The Ice Cream Wars

In postwar Glasgow's suburban housing estates, there was a dreadful paucity of services. Ice cream vans were useful if you wanted to buy ice cream, but also (allegedly) stolen goods and drugs. For whatever reason, the trade was lucrative, and fought over; and one young driver's family were burnt to death by someone who, it's assumed, wanted their rounds. Then the two men convicted protested their innocence, one even repeatedly escaping and then voluntarily returning to gaol to highlight his case; eventually, they were freed, although only after their first appeal was rejected. This documentary reconstructs the story. One limitation is that the real killer was never found; and thus what exactly what happened, both in the trade and in the murder, is not something the programme can reveal. All it can say is that people were killed for no good reason, and bad policing punished the wrong men. Which is a worthy story to tell; but also, a somewhat banal one.