Archives: Gangland godfather Arthur Thompson was 'thug of worst kind'

Documents previously kept from the public described the Glasgow hard man's time in jail at Aberdeen and Inverness in the 1960s and police files from his home city.

In one letter, his wife pleads with the governor of Aberdeen prison to keep him in the north east over fears he will fall in with the wrong crowd if allowed to return to Barlinnie in Glasgow.

A long list of letters between authorities described Thompson's "subversive" activities, such as trying to stir up trouble by using other inmates and hiding an iron bar in his cell.

A parole file from 1969 reads: "Thompson is one of the leading criminal lights in Glasgow with connections in London. A man one cannot take at face value."

It predicted: "Thompson will inevitably return to his lucrative club management and his position as a leader of the Glasgow criminal fraternity."

Thompson was born in 1930 and died of a heart attack in 1993.

He was involved with well-known city gangsters and was briefly connected with the feared Kray Twins in London.

In 1969, his wife, who was in Greenock Prison, wrote to the governor in Aberdeen asking for him to be kept there.

She wrote: "He is Arthur Thompson (No. 660/67) he was told he may be sent to Barlinnie to be liberated and he doesn't want this as he fears he may get involved with the wrong type of people and he doesn't want that to happen.

"So would you please try and have him kept in Craiginches sir and oblige."

But the governor, Mr Williamson, warned that Thompson would "put the screw" on a number of locals in Aberdeen, urging that he should "seek protection" before being liberated from Barlinnie.

In the previous year the governor described Thompson as a consummate villain, adding: "It is well known that Thompson and (name removed] are thugs of the worst kind and run warring factions inside and outside of prison, with the blind hatred of their kind."