GLASGOW’S outgoing council leader Susan Aitken has taken a parting shot at the BBC over a documentary on the city she said made an “enormous misjudgement” in “platforming the far-right”.
Aitken stood down as the leader of Glasgow Council on Thursday following a nine-year tenure.
Speaking at the full council meeting where she officially left the role, Aitken took aim at a BBC Disclosure documentary which was broadcast in August and faced a backlash for allegedly presenting Glasgow as a “backwater of drunks and stereotypes”.
Aitken said: “It has long been a tactic of the far-right to paint cities as lawless and degenerate because cities stand for everything that they hate; diversity, cosmopolitanism, progress.
“The BBC platformed the people who have been responsible for the worst crime in our city centre recently, the most shocking crime. Masked thuggery, rampaging, targeting people of colour, deliberately designed to intimidate and to tell people that our city centre is a place of lawlessness.
“It is not, it has its problems but crime in Glasgow is no worse than crime in any other city in the UK and in actual fact it is considerably better than some of our peers.”
The documentary focused on a one-week period in June, which coincided with anti-immigration protests in the city.
It spoke to Darren Docherty, the leader of the far-right inspired vigilante group Scots Active, who claimed there was a “race war” happening in Glasgow and that you “cannot blame” the violent thugs who attack people based on the colour of their skin.
No one from Glasgow City Council participated in the programme, despite a BBC request.
Aitken, who was speaking during a Labour motion on crime and anti-social behaviour, said: “Like any big city, Glasgow does have its pockets of crime and anti-social behaviour and some of it is severe. We also have an ongoing task of supporting vulnerable people.”
She added the council has had “close engagement with chief superintendent Emma Croft over many, many months on this now”.
“The police operations around Four Corner and St Enoch’s Square are complex, they’re intensive,” Aitken said.
“They are having to respond to changing patterns of criminal behaviour and they also, by their very nature, sometimes have to be operationally confidential.”
At Holyrood last week, Reform UK group leader Malcolm Offord alleged that the BBC documentary had made “clear” that Glasgow was suffering from “warped ideology thanks to years of virtue signalling from a succession of SNP First Ministers”.
John Swinney responded: “About the Disclosure programme and the presentation of the city of Glasgow. I was in Glasgow a lot over the summer for the Commonwealth Games. I saw a city that was welcoming, that was inclusive, that was vibrant, that was creative and colourful.”
Mike Grieve, the managing director of Glasgow’s famous Sub Club and chair of the Scottish Night-Time Industries Association, has also said the documentary presented a “very distorted view of the city”.
A BBC spokesperson said: “The documentary was fair and impartial, accurately reflecting a broad range of perspectives, from numerous contributors.
"Audiences should expect to hear a range of views, including those they disagree with, without coverage being interpreted as endorsement.
"Ms Aitken was invited multiple times to be interviewed but declined.”
