Hopefully most people would tell you that I am a very supportive person, I like to see other people achieve their potential, surpass their goals and feel good about themselves. Indeed, I met one of my primary school teachers when delivering a talk to early year’s professionals. She made me blush by telling the whole group what a lovely boy I had been at primary school.

I know that in her classroom I was always able to be that lovely person because she celebrated all that we had to contribute. She was also particularly good at teaching in the outdoors so we were never cooped up and restless. We were always doing fun things and learning almost without realising it.

However, that nice young boy did not survive unscathed into adulthood. Scotland has always been a very violent place and in high school that young boy turned into a young man who had to learn how to physically fight to survive. Life events changed him.

Various events hardened me, boys in older years and from other schools would pick on me for a fight because I was very tall for my age and they thought I might be a softer touch than boys their own age – they were soon to learn they had made a mistake.

We were all punks at that time and I would have been wearing at least 14 or 18 hole DMs – these DMs would not have aided a fleet footed get away. Yet, I never ran so fast in my life.

I learnt to be quick to stand up bullies but that often got me into deeper trouble. Indeed, I got into a long running feud with a group of brothers from Niddrie in Edinburgh which culminated in me regularly being chased by their gang.

I was never in a gang but it should be noted that my experience was that Edinburgh gang culture of the 1980s was small beer compared to that which has taken place at times in Glasgow or currently in some cities in the USA – that’s why I am still here to tell the tale.

It was at this time that I first realised that some people who make out they are your friends can be nowhere to be seen when you need their support.  Where-as, real friends were people you could count on. People who would put themselves through the daily routine of supporting you to traverse the Meadows in Edinburgh without us all getting a ‘kick-in’.

Eventually, I dropped my guard one day when I paused to chat to a very nice girl after class. She had a kind of hypnotic way about her and I was totally entranced. As we left the school she had just linked her arm into mine and I was rejoicing in the bouquet of her cheap bubble gum scented perfume and her soft embrace when I recognised the gang coming up behind me from the sound of their segs on the concrete.

With a screamed apology I ran. I’m not sure if I’d still be here if it wasn’t for the heroic Lady in the coffee shop (that sold single cigarettes). On this occasion some workmen had generously left spades and a pickaxes in their recently dug utility trench for the gang to chase me with.

My abiding memory is that the guy who picked up the first pickaxe had a red tipped and heavily jelled up Mohican. I could see every tip of his spiky jelled peaks glistening menacingly in the sun light as he ran.

We were all punks at that time and I would have been wearing at least 14 or 18 hole DMs – these DMs would not have aided a fleet footed get away. Yet, I never ran so fast in my life.

It looked like they were certain to catch me but the coffee shop lady waved me across a road and hid me through the back of her shop as a couple of double decker buses mercifully obscured my escape route from the gang’s view – my whole body was still shaking when she passed me her already lit cigarette to ‘calm’ me down.

After that episode, the lady from the coffee shop complained to the school and I was allowed to leave early each day and she let me wait with a cup of coffee in the back of her shop until the gang had given up looking for me.

The knowledge I developed when at high school age of how to work through violent situations came in very handy when I was a bouncer in the north of Ireland.

I went to Ireland to study for my first degree in Sociology and Social Anthropology, we even got a grant from the Scottish Education Department to do that in those days but I still found the need to work to make ends meet throughout my studies.

I am very proud of the fact that I never lifted my fists to anyone, at any-time, when bouncing. My job was concerned with managing situations, not harming our customers – myself and my colleagues regularly received abuse (including death threats) from the people who frequented the bars we worked in but we were very adept at talking down a situation.

It should be noted that my calmness when working as a bouncer did not always transfer into social or sporting situations, especially when I felt my friends were in danger. There are people out there who I encountered in early adulthood who greatly benefited from my ability to fearlessly protect them in various situations e.g. when they were attacked at a party, jumped when leaving a pub or assaulted during a rugby match – and I was also saved a few times by them.

In the main, those moments involved calculated aggression, self-defence and I would tell myself that no one encountered any long term injury, they had it coming anyway and they had started it, etc. All these statements did was amount to the well-worn excuses of a violent man. A violent man that lived up that big river that is called denial.

That’s the thing about violence – men always try to find a way of justifying it as being acceptable, as self-defence or as necessary (worst case of this is Tony Blair’s fake Iraq dossier). I wasn’t helped in my attitudes by watching too many Clint Eastwood movies that always found a way of justifying violence as self-defence.

