Why I don't recognise Thomas Kerr's 'lawless' Glasgow

In her novel Jazz, Toni Morrison writes a version of 1920s New York that is alive. Not simply a setting, the city is a character in its own right, powerful and unpredictable. Capable of influence. 

There’s no argument here that people are strongly affected by place. For those of us with the means to move, it’s a push or pull consideration that helps us decide where to stay, and for how long. It forms part of our identities. We are all from somewhere, and sometimes that means several postcodes. 

For Morrison, the city isn’t a benevolent force but a site that offers both escape and entrapment, and the novel explores the impact of the Great Migration from the segregated South on its African-American protagonists.  

I first read Jazz as a student at university in Glasgow, where my lecturer Zoe Wicomb, a brilliant novelist from South Africa, brought the Harlem Renaissance to life in a room off Rottenrow. 

If Glasgow itself is a character, who is it? A Mr Men-themed tourism and investment push in the 1980s declared that “Glasgow’s Miles Better” and associated the city with the sunny yellow figure of Mr Happy, helping to slough off its tough, industrial image. It’s since styled itself as an aspirational destination and a living film set, amongst other things.

It would be easy to suggest that the former second city of the empire is now down on its luck.

Walking around the town, it’s certainly not the place where I studied. Big clubs like Archaos have closed and the city’s retail crown – it once had the biggest shopping offering outwith London – has been tarnished by changing consumer habits that have left many units unoccupied. Then there are the fires that have left it pockmarked with gap sites on thoroughfares like Sauchiehall Street and latterly Union Street. 

But it’s also a town that’s home to innovation and creativity – a satellite-building hub with a strong arts scene. And, crucially, it is a city undergoing renewal. 

George Square, once the heartbeat of the ‘dear, green place’, was turned red 30 years ago, its grass and trees ripped out for crimson asphalt in an act of vandalism that was supposed to pave the way for the staging of events, but which turned the wee oasis into a dead space. Now work is advancing on an overhaul which, we’re told, will put some of the personality back in. 

The local authority is also trying to grow a city centre population of dwellers once crowded out by commerce – a move which, if successful, will surely help to increase footfall for the remaining shops and cafes.

There are other problems and projects, of course – there always are in cities, where each district has its own peculiarities. Planning takes too long, there is never enough money to do all that’s wanted, and inequalities remain entrenched. Health remains firmly tied to wealth, and the educational attainment gap is yet unclosed. But progress has been made, and the city has long shed the unenviable title of being Europe’s murder capital.

Crime has not ended – indeed, the latest statistics reveal almost 500 cases of rape and attempted rape were reported to police in 2025-26 – but the country’s biggest city is safer now than it was in my youth, when I’d spill out of a club in the early hours and walk an hour home to save on taxi fares. 

There’s no argument for complacency here, and any violent attack is one too many. But I don’t recognise the characterisation of the city I’ve heard in recent months from Reform UK. “This city is becoming lawless, and anarchy is now rampant on our streets,” proclaimed local MSP and councillor Thomas Kerr in a recent social media post which claimed that “young women in particular” are “scared to come into our city centre”. Kerr linked it to “mass illegal migration”, saying it is “pushing our city to breaking point”. 

Living in the vicinity of Glasgow, I don’t know a single woman with such a fear – I’ve never even heard anyone say they know anyone who is scared to go into town.

Actually, that’s not true. I don’t know any white women with such a fear. I do, however, know women from other backgrounds who have become increasingly concerned about their safety in public places: Afghans from the north of Glasgow and Singaporeans from the west end, for example. Women who feel increasingly unwelcome in their adopted home after decades of life here, of working and raising their kids. Muslims who have had their hijabs pulled off by young white men who are told that there is someone to blame for the challenges they face in life, and that this ‘someone’ is not a neighbour but a “stranger”.

It’s not that these individuals have withdrawn from the city’s streets, but they now have cause to reconsider their relationship with it. Where do they stand in the Glasgow of 2026? 

Hate crime figures have risen across the country and Crown Office data shows that race-related incidents are the most commonly reported of these. As many as 3,990 were reported in 2025-26, making for an increase of 17 per cent.

These are national, not local figures. But Glasgow has been at the centre of much of the push and pull of the new politics around race and immigration.

I am reminded of the old music hall song I Belong to Glasgow, a local anthem allegedly inspired by the writer’s encounter with a Central Station drunkard riffing about Karl Marx. “Glasgow belongs to me,” it insists. 

It’s hardly jazz, as in Morrison’s novel, but a century on from its creation, that question of belonging and identity has taken on a new tone.