The Arifs are a slightly different breed to the usual Turkish/ Cypriot gangs from what I can tell. It’s not just that the Arifs are based in south London, not north; they also seem to operate in a way more comparable to the white post-Kray firms (Adams’/Brindles) than the unassimilated Turkish gangs of Stoke Newington / Green Lanes, whose protection rackets and neighbourhood omerta really are comparable with New York mafia in 20s/30s. The Arifs major earning will be from major drug smuggling, fraud etc these days. Can’t imagine they’re involved in much armed robbery or street level stuff. BUT their name is worth a huge amount. Street gangs will readily cut them in on deals just to use their name as an intimidation trick. Incidentally, my parents are from the real outskirts of south London and one of the Arifs (no idea who I’m afraid) lives in a big house nearby. Apparently they seem pretty quiet and respectable, not flashy at all. The funny thing is, loads of the descendants from the Richardson gang also live nearby – like 5 mins walk from the Arifs. They are, shall we say, a little less low key….



I’ve only heard of the Hunt firm, but I don’t really know anything about them I’m afraid. Bit too far east for me to know much about. Will look them up though. Regarding the British firms, I really don’t think there’s anything home grown going on in the old east end (Aldgate/Whitechapel/Bethnal Green/Stepney) anymore. Even when the Krays were around, traditional east enders were leaving London for Essex and North West Kent in droves. Nowadays the whole east end is completely controlled by Bangladeshi and Pakistani gangs, with north east London controlled by the Turks. White families are very much the minority.

There’s a lot more homegrown stuff going on in South London as quite a lot of those areas that took in the families that fled the east end in the decades after world war II have been swallowed up by south London’s ever-creeping suburbs. Lewisham, for example, which was once green and leafy, is now a full-blown traffic clogged hell-hole! The Arifs are the probably the major organised crime family in south London, but there are numerous semi-organised criminal groups, often linked to ex-football hooligans. These guys generally operate as a loose freelance collective, centred on one or two unofficial top guys with the unofficial hierarchy built around level of intimidation and charisma, not formalised like Cosa Nostra.

It’s usually little more than mid-level drug dealing (buying from turks/eastern Europeans and selling on to black gangs at a small profit), amateur armed robbery (usually high street jewellers or sports shops), car theft (cut and shunt) and just crappy stuff like selling stolen goods (Google the phrase: ‘fell of the back of a lorry’). Then there’s always the weird metal theft and melting thing. Most of this crime operates within the manual worker community, with goods bought and sold on building sites and in working class pubs. But to be honest there’s far more violence linked to general drunken idiocy and ‘funny looks’ among these guys than there is as a result of their criminal activities.

Finally, a lot of the old gangs in south London, The Richardsons for example, are still operating, but it’s nothing like it would have been in the 60s. Like I say, a few live close to my parents but most of these guys spend their days intimidating people in pubs and acting like extras in Lock, Stock. Most of the younger guys now work as plumbers or carpenters, and although they’ll dabble in crime, their legit money makes up the bulk of their income