The street gangs are in the process of forging an alliance with existing Mafia-style organised crime networks to concentrate on the business of making money

They have been labelled urban terrorists and for years have fought one another in a series of brutal killings that have shocked the nation, and left dozens dead and wounded.

But now, in a move led by Birmingham mobsters like the Burger Bar Boys, some of the UK’s most feared street gangs are making peace with one another to form a national ‘supergang’.

Many of the street gangs operating in the UK are in the process of forging an alliance with existing Mafia-style organised crime networks to concentrate on the business of making money.

Birmingham, Manchester and London are thought to be involved.

The sinister new network is a worrying trend as police forces across the country warn that parts of Britain are on the brink of another vicious drugs war as street gangs square up for control of the lucrative heroin and cocaine trade.

According to gangland and law enforcement sources, efforts by UK gangsters to form a national supergang follow a pattern already established in the US and in Dutch capital Amsterdam.

A former gang member, who did not want to be named but now runs a “gang exit” group in Birmingham, said: “It was always going to happen because it makes sound economic sense.


Vicious: Birmingham's Burger Bar Boys, who are said to be making peace with other gangs
“The move is being driven by some of the older heads of the Burger Bar and Johnson Crew in Birmingham who have led what is described as the thug life but have realised its futility.

“They have seen their close friends being gunned down over petty arguments or being jailed for a long time and having nothing to show for it.

“The stabbings and shootings only draw police attention. On top of that, gang members are always looking over their shoulders in fear of retaliation from rival gangs.

“What they all really want to do now is make money and it makes much more sense for them to work together.”

Midland gangsters have traditionally made loose affiliations across the country, especially in major urban centres such as Manchester and London.

One gangland source said: “The Johnnies have always had a link with Moss Side gangs in Manchester, while the Burgers are close to some London gangs like the PDC and Tottenham Man Dem crew.

“These alliances were based more on familial links and watching each others’ backs when they are in each others’ areas – but now they are actively trying to do business together.”

Birmingham and the Black Country has traditionally been seen as a national drugs hub because of its central location and motorway links, the Birmingham Mail reported.


Dangerous: Selection of weapons that were produced by members of the Burger Bar Boys
The source added: “A lot of drugs and firearms find their way to the Midlands first, so the gangs here are trying to make their influence in this region count even more so that they can form alliances with gangs across the country.”

Edward Boyd, deputy policy director at the Centre for Social Justice, said: “It’s a worrying trend.

“It could lead to an escalation in violence because the merging gangs will inevitably clash with existing organised crime networks that already operate on a national and international scale.

“Or it may be that the two groups decide to work closer together, with the street gangs being used to do most of the legwork and take most of the risk out on the streets.

“The gangs would then just be part of a jigsaw. In the end, it’s all about creating a sustainable power base and street gangs can’t get into that position if they are fractured and dealing with internecine battles all the time.”

Kirk Dawes, a former West Midlands police officer who now mediates between warring gangs, added: “What’s also happening now is that ethnicity is much less of a divisive factor.

“It used to be that the gangs worked within their own communities but increasingly that is no longer the case.

“These people will have met one another in prison, or through activities connected with the smuggling and drug business.

“They will have looked at the way each is operating, seen their strengths and weaknesses, and decided to find ways of working together.”

These black gangs will never get themselves that organised, too busy selling bags of smack on street corners and listening to gangsta rap!

This will never happen as someone always wants to be 'top boy'

The UK Black British gangs in general are far from as organized as several of the African American gangs in the USA. Feuds like the Burger Bar Boys vs Johnson Crew war in Birmingham or the one between the Peckham Boys and the Ghetto Boys in London were ridiculous. They stabbed each other some pieces of worthless, petty turf. I wouldn't even call the Moss Side gangs in Manchester "organized crime". They did make some money, but as a whole they were far too scruffy and dysfunctional to be considered criminal kingpins.

There are exceptions of course. Back when there still were real original Yardie groups active, the Jamaica-originated groups were far more organized than most of the Britain-based black gangs are. Yardie gangs were indeed known for spontaneous violence, but in general they did have their leaders that could really be considered organized criminals. They more or less managed to have a "mafia"-style network that tried to keep other members in line. And more importantly, they had good connections with their Jamaican homeland which made it possible for them to move large quantities of pure as well as crack cocaine and cannabis. Something most Britain-based black gangs didn't have.

