[3] In the early part of the 20th century, the cities of Leeds, Bristol, Bradford, and more prominently Keighley, and Nottingham all commanded headlines pertaining to street gangs and suffered their share of high-profile firearms murders.
[21] The idea of “hooliganism” was used to describe these type of crimes committed by working-class youth, and drew great concern from the press and middle class during this time.
An investigation in 2014 found that some gangs in Belfast were particularly hostile towards non-white residents of the city, with numerous cases of racially motivated violence, intimidation and extortion having been reported.
Although the vice industry was previously mostly on the street, in recent years it has moved indoors to residential homes and hotels and formed closer links to organised crime networks.
Trafficking gangs in Belfast, as in the rest of Northern Ireland, tend to be of Chinese or Eastern European origin, utilising local people as facilitators in their network.
[27] In 2014, three nights of violence in East Belfast led to the Police Federation for Northern Ireland stating: "The gang culture has to be broken up so that people can go about their business without fear of being struck by a missile or intimidated.
Notable members included David Taylor (imprisoned for carrying a gun at 13 years old), "baby-faced" Harry Fowles, Ernest Haynes and Stephen McNickle.
[citation needed] After a fall-out between members of the Johnson Crew, the Burger Bar Boys formed, taking their name from a Soho Road fast-food joint.
This began a violent feud between the Johnsons and the Burger Bar Boys, which was resolved in a truce instigated by Matthias "Shabba" Thompson in 2010, with assistance from documentary maker Penny Woolcock.
[34] However, 20 shootings in mid 2015 onwards were linked to the feud between the Burger Bar Boys and the Johnson Crew, suggesting any truce is no longer active and the gang rivalry has been renewed.
The gang culture prevalent in the older, central areas of the city such as the Gorbals[44] which became overcrowded and substandard in living conditions, did not disappear when these areas were cleared and redeveloped following World War II with many of the inhabitants rehoused either in clusters of tower blocks or in large peripheral overspill estates like Easterhouse;[45][46][47][48] instead, as the job opportunities became limited in the post-industrial age, the structural flaws, planning mistakes and related social issues became apparent in the schemes as the years passed, and heroin addiction spread throughout the city,[41] new gangs (in addition to some which remained in the original areas) formed in the modern environments and remained prominent for decades, particularly in Glasgow's many areas of deprivation and poor health where generations of young people suffered in childhood[49] and found themselves with little to occupy their lives as teenagers other than a cycle of thrilling but pointless collective recreational violence (usually fuelled by alcohol) against similar groups from neighbouring districts.
[56] Some of these young men moved into other criminal enterprises, including the operation of lucrative van routes in the city's East End "schemes" during the 1980s trading in stolen property and drugs, which were controlled by gangsters such as Tam McGraw, with the resulting "ice cream" turf war eventually culminating in the deaths of a family.
[61] Along with incidents from other origins including domestic violence and organised crime, the street gangs' behaviour contributed to Glasgow being declared the "murder capital of Europe" in the mid-2000s.
Several campaigns were launched by law enforcement and government agencies to discourage the possession of weapons,[71][72] including a 2009 programme of checks on buses heading to the city centre, where the gangs would meet to fight when they left their own territory.
[76] Not all murders were gang-related, but the prevailing culture in the city caused weapons to be carried as a matter of course and, in combination with the abuse of alcohol, serious incidents to result from often trivial disputes.
[83][59] In the decade following the publication of the Evening Times reports, the number of young people involved in "young teams" in Glasgow and the number of serious violent incidents recorded as a result of their activities reduced substantially;[84][85] [86][41][87] in 2016, contributors to an article in the same newspaper suggested the links to gang identity were deeply embedded in local communities and unlikely to entirely disappear for many years,[48][88] but that measures to combat the problems such as the police-led Violence Reduction Unit[89][60] (which engaged with existing gang members, encouraging them to examine the negative consequences of their behaviour,[53] to seek positive connections with their "enemies" such as Friday evening football games and outdoor pursuits,[55][90][91] and to provide opportunities for training and employment as an alternative to the lifestyle they had known) had been effective to a noticeable extent.
[92][93][84][88][87][46] Other external factors such as an increased availability of advanced internet-enabled gaming technology and the widespread use of social media among youngsters[66] – which were acknowledged as having their own associated problems such as social isolation and online bullying, as well as allowing the "young teams" a platform to boast of their exploits and taunt rivals[94][59][44][95] – also contributed to a general reduction in the number of local teenagers regularly out roaming the streets bored and seeking companionship or confrontation, with those who did openly express an affiliation to a violent gang more likely to face a negative reaction from the majority of their peers than in the past.
[41] In the wake of a rise in knife crime in England and Wales, particularly in London, in the 2010s, it was reported that those areas were studying the approaches taken by Scotland in tackling the issue.
[96][65] However, it was recognised by the VRU that only around half of all violent incidents which occurred were reported to the police (as compared with figures from hospital admissions and other research),[97] while violence related to organised crime in parts of the city (many of those involved having "graduated" from the local street gangs) remained a significant issue.
[98][99][100][101] A 2020 novel by Graeme Armstrong, The Young Team, narrated by a gang member in the local dialect, focuses on the "ned culture" of the region in the early 21st century (albeit set in Airdrie, North Lanarkshire a few miles east of Glasgow rather than in the city itself).
[112] It has also been suggested that distribution networks for illicit drugs within Ireland and the UK, and even allegedly some Mediterranean holiday resorts, are today controlled by various Liverpool gangs.
[115] Official Home Office statistics revealed a total of 3,387 offences involving firearms had occurred in the Merseyside region during a four-year period between 1997 and 2001.
[citation needed] In August 2007 the ongoing war between two rival gangs caused nationwide outrage, when innocent 11-year-old Rhys Jones was shot in the neck and died in his mother's arms in the car park of the Fir Tree pub in Croxteth Liverpool.
[117] On 16 December 2008, Sean Mercer was convicted of the murder and ordered to serve a minimum tariff of 22 years by trial judge Mr Justice Irwin.
[127] The report, using a methodology developed by American gang experts and practitioners, estimated that 6% of young people aged 10–19 were classified as belonging to a delinquent youth group, although based on the most stringent criteria this was 4%.
On the top were the gang's leaders, Colin Joyce and Lee Amos, and below them were members controlling the supply and distribution of drugs to the street dealers at the bottom.
Pakistani gangs have been recorded to be associated with the importation and distribution of heroin and can be found in Luton, Bradford, Birmingham, Manchester, Huddersfield, Slough, Bedford, and Middlesbrough.
Historically, societal fears of gangs have centered around frameworks which argue that effects like increased mass production, consumption, democracy, and communication lead to the rise of organised crime groups.
[171] Two historians have done extensive research in this field and represent two different views of the underlying causes of the rise in gang culture between the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
[176] Professor Simon Hallsworth argues that where they exist, gangs in the UK are "far more fluid, volatile and amorphous than the myth of the organised group with a corporate structure".