Liberties by Peter Bennett does what E.M. Forster, in his Aspects of the Novel (1927), says a novel must invariably do: ‘The novel – oh dear yes – the novel tells a story.’  While Forster wishes the novel could be ‘something different’ like ‘melody or perception of the truth,’ he nonetheless concedes that telling a story is the ‘highest factor common to all novels.’

There have been countless attempts to challenge what the novel can do, but it seems that ultimately Forster was right in saying that novels must tell a story. How the reader judges the success or failure of any novel, however, is dependent on certain criteria. For example, is the characterisation recognisable and credible? Is the dialogue sufficient to understand the characters? Are the settings well imagined and conceived? How effective is the language used? Has the writer managed to lift the novel above the level of mere storytelling and say something else that is important or needs saying about our condition?

On every count Peter Bennett’s novel answers such questions affirmatively. Three chapters of this book had been published prior to its release by Rymour Books. One of them was in the Culture Matters anthology of 2021, Ghosts of the Early Morning Shift: radical prose from contemporary Scotland.

Togetherness and solidarity

Bennett’s novel is set in the year 1998. He uses three narrators who are also characters in the action. They are Arthur Coyle, a grandad in his 70s, his twenty-year old grandson Daniel Coyle, and Stevie McShane who is young like Daniel. Each narrator pushes the action forward and by about a third of the way through their stories begin to morph into one another.

This triple narration worked extremely well with each character being fully realised. And the fact that Bennett chose to cross the generations gave his text an added dimension by showing how the young and the old apprehend their world. Arthur has roots in Glasgow’s industrial past whereas the younger ones are part of the post-industrial world we know today. What raises the novel above the telling of a tale is the way these contrasts in outlook are expressed. Arthur’s values belong to the togetherness and solidarity he experienced during the Upper Clyde Shipbuilders' campaign of the early 1970s. The young narrators seem much more rootless and lost.

The novel is also written in Glaswegian Scots throughout and Bennett – and Rymour Books – should be applauded for pulling this off. The language is distinctively from Glasgow, along with many Scots words that are not peculiar to Glasgow alone which are also used. The language convinces and the three main voices of the narrators – along with the voices of others – all ring true. 

The novel is set in Glasgow’s East End, particularly around the Shettleston area. Though there have been many attempts at renewal, the area is still known for its social inequality and all the accompanied ills that go with this. Sadly, the No Mean City (1935) of Long and McArthur is still alive and literally kicking in Glasgow today. The razor gangs of the 1930s have now given way to Stanley knives and baseball bats.

Add into this mix the continuing blight of sectarianism, drink and drugs and you may be forgiven for thinking that not much has changed since the 1930s. It is a bit more complex than that though. Bennett’s novel is fully aware how the industrial past of this great city once defined it and how its post-industrial reincarnation struggles to fully affirm. Young Glaswegians like Daniel Coyle are well aware of this. And the precariousness of employment through agency work for lads like Stevie McShane convinces him that today’s workplace is a game for losers and selling drugs is a better option.

A theme that runs through the novel is the role played by market forces. Where there is a demand for something then a supply is obviously required. Bennett applies this to drugs and he seems to suggest that these market forces are out of control. The extent of the demand is so widespread. Yes, the demand in the housing schemes stem from misery and deprivation, and Bennett paints a grim portrait in this regard:

… the underbelly ay society; the wans that faw between the cracks. The forgotten tribe. Social misfits. The miscreants nae cunt wants, nor needs, cast asunder oan tae the pile ay social security numbers, social workers case files an their ever expandin criminal records – the only documentation tae validate their sorry existence.

However, the demand has grown further up the food chain as well. We know this from reports of cocaine being found in the toilets of the House of Commons; and recently Prince Harry has confessed to using cocaine.

While we can understand how drink and drugs may seem to alleviate suffering – though both actually add to it – in areas of deprivation, the fact that people from more affluent backgrounds feel the need to use drugs shows that the stresses and strains associated with our economic and political model is clearly out of control.