At the time I was completely sickened by my own behaviour – I had seen my father be violent to my mother and vowed never to be like him – but here I was

On returning to Edinburgh in my very early twenties I was involved in a passionate relationship with a hard working woman who taught me a lot about aspiration, life, literature, film, opinions and travel.

I grew as a person because of her, but, she also taught me some painful lessons that I didn’t want to learn about the dark side of relationships such as broken trust, jealousy and dishonesty.

We both had unresolved issues in our life that we took out on each other. She had an unerring ability for seeking out trouble and I had a huge chip on my shoulder fuelled by a class-based insecurity – that was equally problematic.

The relationship was mainly full of positive fast moving energy but one alcohol fuelled Hogmanay it ended in acrimony with my beloved on top of me trying to claw out my eyes and me shouting my head off (Yes, that nice boy from primary school could now be annoying enough to bring out that type of reaction in a woman who apparently loved him).

I felt the need to throw her off to protect myself, there wasn’t much to her and I thought I had badly injured her – luckily she was ok. As we embarrassingly licked our wounds, we both knew our behaviour had been totally unacceptable.

At the time I was completely sickened by my own behaviour – I had seen my father be violent to my mother and vowed never to be like him – but here I was. Yet, later I disassociated myself from my violence and did the very male thing of blaming ‘the woman’, ‘she attacked me’ was what I told myself – half heartedly trying to believing my own excuse.

It took a few more years for my brain to entertain another way of being. Until then I kept getting myself into stupid situations that were immature where I let myself down: For example, I ripped the shirt of a team mate in a pub who was questioning my fitness, poured a pint of beer over a club captains head when he told me I was dropped from the team and shoved a guy off a bar stool who had embarrassed a very sensitive friend of mine who was had finally sucked up the courage to ask out a girl he had had a crush on for a long time.

Limited violence compared to the earlier examples, but not the actions of a happy, mature and centred person. These were the actions of a damaged person, who acted as judge, jury and executioner and who blamed other people for his own shortcomings. Eventually, I was helped by a very close female friend to see that I had a choice in how I reacted on that night with my girl-friend and in other situations.

In the end he who lives by the sword – dies by the sword and I am ashamed of the situations I got into as a young man and I use them now when working with young men as case examples of situations to avoid.

This brought the realisation that I had always had a choice how I reacted e.g. when the conflict had been with other young men. I had failed myself because I regularly made the choice to fulfil a male stereotype – a stereotype that I claimed I didn’t want to be.

In the end he who lives by the sword – dies by the sword and I am ashamed of the situations I got into as a young man and I use them now when working with young men as case examples of situations to avoid.

Over time, I realised that my inability to avoid these situations came from a much deeper place and when working on research about violence and childhood I could see connections between my own childhood and subsequent behaviour.

For example, my parents left school at 15, were working class and came from a generation where children were beaten for their misdemeanours. So they exercised an uneducated, ‘spare the rod, spoil the child’ type of parenting.

My dad was a bully. In turn, I hated feeling week or bullied so if anyone stepped over my own imaginary line – I would react hard and fast. I learnt to react hard and fast from my mother who was quick, when we misbehaved, to beat us with any implement within her reach.

That’s why I have always advocated a complete ban on smacking of children. I know from personal experience what it teaches children – that hitting people is ok. It is not ok to strike another human being and we shouldn’t do it.

People, who know my mother would not believe she could have hit us, she has supported so many people over the years with incredible depths of kindness, but, she had a difficult marriage – you can do things that aren’t good for children when your marriage isn’t working – and the wider culture of the time permits it.

Eventually, something had to change in my life and, luckily for me, my wife came along and assertively showed me another way. It was a bit like the Proclaimers song, I met you:  ‘Thought that I was whole instead of being half of something… … Thought the book was written… … Thought my faith was misplaced… … And then one night I went to Morningside and you were waiting. I met you, I met you…’.

My wife helped me see another way, let me tap into the nice person who was always there and I am extremely glad my children have grown up in a zero tolerance household and that, in my work, I have had the opportunity to contribute to projects that support families and children who have difficult lives (including, on occasion, Zero Tolerance projects).

I am extremely glad my children live a life that hasn’t involved them having to lift their hands to defend themselves.   But I don’t want to make out everything is rosy in our world. I haven’t become any kind of saint and our kids would tell you stories about what a grumpy old man I can be when I am tired, over worked, hungry or have a hang-over (interesting how alcohol is often at the route of bad behaviour, illness and mental ill-health).

At a very young age our son, who is the youngest of his siblings, would quickly notice when I was, ‘about to go off on one’. He could read me better than I could read myself. So, when I was about to get shouty, he would quickly admonish me and say, ‘Come to yir senses man!’