Only a small handful of gangs originated in Britain moved up the latter towards organized crime. The Tottenham Mandem, back when Lambie was the boss, is an example. Lambie was a strong leader compared to other London street gang leaders. He had a real business accumen. He stayed true to his roots in Jamaica which assured his connections to Yardie leaders. His savviness allowed him to have good connections with other North London crime figures such as the Kurds (the Baybasin family to be more precise) and the White British firms such as the Adams. The Tottenham Mandem became a mess ever since Lambie was put away.
The Cheetham Hill Mob is an example from Manchester. Most of the members were from Nigerian origins but instead of operating as a street gang they more operated as a crime firm. A lot of their members have gone legit now, something I don't really see happening with most of the other street gangs.
A current up-and-comer are the Woolwich Boys. The majority of the members of the Woolwich gang are of Somali origins. They really control a sizeable portion of the London drug trade nowadays, even moving large wholesale quantities of cocaine, heroin and other stuff. While most London street gangs are currently too busy fighting each other over bags of crack, the Woolwich gang conducts its business more quietly and more organized. They have far better connections and are currently the only ones to have a far-reaching network with tentacles outside of London.

Gangs in the UK ARE NOT THAT POWERFULL at all, the Irish gangs in Spain run alot of things into the UK now.

Don't think that's the case at all, it's UK gangs that are growing in power in the rep of Ireland just now

British and Irish gangs both have a large presence in Spain. I'm talking about the white criminal organizations, not the black street gangs that generally have no presence at all outside of their neighborhood.

In terms of the amount of groups, the UK has a lot more regional powerbases than Ireland. Almost all of the powerful gangs in Ireland are based in and around Dublin. While the UK has criminal organizations operating from Liverpool, London, Glasgow and too a lesser extent Nottingham and Newcastle.
They all have international connections, but internationally the most entrenched are the Dublin gangs and the ones from Liverpool.

Glasgow has some gangs that work internationally, as you say Liverpool groups are very busy. And it may come as a surprise after what went on a few years ago but Essex has 3 very busy little firms who are becoming very well respected across parts of Europe

I have to say I don't know anything about the Essex firms. But it doesn't really come as a surprise as a shitload of families tracing their roots to London's East End moved to Essex. As the East End demographics have been gradually displaced from majority white and minority black towards majority Bangladeshi and minority black. Crime in the East End in turn became incredibly disorganized except for small pockets. It doesn't surprise me that a lot of the traditional organized crime moved out to Essex.

Nottingham gangs also have some international presence. The Dawes family for instance at their peak were signalled in Spain as well as the Netherlands. One of their associates, Daniel Sowerby, killer a guy in the Netherlands over some missing drugs.

From the comments that's being posted I assume that U.K gangs aren't like the ones here in the U.S? Do anyone have in depth details or reports on any organized activities they commit or large scale drug trafficking ? Speaking of that do they control the retail market at all ? I'm not that well verse in U.K gangs.

You mean the white or the black gangs?

White gangs in the UK are strictly organized crime for the most part. You do have some small cliques of young white street criminals running around, especially in working class neighborhoods in London, Liverpool, Glasgow,... The criminal activities of the white youth gangs seldomly extent beyond vandalism, random violence and some petty crime. In London there are few white youth gangs, while gangs Liverpool and Glasgow are for the most part white. Some of them provide a recruitment pool for the older organized criminals in the city.

In London, Manchester, Birmingham, Bristol,...there are a lot of black gangs. The majority of them are British-born blacks of Jamaican ancestry. In the 90s Jamaica-based Yardie gangs used to operate in the UK. Nowadays almost all of the black gangs are British-born with little connections to Jamaica. Most Black British street gangs are based around postal codes, the small areas where their members come from. Their money-making criminal activities mostly revolve around small street-level sales of heroin and crack cocaine. For the most part they're too busy getting involved in random acts of violence and fights over their postal codes (much like a lot of the white gangs in Liverpool and Glasgow do).
The Tottenham Mandem, an Afro-Caribbean gang from North London, used to be a comparatively serious street gang when they were still more Yardie-based and where pushing relatively large amounts of scag and coke (which they got from the Turks/Kurds and the local whites) to other more street-level black gangs for distribution. But nowadays the last time a TMD member was busted he was jailed for a random and useless act of torture and for a ridiculous childlike size of narcotics.
The only black gang that recently had a relatively large case against them were the Woolwich Boys from South London. Some top members, who were of older age compared to most black street gangs, were busted for a big crack cocaine and heroin trafficking operation. They were also wholesaling outside of London. South London still is home to a small amount of Yardie gangs (often more low-key and organized than their British-born counterparts). The Woolwich Boys are for the most part Somali however. Sometimes it seems like the Somali gangs are more involved in organized crime than the British-bred Afro-Caribbean gangs are.