State brutality

The drug business is every bit as vile as every other business under capitalism. Why should it not be? Down at the bottom it is particularly brutal for those on drugs but this simply mirrors the state’s brutality towards the poorest in our society with zero hours contracts, food banks, demeaning fitness for work interviews, sanctions, cuts to benefits and pre-payment energy meters.

The local gangster and hard man is called Mullin. He parasitises on his clients and terrorises the neighbourhood. There are many Mullins all over Scotland, England, Europe and elsewhere. While he comes from the neighbourhood himself and grew up between the cracks, Bennett clearly implies that there are other gangsters who seem outwardly respectable who wear suits but whose actions are every bit as brutal as the Mullins of this world. One thinks of Bezos, Musk and so many similar others. McShane tells us ‘the bankers an the politicians, they’re the biggest crooks ay the lot.’

It turns out that Mullin had murdered Danny’s dad, John Coyle, who was also the son of Arthur Coyle. Mullin was also responsible for the death of Arthur’s mate, Tam O’Henry. Tam’s daughter has fallen on even harder times and Tam accepts money from Mullin but every time he pays some back Mullin increases interest payments. By doubling up as a money lender as well as a drug dealer, Mullin has enormous power in the area.

Arthur and Tam go to the bowling club and also to the Portland Arms. They have been friends since they worked on the Clyde as apprentices. Tam has a disability – ‘a gammy airm’ – from his time working as a welder. He had been on Invalidity Benefit but this got changed to Incapacity Benefit and Tam, at 63 years old, is told to find a job. This is the background to Tam’s life becoming embroiled with Mullin.

There was, at times, a sense that Arthur and Tam were a bit like the two most famous pensioners in Scotland, namely Jack and Victor from the TV programmes of Still Game, but any similarity is short lived as the lives of Tam and Arthur become deeply troubled by more serious events.

Another parallel that could be made concerns Danny Coyle dropping out of Glasgow Caledonian University. He now goes around with his former mates, McDade and Pearcey, and Danny’s mum castigates him – ‘ye decided tae drap oot ay university tae piss aboot wae yer nae good, waster pals.’ This is incredibly similar to Tom Leonard’s mum, in his poem The Dropout:

well jist take a lookit yersel
naithur work nor wahnt
aw aye

yir clivir
damm clivir.
but yi huvny a clue whutyur dayn.

It is a strength that Bennett’s novel raises such comparisons. Another one could obviously be made with Irvine Welsh’s Trainspotting (1993). Like Welsh’s novel, Liberties looks at the drug scene in a deprived area. Bennett also focusses on the music that was around in the 90s and pays attention to the clothes and trainers his characters wear. On one occasion Danny, McDade and Pearcey head off to a bothy out by Ben More and this scene was reminiscent of when Renton and his mates in Trainspotting decide to go north for fresh air and to temporarily get away from Leith.

The famous lines by Renton as one of his mates suggests that the beauty of the Highlands make you proud to be Scottish still resonate:

It’s shite being Scottish! We’re the lowest of the low! The scum of the fucking earth… some people hate the English, I don’t. They’re just wankers! We, on the other hand, are colonised by wankers! Can’t even find a decent culture to be colonised by… it’s a shite state of affairs to be in Tommy, and all the fresh air in the world won’t make any fucking difference.

Danny Coyle, like Renton, is more intelligent than his mates and sees how basic they are. Rather than comment on the state of being Scottish, however, Danny is more aesthetically appalled at the total lack of awareness of the beauty that can be found in such settings:

There’s some rarely spoken ay, unwritten code amongst cunts like us that dictates that ye cannae openly express awe an wonder at that in life that elicits such a response… the majestic flight ay a golden eagle… tae openly express wonderment is tae invite ridicule.

