Gangs of Dundee

About the Book: 

Ye knew wah ah the ither gangs wir, ye knew the colours an ye knew maist o the nuttirz. No bein associated wi a gang wizna really an option. The law o the street jungle prevailed.

Dundee has a long, illustrious, and well-documented history – the city of ‘jute, jam and journalism’. There is, however, one aspect of Scotland’s fourth largest city yet to be told – the story of Dundee’s gangs. 

From the Huns to the Shimmy, the Shams and the Fleet, the stories of generation after generation of Dundee’s youths have without doubt been shaped by gang culture. It is this side of Dundee’s history that rap poet, and former gang member, Gary Robertson reveals in this book. 

From the emergence of the gangs in the mid sixties through to today’s fresh-faced recruits, Robertson gives us a captivating insight into another side of Dundee’s violent past; into the youths who battled on its streets, the social problems that led to the creation of the gangs, and the individual stories of some of those involved.

Robertson has told the story of the gangs in their own words, basing his accounts on interviews with former and current gang members, giving an anecdotal, colourful, and fundamentally true-to-life history of this volatile subject.

Reviews: 

Dundee in the 1970s was a fearsome place where gangs ruled the city's schemes. Territory was everything and frequent, bloody battles were fought over turf. DUNDEE COURIER

About the Author:

GARY ROBERTSON was born in 1967 and has lived and worked in Dundee all his life. A fitness fanatic who has climbed Scotland’s 284 Munros, in 2001 he won the BBC 2 reality TV series, SAS: Are You Tough Enough? He very much enjoys family life and even finds time for playing the bagpipes. He and fellow Dundonian Mark Thomson are the two halves of Tribal Tongues, a high energy poetry partnership performing in the Dundee dialect.