I began this book with a warning – a portent of what will become of British society if we, and the Government, or any successive government, do not wake up to the effects of the social disease, the pandemic which is spreading globally, known as gang culture and ‘organised crime’. And, as things stand today, there is no antidote or known cure.
The Introduction to this book illuminates the ever-increasing anti-social behaviour of some 200,000 youngsters/yobs/thugs who commit street crime. Teenagers, and many kids as young as nine or ten, are prepared to resort to violence on a whim, and see its use as a perfectly viable means of getting what they want. These are children and young adults with little to no parental controls, and they are the budding serious villains of tomorrow, many of whom will spend much of their lives going from youth offender institutions to Borstals, before graduating to ‘proper’ incarceration. They will then be released back into society as fast as is expedient to do so because of prison overcrowding and a determined lack of will by society to do much about it.
We cannot say that the writing has not been on the wall. Gangs have always been a fairly consistent feature of the urban landscape of Britain. In the seventeenth century, British gangs routinely vandalised urban areas, were territorial, and were involved in violent conflict with other gangs. From time immemorial, wherever there have been dense populations, there have always been groups of ill-doers who prey on the law-abiding and innocent.
The obvious fact that cannot be ignored is that most home-grown British gangsters have come from rundown inner-city conurbations, and most were in trouble shortly after they started school.
The Gunn brothers have been used as an example of organised crime flourishing within our council estates. Of course, the Bestwood Estate is merely an example because the problem exists on most large estates – it always has done and it always will. And at a time when British law enforcement is potentially about to be drastically reduced in manpower, to be replaced by an amateur task force of Neighbourhood Watch do-gooders, with no powers of arrest, where will this take us? Backwards, naturally. Reporting a bunch of out-of-control yobbos to the police is one thing, but the issue the present Home Secretary seems to have missed is that there will not be enough underpaid ‘real’ police around to attend such incidents – a bit like today really, yet far worse.
The book also tries to dispel the notion that many of our home-grown gangsters have a romantic edge to their lives and criminal activities. I have used the example of Robin Hood and compared how the Gunn brothers stacked up against the man in green tights – they were, after all, compared to the legendary hero of Sherwood Forest by some of the residents of the Bestwood Estate themselves.
Kenneth Noye, a short young man, bullied at school, certainly grew up to become a master criminal. In many circles, he is admired for that. Cunning as a fox and just as secretive, his big mistakes were not only to have killed a brave and defenceless police officer, but also an innocent young man, whom he stabbed to death in a road-rage incident – both crimes shocked a nation. Had he not committed manslaughter, for that’s what it boiled down to with the killing of DC John Fordham, and had he not committed murder most foul, for that’s what it boiled down to with Stephen Cameron, he might still be enjoying the fruits of his crimes today.
During the writing of this book, I spoke to several police officers who remembered the night when John Fordham died. They all told me that every British policeman was sickened to their stomachs and all of them couldn’t wait to get their hands on the vile cop-killer. And, of course, both killings brought about the utter disgust of the public and media at large. From then on, Kenny Noye’s fate was sealed – he would have to spend the rest of his life behind bars.
And so to the Krays. Their names still live on as criminal icons of years gone by. Two tough lads who came from deprived nothingness to rule London’s underworld for many years, but, in today’s terms, were they really so hot? The area for which they deserve a modicum of respect is how they dragged themselves out of poverty and created a world in which they mixed on an equal footing with the rich and famous. Their downfall was Ronnie, a psychopathic, delusional ‘nutter’ who started to think that he equalled any Italian mafia godfather. His brother, Reggie, certainly had his business wits about him but, influenced by his devotion to Ronnie, he allowed murders to be committed and their downfall was soon to follow. Had the Krays not killed, they might have gone on to stay ‘legit’, and prospered. As we have seen, that was not to be.
Of course, today we should regard the Krays in almost prehistoric terms, extinct dinosaurs of a long-gone criminal era which could never thrive in modern gang-driven, crime-ridden Britain today.
By comparison, I have compared the Richardsons with the Krays. A couple of more mentally stable thugs, or ‘Jack-the-lads’, who vied for control of London’s underworld. As arch enemies of Ron and Reg, their only real claim to fame was the ‘Torture Trial’, proving merely that Charlie Richardson was a sadist and not much more.
Things heat up for us when we travel north to Scotland; Glasgow became the stamping ground of some of the best-organised and most brutal gangsters ever to live on British soil. It was the home of the Ice Cream Wars and Thomas ‘Tam’ McGraw, a millionaire mobster-turned-police informer, who stayed in business because the police were bought and sold. They were tough, unforgiving, old-school types, these gangster Scots and, if the truth were known, they were always more than a match for the Krays.
