Originally Posted By: British
Originally Posted By: TheKillingJoke
The most well known South London firms were/are the Arif, Brindle and the Daley family. The Arifs are Turkish Cypriots, the Brindles and the Daleys are both part-Irish (Brindles on their mother's side, Daleys on their father's side). Most, if not all, white working class families in East and South London will have some Irish blood, but few are fully Irish. The Adams of North London are an exception (Islington has long been a settlement for more recent Irish immigrants), but families in the east and south will commonly have one Irish parent or at least an Irish grandparent.
It's true, a lot of the London-based crime firms are in business with the Real IRA. Even the Canning Town families such as the Hunts, who as far as I know are not of Irish descent, frequently did business with some criminal minded cells in the IRA concerning the drug and weapon trade.


They also worked with loyalist organisations, it was just business for them.

People involved in that life in London don't care about the background of those they do business with.

As London is so ethnically diverse the real cockneys all moved out to Essex and Kent...


There still are some white working class strongholds: Canning Town in the East End, Bermondsey in the Southeast, several pockets in South London,...but generally speaking a lot of Bangladeshis and Jamaicans moved into tradinitional areas such as Bethnal Green, Hackney, etc... Very little if any whites remain in these areas.
Nevertheless, Bangladeshi neighborhoods are hotbeds of small time petty crime. The more organized but grittiest criminal activities mostly take place in the white working class and the Turkish/Kurdish communities. In the South the black gangs (Jamaican, Nigerian and Somali) have some higher level players among the older members as well, younger members are mostly active in petty theft and small time drug dealing. Russians, Albanians, Chinese and Tamils all operate in West London, but they don't necessarily "control" any turf there except maybe for the Tamils.