Apr 4 2003
FOUR members of Scotland's most notorious crime family were jailed for a total of 33 years yesterday at the High Court in Edinburgh for dealing heroin.
Margaret "Big Mags" Haney, a 60-year-old grandmother and mother of 13, from Alloa, Clackmannanshire, was the mastermind of a (Pounds) 1,000-a-day drug dealing operation.
She simultaneously claimed (Pounds) 1,200 a month in state benefits.
The 14-stone "Godmother" -whose notoriety led crime writer Ian Rankin to base a character in one of his Inspector Rebus novels on her -was sentenced to 12 years in jail after admitting dealing heroin from flats in Stirling, known locally as Haney's Hotel, between January 2000 and June 2001.
Her daughter Diane, 35, was sentenced to nine years in jail, son Hugh, 31, to five years and niece Roseann, 40, seven years after also admitting drugs offences.
Her granddaughter, Kim, 24, was jailed for two years for contempt of court after refusing to give evidence against her family.
The convictions mean that six of the eight Haney children still living have now served time in prison for drug dealing.
Sentencing the family yesterday the judge, Lady Smith, told Haney: "You thought you were untouchable."
Brought up in a Glasgow convent, Mags Haney settled in the run-down Raploch district of Stirling and over the past ten years has rarely been out of the limelight.
While gaining a string of convictions over the years, she also took a high profile role in public causes supposedly close to her heart.
In 1992 she showed what one community worker called "an unsurpassed aptitude for hypocrisy and humbug" by simultaneously leading mothers on an anti-drugs march and appearing on TV as an outspoken critic of the drugs culture, while dealing in cannabis and Temazepam "jellies" from the landing outside her flat.
In 1995 a Stirling Sheriff, horrified at the number of Haneys trooping through his court, called for "severe steps" to stop their offending and the misery they inflicted on the Raploch community.
Haney immediately complained to the press that the Sheriff had branded her brood a "Family from Hell" and threatened to report him to the Lord Advocate.
"How dare he say such things," she said, "when my family keeps him in a job."
Two years later she hit the headlines when she led a mob which surrounded a bed and breakfast in Stirling where a convicted paedophile was being accommodated after his release from prison. Haney set up Scottish Communities Against Paedophiles and began campaigning for a national register of sex offenders.
But her grandstanding appearances on programmes like Kilroy cut little ice with her neighbours and resentment grew among those who knew the truth about her.
By July 1997 Stirling Council was receiving constant complaints about her and her family and less than a month later a mob of 200 turned up outside her home. The family had to be driven away under police escort and were eventually rehoused.
The investigation into her drug dealing began in 1998 but it was not until June 2001 that she was arrested.
Her last act of defiance was to raise her arms and shout "Get it up you" at a crowd of neighbours who had gathered in the street to celebrate her departure.
~ Mark C. Gribben http://organizedcrime.about.com/cs/news/a/aadailynews_4.htm
