Gangs

Also by Tony Thompson

For Harriet

 

 

In the ten years since the publication of
Gangland Britain
the nature of organised crime has changed almost beyond recognition. It used to be the case that both the criminals and the commodities they dealt with could be neatly isolated, most often along ethnic lines: one gang dealt crack, another smuggled cocaine, another heroin and so on. This is no longer the case.

Though the individual ethnic gangs are still there, the lines between have become increasingly blurred. The members of a gang that falls under the umbrella of ‘Yardies’ are just as likely to have been born in the UK and will be as active in fields like fraud, prostitution and heroin as they are in crack cocaine.

The very nature of criminal activities has changed too. A decade ago crimes like people-smuggling, identity theft and even money-laundering were in their infancy in the UK and virtually unknown to a wider public. They are now staple gang activities. Before 1999 there had never been a case of kidnap in the Greater Manchester area. Then, in a single weekend, the police force there found itself dealing with three all at once. Kidnap is now one of Britain’s fastest-growing crimes and the trend looks set to continue.

With this and other trends in mind, the philosophy behind the writing of
Gangs
has been a simple one: despite the best intentions of police and law-enforcement agencies in Britain and around the world, the only people who truly know exactly what is going on in the world of crime are the criminals themselves.

To this end in the course of writing this book I have socialised with robbers, thugs, killers and thieves the length and breadth of the country, propositioned prostitutes of multiple nationalities, bought guns, been threatened with knives and sampled two of the most dangerous drugs known to man.

Many of those who assisted me on my journey are too shy to be mentioned by name; others made it clear that if I indicated in any way I had ever spoken to them I would not live long enough to regret it. A few agreed to speak only after I handed over my full address and that of my parents so that they might more easily seek retribution should I ever betray them.

There have been some memorable encounters: the fearsome gangland hitman who asked me not to leave the bar where I had interviewed him until I had written up my notes and read out my piece to him. When I told him that simply would not be possible he explained that if I didn’t he’d break my legs. Suitably inspired, I spent ten minutes transcribing my notes, then gave a fifteen-minute presentation of the man’s life and times, thick with puff and praise.

‘That was lovely,’ he said. ‘Just wait there one minute.’ He left the room and returned with a group of burly friends. ‘Now,’ he said, taking a seat, ‘read it again so this lot can hear it.’ It took more than three hours of multiple readings before he finally let me go.

Then there was the time when I naively agreed to meet a notorious villain at his home so that he could ‘put me straight’ on some facts he felt I had got wrong in a magazine article. ‘Ron’ and his minder Chris – a man so tall that he had to stoop to avoid his head bashing on the ceiling of Ron’s south London home – installed me in the back of a large silver Mercedes and set off at speed.

For more than ten minutes neither man said a word to me or one another and I grew increasingly uncomfortable. Then finally Chris turned to Ron. ‘What do you want to do with him?’ he grunted.

Ron briefly glanced at me in the rear-view mirror then turned to Chris. ‘Let’s take him down the docks.’

It’s a cliché, I know, but my life really did flash before my eyes. How could I have been so stupid and put myself into such a sticky situation? I had a chilling vision of my lifeless body floating down the Thames.

My mind was racing but so was the Merc. I wondered how badly hurt I would be if I threw myself from the car at speed, what the chances of being hit by the vehicle behind were. The panic started rising. I could feel my chest tightening, my throat getting dry, my heart pounding against the walls of my chest. This is it, I thought. I’m going to die.

All this and more was running through my mind as the car suddenly turned left and pulled into a small car park. One minute I was in fear of my life, the next I was laughing hysterically. They had taken me to the docks all right, their local pub – the Dockers Arms.

But not all my encounters ended well. In particular there was the time I travelled to Cambridge to meet a retired career criminal by the name of Jeremy Earls, who insisted he had information about widespread corruption and drug-dealing by members of Lincolnshire’s police force.

For more than two hours I sat in his car and listened patiently to Earls’s increasingly paranoid and gun-obsessed explanation of what he believed was going on. When he had finished he insisted I take away reams of statements, papers and tape-recordings that he said would support his claims. More than anything, Earls was convinced that his life was in danger, that he would be murdered and that his killers would attempt to make his death look like an accident or that he had committed suicide.

A few days later his name caught my eye as I flicked through some local news bulletins. Earls was dead. Soon after our meeting he had brutally murdered two young brothers, then shot himself in the head, all with an Uzi submachine-gun that he kept under the passenger seat of his car at all times. The same seat in which I had sat during our initial meeting.

A slightly surreal inquest later concluded that Earls was severely mentally ill and had committed suicide after deliberately laying a false trail to make it appear he had been murdered.

Despite such experiences, the lasting impression I have come away with is just how ordinary most of those involved in the world of organised crime truly are. Sure, there are a fair few psychopaths out there but even the people who are known to be as violent and ruthless as they come generally have families, a sense of humour and go through the same stresses and strains as the rest of us. Just because they manage to put it to one side when they are ‘working’ doesn’t mean it isn’t there.

‘It’s like that bit in
Pulp Fiction,
’ one gang member told me, ‘when the two hitmen are on their way to a job and they’re talking about different burger chains around the world. Then before they go into the house one says to the other: “Let’s get into character.” It’s just like that. When it’s time to go to work, you go into a different mindset.’

It is this same mindset that
Gangs
seeks to explain.

Tony Thompson London 2004

 

Jimmy Tippett Jnr throws open the door to his Humberside home and demands to know who the hell I am and what the fuck I want.

The stocky thirty-two-year-old, once jailed for beating a man senseless with a baseball bat and who famously fought as an unlicensed boxer under the sponsorship of Reggie Kray, is in no mood for visitors and cannot contain his anger at my arrival.

I stutter and stumble over my words as I try to explain the reason for my visit – to find out whether he’s willing to talk about his alleged friendship with a long-dead drugs baron – but I manage only a few garbled phrases before a mobile phone bursts into life and Tippett rushes off to answer it.

The door is open so I step forward gingerly into the hallway as Tippett takes the call in his kitchen. I can make out a few snippets of conversation and soon realise that he’s talking about the death of George Francis, a notorious south London gangster gunned down in an apparent contract killing just a few days earlier.

It was the second time that Francis, strongly suspected of helping dispose of gold bullion from the £26 million Brinks Mat robbery, had been the target of an assassination attempt. In May 1985, just two years after the Brinks Mat job, a hooded man ran into his Kent pub, singled him out and fired a volley of shots, one of which hit him in the shoulder.

Eighteen years later nothing was left to chance. As sixty-three-year-old Francis arrived at the office of his Bermondsey courier company, his killer emerged from hiding and pumped four bullets into his head and chest at point-blank range.

His death echoed that of another south London ‘face’, Brian Perry, also sixty-three and linked to the Brinks Mat raid, who had been shot dead in almost identical circumstances seventeen months earlier as he, too, arrived for work. Perry had died just a few hundred yards from where Francis had been shot but nobody had been convicted for the murder and there was an immediate suspicion that the same hitman was responsible for both deaths.

Tippett finishes his call and returns to the hallway, surprised to find me still waiting there. He motions towards the door and explains that I’ll have to leave as he has some urgent business to attend to.

‘Has something happened with the Francis murder?’ I ask.

Tippett eyes me suspiciously. ‘What do you know about it?’