The Adams family also caught our attention, and particularly their leader, Terry, who was at the top of his profession and controlled his empire with such ruthless efficiency that he could have run a major multinational company. Yet Terry, who made Tony Soprano look like a wuss, was the godfather of the nearest underworld network Britain had to the Mafia. He was the Capone of his time and, like Alphonse Capone, it was the taxman who finally nailed him.
One has to give Terry respect. He was ever the dapper gent in his velvet-collared overcoats. He lived in a £2 million house in north London crammed with stolen antiques, a far cry from his upbringing on the rough Barnsbury council estate in Islington. His family and close associates were reputably worth about £200 million, and they were feared far more than the Krays ever were.
The Wembley Mob was a gang at large throughout the ‘Swinging Sixties’, which was an era when gang-driven armed robberies and daylight smash-and-grab raids proliferated. By the summer of 1972, the Metropolitan Police were at their wits’ end, but seemed powerless to stem the tide of violence and mayhem. The Wembley Mob simply went about their business – ruthlessly, efficiently and successfully.
The gang’s downfall was a ‘grass’, the most infamous supergrass in British criminal history – Bertie Smalls.
Grasses, snitches, songbirds and bent coppers abound as well. But there were some decent, determined, hard-nosed detectives, too, determined to redress the balance despite limited resources, and this is why I have introduced Bert Wickstead to offer a wider perspective on gang culture. Known as ‘The Gangbuster’, his name will live on with others, such as ‘Slipper of the Yard’, both dedicated policemen whose names brought nightmares to scores of the country’s gangsters for decades.
Moving closer to the present day, the Securitas Crew could not be ignored, nor the success of their brilliantly executed heist. It was perfect, having been signed, sealed and delivered with military precision. If only the after-crime laundering of the cash had been planned with as much ingenuity.
How do you make £53 million in untraceable currency disappear? Unfortunately for the gang, the brilliance of the raid was only matched by the incompetence of the aftermath. Most of the gang were caught within a heartbeat, in criminal investigation terms, with one female accomplice ambling into a bank dressed as a Salvation Army nurse and trying to deposit thousands of pounds with the distinctive Securitas logo still wrapped around the notes. You couldn’t make it up.
Equally as incompetent were the Great Train Robbers. Although, again, it has to
be acknowledged that they did pull off one of the most remarkable heists in world history, and we have to give them a great deal of credit for that. Having accomplished the near impossible, one might have thought that dividing up the cash between them would have been a simple task, one that should have been completed easily within a day.
But what did our robbers do? They rented a farmhouse at a location that was bound to draw attention from the nosy locals with nothing better to do. They came and went as if they owned the place, just a 20-minute drive from where the world’s largest robbery had taken place. They left their fingerprints all over the place, yet were very surprised when they were arrested.
In commenting on their lengthy prison terms, the word ‘disgraceful’ often comes to mind. Apart from whacking the train driver over the head – and Jack Mills had resisted, after all – the robbery was non-violent, so perhaps they should have been rewarded for their ingenuity and their reluctance to resort to more direct, violent means.
Perhaps one of the most unnerving aspects of Gangland UK is the chapter on street gangs. It brings into stark reality the problems facing decent society today. And it is not just the indigenous, white population who are the perpetrators of gang-related crime – far from it. We have brought upon ourselves, through sublime and convenient sweep-it-under-the carpet ignorance, a social disease that will never go away. We have, in truth, imported gangsterism from all corners of the globe – and particularly Asia and an impoverished Eastern Europe. It is the same old, sad story – lack of effective border controls, insufficient policing… although the authorities are probably doing all they can to stem the tide. It’s just that they’re losing the battle.
For decades, both of the major British political parties have formed governments on their phoney ‘get tough on crime’ law enforcement tickets. There have been promises after promises after promises… ad infinitum. Yet, today, the problem is far worse than it has ever been, and Government guidelines issued to the judiciary are advising fewer custodial sentences for the young hooligans. Their parents have lost all control, oblivious to – or tacitly allowing – their offspring to run amok with knives and baseball bats, terrifying decent people on their local streets.
With the CPS willing only to take on prosecutions that will result in cast-iron convictions, the police and the general public are hopping mad, and they have every right to be. But will the decent citizen take back the streets? Of course not. Merely raising a hand against one of these yobs brings down the wrath of the law, so why bother?
Vast swathes of our inner-city areas are run by street gangs. No-go areas are policed by hoodies and hammer-wielding thugs who strive to mark out their territories like hyenas fighting over scraps of meat and bragging rights. One might say that, as long as they only maim and kill their own, then so be it; however, as this book highlights, they not only do that, but they maim and kill innocent people as well.
I finished this book with the Triads. Seemingly, they keep very much to themselves and Chinese-related street crime is relatively rare.
There are costs to gangland crime in the UK, and they are enormous costs, too, and not just in financial terms – misery, terror, unsafe streets and businesses, injuries, deaths… Who bears those costs for Gangland UK?
You!
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First published in hardback in 2008
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