Jimmy Donnelly - Jimmy the Weed: Inside the Quality Street Gang

Published in November 2011 by Milo Books

Copyright 2011 James Donnelly

The moral right of the author has been asserted.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form or by any means without permission in writing from the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

ISBN 978-1-903854-97-6
eISBN 978-1-908479-01-3

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CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CR0 4YY

MILO BOOKS LTD

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Jimmy the Weed wont use no muscle,

That cats so sly, slick and subtle.

Thin Lizzy, Johnny the Fox Meets Jimmy the Weed Universal Music Publishing Group

WHO ARE THE QUALITY STREET GANG?

There never was any such gang, but several Manchester characters had styled themselves that way as a joke, in commemoration of a Quality Street TV advertisement of the 1960s, depicting rather suave, debonair crooks. In fact, they worked hard almost every day on their car sales pitches, in all weathers, which is hardly to be expected if they were indeed criminals. None had any serious convictions, though it was an obsession of certain senior officers within the Greater Manchester Police force to try to tie them in with serious organized crime ... The official argument was that they were guilty but had avoided prosecution. It was more likely that they were a convenient peg on which to hang unsolved crimes.

Kevin Taylor, The Poisoned Tree

I dont like the title. It is misleading. It gives the impression of an organised gang which, from my information, didnt exist on the same scale as other gangs. There was no hierarchical structure. I have no direct information of a gang of that type, comparable with other street gangs and gangs within the Manchester area that presently exist and have existed for the last ten years.

Supt Bill Kerr, former head of Manchester drugs squad

The QSG were hugely respected in Manchester, and in some ways, they were greater celebrities than the rock stars and footballers they knew and partied with. But they never hurt anyone too badly, and were never arrested for anything major; so I could never understand why they ended up with such a big reputation. However, they were legendary characters, and remain so even to this day. Maybe they did something that nobody else knew about ...

Stan Bowles, The Autobiography

It depends on ones outlook whether by the 1960s Manchester crime was free of protection or was firmly controlled by the so-called Quality Street Gang which included the redoubtable ex-boxer Jimmy Swords. The police view is that they were a group of minders and enforcers who, as the years passed and they grew older, had moved into the more respectable lines of club and restaurant owning.

James Morton, Gangland Volume 2

From the late sixties to the mid-eighties, the QSG and their crowd were faces in the city, men you didnt mess with. Notoriety gave them glamour heads turned when they walked into a club and they rubbed shoulders with entertainers and the more flamboyant footballers of the day.

Peter Walsh, Gang War

The QSG might have been the hard men of Manchester but amongst their number were some of the most genuine, moral and decent people you could ever wish to meet.

Malcolm Wagner, George Best & Me

The gang gained, and still enjoys, a notoriety among the public and police in Manchester, and many an unsolved crime has been laid at its door. Like many criminal fraternities, however, its precise membership is impossible to discover. Many friends and associates of the principal figures would not be involved in crime. For the police, looking in from the outside, it would have been easy to mistake a social friendship for a criminal conspiracy.

Peter Taylor, Stalker: The Search for the Truth

Jimmy [Donnelly] was a member of the Quality Street Gang, a group of men accused by the press of being behind most of Manchesters major crime. The press are very careful not to mention them by name as they are largely businessmen men of some substance. They are also very tough boys but I never saw any of them take a liberty.

Eric Mason, The Brutal Truth

I dont want it to be thought Im accepting there was a Quality Street Gang. Since his retirement, a very senior detective has said they were a myth and if they had existed they would have been put behind bars many years ago. He would have been the man who would have done it.

Former Deputy Chief Constable John Stalker,
Liverpool High Court, 1995

CONTENTS

To the memory of my beautiful wife, Rita. Rest in peace.

To my sons, Tony, Dominic and Raefe, and my grandchildren, James, Josh, Rory, Tira and Nathan. I hope you will never have to follow the path I took.

To my brothers and sisters.

To Valerie, Jason and Sharon, thank you for all the years of friendship and help.

To my friends in Thailand, especially Nancy, who inspired me to write this book.

Lastly, to the wardens where I now live, who look after me especially Donna. Thanks.

PREFACE

I TELL THIS story to reveal some truths and explode some myths. My life and the lives of my friends and associates, known collectively as the Quality Street Gang, have been the subject of more speculation, innuendo and rumour than those of any similar group of men I know. We have been labelled a crime mob, and dismissed as a myth. We have been described in police reports, books and newspapers, with varying degrees of inaccuracy. Some of us have even been called organisers of major crime in Manchester, our home city. I sometimes think there are more exaggerations about us than there are about the SAS.

For forty years, the stories have gone unchecked. So I want to set the record straight. I was, for much of my adult life, one of the so-called QSG. I was, in fact, one of the seven or eight close friends at the core of the group, although as I will explain, we were not the gang of popular perception. Many of my circle were simply rough-and-ready lads. We grew up together. Some picked up convictions in their youth, for fighting or other relatively minor offences. Many went into business as they grew older, and made a good job of it. Others went into crime. But we all continued to associate together because we were pals. That never meant we were some kind of conspiracy. It just meant we were loyal.

For my part, I was a villain; a successful one at that. I have handled stolen gems, illegal firearms and piles of cash. I have hurt people, though never someone who did not deserve it, and have survived attempts on my own life. I have had friends who were killers and others who have been killed. I have been investigated by various police forces, Her Majestys Customs and Excise and the Special Branch, and have been accused or suspected of just about every crime on the statute book. I have been arrested more times than I can remember, and have seen the inside of numerous lock-ups. Yet through it all, I have served no more than a few months in prison, most of them on remand. I have endured nearly a dozen court trials and have walked free at the end of every one.

I also made my way in the straight world. I have been a publican, a ticket scalper, a boxing promoter, a bookie, a scrap dealer, a car salesman, a market trader, a club owner and hotelier. I have socialised with famous actors and actresses, singers and musicians, footballers and fighters, many of whom became close pals. Many of my friends are legitimately wealthy and have been for many years, while I have walked the line between straight and crooked, sometimes on one side, sometimes on the other. It was all the same to me.