A mother's pain

0 - 0 • Published 10 Jun 2009 09:36

Anyone who has grown up in the west of Scotland knows that it can be a wasteland where our young people often live out lives filled with violence.

Having grown up in Drumchapel in the 1970s I was involved in the same type of negativity as Garry Brotherston and experienced the loss of several friends whose lives were cut short in a similar way to Billy Barclay.

I also had a number of friends who were given life sentences for taking other people"s lives and I myself spent three years in prison after nearly killing a couple of young men in a fight.

I look back on these days with a sort of horror and I wish that they could be lived again, but no matter how much we wish it or want it, we can never turn back time.

My heart goes out to the grieving mother of Mr Barclay in the same way that it goes out to the mothers of other friends whose lives have been so violently taken from them.

I have known a number of people with life sentences who get released from prison and continue to be embroiled in crime and others who get as far from it as they possibly can.

Garry is one of the few that I have met whose purpose in life is to try and reach young people in order to persuade them not to carry weapons and to stop them from making the same mistake as he did.

He cannot turn the clock back and give this mother back her son, but he does try to stop other mothers from knowing the same pain.

Knife culture and violence is the open wound of this country and the only reason that anyone has ever heard of Garry is because he is trying to do something about it in order that it may change.

David Forsyth, Glasgow

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This letter appeared in Clydebank Post 10 Jun 09

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