There are also other ethnic street gangs. London's Chinatown has some Chinese street gangs. There are Turkish and Kurdish gangs. In West London you also have some Indian, Pakistani and Tamil street gangs. Bangladeshi youth gangs in East London. And Albanians also have their young street gangs.
Bangladeshi gangs are often very disorganized and petty. Tamils have some more organized ones, but they're prone to interfighting often resulting in a ridiculously shocking amount of violence (almost surrealistic even). Turkish, Kurdish, Chinese, Indian, Pakistani, Albanian and Tamil street gangs are a lot like the White British ones in the way they provide a recruiting pool for the serious organized criminals in their community.

That's the main difference between the white and the black gangs is that the whites often have "Godfather"-like figures in their community that are used to climb up on the ladder towards organized crime. Something most of the black youth gangs do not have.

Black gangs in Britain are nothing. They run street corners, nothing more.

The black gangs in the UK are extremely violent, I agree on the whole it's street corner type crime and drug dealing but they are very violent

The white gangs in the UK are on the whole more organised and a fair few are involved in international crimes.

The old rackets such protection, long firm fraud, money lending and debt collection etc still go on in many areas. And of course drugs, and a lot of security for clubs and pubs which is very popular for many criminal groups.

Nobody is saying the UK are all high level gangs etc, but there are some very serious groups that are very active.

Yeah and only if they're not stabbing each other over postal codes. And they often even fuck that up as well. There have been a lot of cases where a random innocent black kid was stabbed to death just because some petty criminal mistook him for a member of a rival gang. Ridiculous.

And what gives them away is also the amount of dope they're caught with. The TMD gang member I talked about was jailed for 64g of heroin and 14g of crack. Together it was worth only £7,500. Hardly the Scarface-amount of dope they claim to be pushing.

The UK black gangs are nothing like the African American street gangs in the US. Or even nothing like any type of American street gang for that matter.

The conflicts over postal code reminds me of the crews of New Orleans or DC.

Those guys getting nicked are just street runners, the main guys are holding huge amounts of drugs!

Except for the fact that New Orleans' murder rate makes the one of the UK look like a trip to Orlando's Walt Disney World Resort

@TommyGambino

Nottingham also has a fairly large gangland, isn't it?

Read about the Gunns, the Hardy's, the Dawes family,...and the mysterious "Taxman" (who after some reading and researching I think I know who it is).

The Dawes gang was involved with some criminals from the Netherlands such as Gwenette Martha years ago.

There is not much UK gangs in Ireland full stop, in the last 15 years Irish gangs have went from buying from UK gangs to been some of the European zones biggest and most dangerous crime cartels.

In a report Serious Organised Crime Agency said a number of Irish crimnals are in there list of top 10 criminals in the UK.

All the UK gangs fear the Irish Criminal gangs in Spain, Dublin gangs are some of the European zones most dangerous criminals and liverpool gangs fear the Dublin boys in Spain and UK all day long.

You only have to look at the number of murders in Ireland and Spain involving irish gangs to know who the serious players are. Essex boys!? Baahh, There's an Essex boys style killing in Dublin every other week!

Christ why does every thread on organized crime in Ireland and the UK have to turn into a fight about which country has the biggest criminal dick?

The Dublin gangs are major players currently with a large international network, true, one can't argue on that. But that doesn't mean the UK gangs are pussy's. Quite some UK gangs have and have had wide international links as well. Arguments on who's the biggest and strongest are pointless.

I care SFA about uk and irish gangs. I'm on this forum as I'm interested in lcn,I'm not fighting about who's got the biggest criminal dick as you say.nor did I call uk gangs pussys. But in Spain along with the Russians the Irish gangs have the bigger presence. This is fact . The English `firms` had they're day in spain back in the 70s and 80s.

I am on this forum for my interest in Italian/American families, I have put the odd post about British crime which I thought may be of interest.

There are certain posters that have a big chip on their shoulders about Irish this and Irish that, I doubt anyone cares about Irish this and Irish that..

There's 2 Irish threads on here which I never read, but I have no interest in Irish crime and I have no interest in going on it trying to claim UK crime is bigger or better, again as I have no interest!

99% of those on here are just interested in LCN, great to see other stuff of interest whether it's European, Irish or British crime but let's remove the chip from our shoulders and leave it at that eh!

Well you do not have to debate on this thread if you do not want to its free to go on any thread,

But if you say something in a post you are going to get a reply from someone, if you did read the irish threads you would know that UK gangs are not in Ireland at all.

OP is about street gangs in UK who are not all that and if they was how are irish gangs doing well in the UK was the point i was making in the first place so as you said you like to post on British OC and i am sure people on here will read it.

You are right some UK gangs have international network contacts.

Did just have a quick at the Irish threads and there's lots about Northern Ireland and British gangs, let's leave it at that...