James Morton - The Mammoth Book of Gangs

James Morton is the author of the bestselling Gangland series. He had many years experience as a lawyer specializing in criminal work and was also editor-in-chief of New Law Journal. He lives in London.

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First published in the UK by Robinson,

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Copyright James Morton, 2012

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UK ISBN: 978-1-78033-088-4 (paperback)

UK ISBN: 978-1-78033-089-1 (ebook)

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First published in the United States in 2012 by Running Press Book Publishers,

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US ISBN: 978-0-7624-4436-6

US Library of Congress Control Number: 2011930512

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What is a gang? What is organized crime? What is a criminal, even? Sociologists have wasted thousands of acres of trees trying to put together satisfactory definitions or at least one on which they can agree. Generally they have failed.

Defining a criminal is relatively easy. In the years before his death the Chicagoan journalist and playwright Ben Hecht, who wrote The Front Page, was working on a biography of the Californian mobster Mickey Cohen. He wrote, in what would have been the foreword:

Out of my contacts has come what I think may be a major piece of anthropological lore. The criminal has no hates or fears except very personal ones. He is possibly the only human left in the world who looks lovingly on society. He does not hanker to fight it, reform it or even rationalize it. He wants only to rob it. He admires it as a hungry man might admire a roast pig with an apple in its mouth.

I was pleased to find this out, for I have read much to the contrary. Society does not, as sociologists and other tony intellectuals maintain, create the criminal. Bad housing, bad companions, bad government etc., have little to do with why there are killers, robbers and outlaws. The criminal has no relation to society to speak of. He is part of mans soul, not his institutions. He is an old one. A thousand preachers, summer boys camps, plus a congress of psychiatrists can barely dent even a minor criminal. As for the major criminal, he cannot be touched at all by society because he operates on a different time level. He is the presocial part of us the ape that spurned the collar.

The criminal at the time of his lawlessness is one of the few happy or contented men to be found among us. While he remains a criminal he is as free of conscience pangs as the most right-doing of bookkeepers. He eats well, sleeps well, lives well, and his only disadvantage is that he may die ahead of his time from an enemy bullet, the gas chamber or electric chair.

Not even the latter two nowadays.

As for organized crime? Perhaps as good as any definition are two North American offerings. The first, by the Canadian police, is two or more persons consorting together on a continuing basis to participate in illegal activities, either directly or indirectly, for gain. An unnamed American organized crime boss thought it was just a bunch of people getting together to take all the money they can from all the suckers they can. Organized crime is a chain of command all the way from London to Canada, the US, Mexico, Italy, France, everywhere.

If that is organized crime what, then, is a gang? When I first began researching my book Gangland, a north London solicitor told me he did not act for gangs: I act for families. And if those families find they need a little help from friends and acquaintances does that make them into a gang? Surely gangs were for little boys giving secret passwords and meeting in the same shed every Saturday at teatime? Gangs were for American television films, said Reggie Kray.

It is really a question of semantics. A gang does not necessarily require a paid-up subscription, although members are often required to contribute a certain amount of their weekly take, or maintain a list of members, as does the Garrick or any other gentlemans club. It is, however, a clearly recognizable floating body with the equivalent of a chairman, members of the board, officers of the club and members who come and go for a variety of reasons. Some are in prison, some die, some retire and, just as some football players may leave Chelsea for Liverpool (but rather more dangerously), some may join another gang. But for a period of time they are members in one form or another.