This reaction by Danny seems more acute and psychologically aware. In this sense it appears that Danny, while having some similarity to Renton, has much more in common with the leading characters of previous Glasgow novels.

Eddie Macdonnell in Edward Gaintens’, Dance of the Apprentices (1948), tries to rise above the chaos that surrounds him in the Gorbals and he reads widely and talks of socialism. So too does Mat Craig, in Archie Hind’s The Dear Green Place (1966), who wishes to become a writer despite falling into extreme poverty. A similar case can be made for Duncan Thaw in Alasdair Gray’s Lanark(1981)  and Joe Necchi in Alexander Trocchi’s Cain’s Book (1960) who both fail to realise their artistic ambitions.

'There’s mare that unites us than divides us'

At the end of Liberties we are told that Danny is going back to university, this time to Heriot Watt in Edinburgh, and his girlfriend Tracey is also going to transfer there. This is optimistic and such an ending places Bennett’s novel much more in the proud tradition of Glasgow novels that have gone before. Learning is the best antidote to help you raise yourself from your environment. Crime or sporting success are only temporary measures, whereas learning will always be more sustainable in the longer term. You may not achieve your artistic vision but learning and the artistic urge are always of a higher order regardless of how events may turn out.

Arthur is proud of his grandson, as is his mother. Yet, it is Arthur who has to caution Danny and his friends over a sectarian outburst by McDade as they watch a Scotland football match when Gordon Durie, a Rangers player, misses a chance. Arthur, with his history of working-class solidarity forged in UCS, responds to McDade’s ‘orange bastart’ comment by telling the lads ‘There’s mare that unites us than divides us, son… That’s whit they want, ye know – us aw bloody fightin wae each other.’

The novel is set in the year 1998 and this was the year Celtic managed to stop Rangers winning 10 in a row league titles. Every young Celtic fan born after this date will be aware of this fact. Even in a more secular era, the sectarian attitude still exists. The Portland Arms pub has separate ends for fans of Rangers and Celtic and this was arranged by the those who frequent the bar themselves. Like every other Glasgow writer who has raised this issue, Bennett regrets how this tradition still divides.

Bennett also uses some fine descriptive writing to paint certain Glasgow scenes:

A great cliff of charcoal grey cloud rolls across the sky like some huge megalithic wall of dark, volcanic rock drifting through the air, bloated and swollen, stubbornly retaining its precipitous essence until it can no more.

Often the dreich, damp weather Bennett describes which is so common to Glasgow and other parts of Scotland, appears to hold a certain echo of Edwin Morgan and his Glasgow Sonnet 1 – ‘A mean wind wanders through the backcourt trash/Hackles on puddles rise.’ The fact that Bennett’s writing evokes other Glasgow writers is an enormous strength and places him in this proud tradition.

Bennett also gives us a few examples of the customary humour that is associated with this city. Arthur tells us that one of the guys he knows at the bowling club is known as The Blacksmith. This is because every time it is his turn to buy a round ‘he makes a bolt fur the door.’  And when it is pointed out that McDade always seems to have some luck about him, we are told if McDade ‘fell in the Clyde, he’d come oot wi a fuckin salmon in his mooth, nae danger, man.’

Liberties has much to recommend it. The title refers to not taking advantage of someone and not allowing anyone to take advantage of yourself. Arthur gave this advice to Danny. However, this novel uses the title metaphorically in that the economic and political system we endure takes liberties all the time with us. The desperation of the drug scene experienced in poor areas did not suddenly fall out of the sky. It has been orchestrated by imposed economic disadvantage.

Bennett has done an invaluable job in exposing this. His debut novel is convincing in terms of his credible characters, the triple narration works superbly well, the dialogue is recognisably Glaswegian and his knowledge of the drug scene also seems entirely accurate. He has fulfilled Forster’s dictum and told an altogether riveting tale. All of this is no mean political and aesthetic achievement.

‘Liberties’ by Peter Bennett is published by Rymour Books, 2022, and can be bought here.