For the most part any family conflict we endure involves humorously or sensitively pointing out to each other that we have fallen below our high standards and are acting in ways that aren’t appropriate.

Collectively, as a family, we are fairly good at owning up to our own limitations, agreeing that no one is perfect and apologising when we get out of line – although it is interesting that as our children have become teenagers we all find it harder to be reasonable, there has been a lot more shouting than previously and it takes a bit longer for us set aside our differences.

Concepts of children’s rights have helped me to be a good father, my own violent childhood was based on a premise that children should be, ‘seen and not heard’. Hence and in contrast, we have been keen to ensure that as parents we followed a different path and we have always sought to be open to the choices, thoughts and voices of our children.

At a very young age our son, who is the youngest of his siblings, would quickly notice when I was, ‘about to go off on one’. He could read me better than I could read myself. So, when I was about to get shouty, he would quickly admonish me and say, ‘Come to yir senses man!’

The first time he said this it immediately calmed the situation because we all fell about laughing – we all knew that he drew is power to admonish me from the fact that adults and children were treated equally in our household.  We all knew that this was a great example of how a children’s rights approach enables children to speak out when adults miss-behave. We all knew I had to listen to him and improve my behaviour.

Life has a way of turning things around.  My son recently went through a very serious operation and has had a long-term process of rehabilitation. We have all had very low moments.  It has been a very stressful, jolting and emotional time.  And, we have had moments when we have said things to each other that we now regret.

Things have changed and our beautifully calm son is now vying for the title of the most unreasonable person in the house and it has become his turn to be on the receiving end of the, ‘com ti yir senses man’ phrase.

He is around the same age as I was when I had to spend a lot of time checking over my shoulder for trouble. He is being tested to his limit, just like I was, but he is being tested in a different way.

It will be his choice how he responds and grows through this experience and we are trying not to judge him at his lowest – it is understandable that he is not himself at the moment. He is very resilient and the likelihood is that in the long run he will be ok because he lives in a family where he has always been loved, cherished and valued.

As his adult identity forms, he has lots of very sensible male and female role models and also has a very supportive peer group to draw from. So, our hope is that he will be able to hold on to his reputation for being a nice guy.

Some sociologists talk about a crisis of masculinity – that feminism has stripped men of power, that the media puts stress on men, that men feel a pressure more than ever to have strong masculine bodies, that men are scared to talk about emotions, and that powerful women are stopping men from fulfilling their need to provide financial stability for their families.

I put these ideas concerning the crisis of masculinity to my son, he found them ridiculous. Neither of us buy this rigid notion of masculinity. Most men I know, even the violent ones, have complex and multifaceted identities.

I put these ideas concerning the crisis of masculinity to my son, he found them ridiculous. Neither of us buy this rigid notion of masculinity. Most men I know, even the violent ones, have complex and multifaceted identities.

The complexity of masculinity and male violence came to me at a very striking moment in the north of Ireland in my 20s when I was speaking to a heavily tattooed man who was aged almost 40. For a great deal of his life he had been involved in the troubles and he was explaining, with tears in his eyes, why.

He told a very emotional story which included amongst other things his father dying at a young age, his single-mother being taunted by unionist thugs, his neighbours spitting on him every-day in the street and his friends being burnt out of their houses.

Whilst I wouldn’t condone his involvement in the troubles, I could understand the isolating experiences that fuelled his burning need to do something about the way he and his loved ones had been treated.

He himself spoke of regret that he had not chosen a less destructive avenue by which to challenge his experiences – my conclusion was that not everyone has the depth of character or opportunity to face adversity with non-violence like Martin Luther King, Aung San Suu Kyi, or Mahatma Gandhi

With out condoning his choices, in another place or time this guy might have been a different person.

So what am I getting at here. We need to have the strength of these rare pacifists if we are to overcome the fact that – violence begets violence. Someone has to have the common sense to step off the merry-go-round or the escalator and stop the conflict.

There is never any excuse for male violence towards women – we need to ensure young men get this message from other men (e.g. their fathers and brothers) and from women (e.g. their sisters and mothers).

There is never any excuse for male violence towards women – we need to ensure young men get this message from other men (e.g. their fathers and brothers) and from women (e.g. their sisters and mothers).

There is never an excuse for hitting children – whether it is the mother or father who is doing it, we need to get this message across – read this article by Pricilla Alderson and Ben Phillips if you have any doubts.

In the end, violence brings a cold, hard and lonely feeling – not power. I have been lucky enough in my life to also find out that love wins – not violence.