said: “Emergency services attended and the fire was put out by the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service. No-one was injured. “The fire is being treated as wilful and inquiries are ongoing.”
Seeing that image reminded me of scenes back in September 2023, from the small town of Auchinleck in East Ayrshire, where locals burned a house being used by a Bradford-based County Lines gang and drove them out of town. To my knowledge, that was the only such example of a community fighting back. More on this below.
First, that remarkably short BBC report from Inverness, made me wonder, so I search for ‘Wyvis Place Inverness drugs‘ and found in the Inverness Courier on 16 December 2024 this:
Inverness women and London men recruited to help sale of heroin in Highlands – Two Inverness women and two men from London who were recruited to assist in the sale of heroin in the Highlands avoided jail sentences because they were “vulnerable” and “taken advantage of”.
The quartet were arrested following a police raid on a house in Wyvis Place, Inverness on July 13 last year. John Sabharwal (27), of Benares Road, Plumstead, Shadrach Ekpo (20), of Spa Road, London, Kerry McDonald (46) and Christina Swanson (40), both of Wyvis Place, pleaded guilty to separate charges at Inverness Sheriff Court. The sheriff told all four: “You were part of a much bigger operation but I take into account there is a bigger picture here. Two of you were vulnerable and two of you were taken advantage of.”
What is the ‘much bigger operation‘, the judge refers to?
Also from the Inverness Courier but getting no national media coverage:
Inverness is grappling with the grim reality of County Lines drug operations, with 10 separate gangs exploiting vulnerable individuals in the city. Police Scotland’s Highlands and Islands Division has identified the growing footprint of organised crime over the past 18 months, with devastating consequences for the community.
The criminal networks behind County Lines originate in major cities like Liverpool, London, and the West Midlands, and use a combination of coercion, exploitation, and violence to tighten their grip on the drug trade. Inverness is the hub of their northern operations but their reach extends as far as Alness.
The house-burning is not yet confirmed as a community reaction but there is no reason why the gang would do so.
Almost a year ago, I wrote:
How one local newspaper gave the people the facts they needed to ‘Take back our town’ from English drug gangs
Last September [2023], English County Lines gangsters were driven out by mass protests in Auchinleck and Cumnock (East Ayrshire) with hundreds of locals involved. They had become increasingly angry and fearful, as reports of a massive surge in cheap drug availability threatened the lives of their families, of the exploitation of vulnerable individuals to provide bases in their homes, of direct threats to kill local young men and of reports of the sexual abuse of women and minors, spread through the towns
I can find no reports of County Lines activity in that area, since late 2023.
Sadly, mainstream media portrayed the local protests as unfocused ‘riots’ and concentrated on the effects of those for local policing.
However, not for the first time, I was struck by the role the local Cumnock Chronicle (CC) had played in helping the local population to understand what was happening to them.
As early as April 2019, when the first County Lines gang activity was being reported in North-East Scotland, in social media reports including Police Facebook messaging, the CC had an informative piece on the spreading phenomenon and of its presence amongst popular music performers such as the Grime artist, Asco:
https://www.cumnockchronicle.com/news/national-news/17598473.gang-filmed-showing-off-cash-convicted-plot-supply-class-drugs/ https://www.cumnockchronicle.com/news/national-news/17901711.grime-artist-asco-jailed-county-lines-drug-dealing/
Then, in March 2023, they told locals of the extreme brutality of these gangs including their preying on vulnerable children – ‘cuckooing’:
By October 2023, the CC was reporting on the massive UK-wide scale of the problem, as 1 600 were arrested across England & Wales:
Then on 26 November, BBC Scotland and other MSM reported on ‘riots’ in Auchinleck:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-glasgow-west-67535875
These reports do not mention drugs nor ‘County Lines.’ Only the Sun had the accurate headline: Village ‘riot’ sparked by ‘vigilantes laying siege’ to English drug dealers’ stash house
https://www.thescottishsun.co.uk/news/11591954/village-riot-sparked-siege-drug-dealers-stash-house/
More recently, on 28 February 2024, the CC reported: No hearing date has been set for those charged following riots in Auchinleck and Cumnock last year, a police report has revealed. Back in November, we reported how a weekend of chaos resulted in at least eight people, including a 13-year-old boy, being arrested and charged in connection with the disorder. https://www.cumnockchronicle.com/news/24148200.no-hearing-date-set-following-auchinleck-cumnock-riots/
Intriguingly, the CC report includes this:
Providing an update on the Auchinleck and Cumnock incidents, the report stated: “Over the weekend of November 24-26, significant large scale disorder took place in the towns of Auchinleck and Cumnock. “This originated in a ‘take back our town’ protest which gathered momentum via social media and culminated in widespread violence and disorder taking place over three nights.
I am aware of no other Scottish towns doing this kind of thing but would be interested to hear of any.
For more on the Auchinleck story:
Support Scots Independent, Scotland’s oldest pro-independence newspaper [98!] and host of the OBA (Oliver Brown Award) at: https://scotsindependent.scot/FWShop/shop/
The Oliver Brown Award for advancing the cause of Scotland’s self respect, previously awarded to Dr Philippa Whitford, Alex Salmond and Sean Connery: https://scotsindependent.scot/?page_id=116
About Oliver Brown, the first Scottish National Party candidate to save his deposit in a Parliamentary election: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oliver_Brow
Talking-up Scotland 'Albatraz' 