One of Britain’s top gang experts has said gangs became a major problem in many British cities because the Labour government between 1997 and 2010 did not take them seriously and by the time the problem was acknowledged in 2011, after that summer’s riots, gangs were “too entrenched.”
Thomas said Straw told him, “We don’t have a gangs problem,” and asked him what evidence he had of a growing gangs issue in Britain.
Thomas said: “We had a government, which was Labour at that time, who just did not take the gangs seriously. And that’s why we’re in the mess today because it started with their reluctance to deal with it.”
He said that when riots took place in 2011, when David Cameron was prime minister, he woke up to the problem.
Thomas said the riots began when Mark Duggan, a leading member of the Tottenham Man Dem gang, was shot dead by police officers on Aug. 4, 2011.
‘By Then it was too Late. It was too Entrenched’
Thomas said: “So it took a riot before they decided to do something about the gangs. And that’s when they called me and other people to come in and work with the government to look at sorting the gangs problem, but by then it was too late. It was too entrenched.”Thomas works with the government and police forces on how to deal with street gangs and also mentors former gang members and young people at risk.
He said: “In London, there’s no doubt that most of the gang members are black. There’s no disputing that. And in parts of Birmingham, it’s Asians. But when you go outside of these areas ... in parts of Liverpool, I would say 89 percent of the gangs are white kids.”
Thomas said him and his friends started a gang in the 1970s, “because we felt we had no choice but to protect ourselves from racist police officers and the National Front.”
But he said: “Then we imploded. We began to turn against each other because of the drugs ... That was our downfall. I think a lot of black British youth, who are of Caribbean descent, fell into that. We fell into the drugs market because many of us were unemployed at that time. Fifty percent of us were unemployed. We couldn’t get any job because of the colour of our skin. Even with qualifications, we couldn’t get a job.”
Thomas said he was involved in gangs and drugs for a decade and saw a lot of violence.
“In our days we used guns, we didn’t use knives. So there was a lot of deaths. And during that time nine of my friends were shot dead. I myself was shot at quite a few times. A bullet just missed the side of my face, and blew the guy’s head off next to me. That was a turning point for me,” he added.
Then in 1988, he met Bernie Grant, the black Labour MP.
Thomas said: “Jesse Jackson and Diane Abbott and Bernie Grant convinced me that as black people, we have a place. And I‘ll never forget the last thing Jesse Jackson said to me [in 1989], he said ’we’re going to have a black president one day.' I laughed ... but in 2008 his words came true.”
“Jesse Jackson is a Christian. So he really made me realise for the first time that, you know, God had a plan for me,” said Thomas.
Thomas went back to school, got some qualifications then began trying to engage with gang members.
He said his first attempt was in Manchester in the early 1990s when the rival Gooch Close and Doddington gangs were at war with each other and the city was dubbed Gunchester by the tabloid press.
“I didn’t have a programme, no plan, no nothing, no strategy. I just jumped on a train and went to Manchester, went down to Moss Side, and just started talking to the man dem [men]. It was a bit scary at first because they shoot people more randomly than they did in London. It was real crazy up there,” Thomas recalled.
He said gangs often recruited children whose parents were absent or distracted.
“What I learned about this whole gang life was that a lot of it is to do with parenting. Even though we can say school exclusion is a major factor, unemployment, the big society lie, all of that contributes, but the biggest part of it is parenting,” said Thomas.
“If your parents are not parented when they were children, the likelihood of them being good parents is very slim,” he added.
Thomas founded Gangsline in 2007 and said: “I decided to start the first specialist outreach team ... It was specifically targeted for gang members. So we were the first in the whole country. No-one had done that before, where you have an outreach team of former gang members driving in a minivan going into gang neighbourhoods, to talk to gang members. That’s what we did.”
He explained, “It was just us showing love, because one of the things we talked about was there was a lack of love in the black community.”
Thomas said: “It worked. It really worked, because I remember one gang member from Forest Gate [in east London]. He said to me, he’s never had anyone show him love. He was about 22 years old. When we met him, he had a shotgun. I’m not saying he got rid of it. I don’t know. But I do know he told us that was the first time he felt loved.”
Gangsline now runs a 12-step mentoring programme and runs prison workshops and also goes into schools to teach children of all ages of the dangers of being groomed and exploited by gang members.
