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This page includes a number of maps highlighting London gang areas over the years. A 2009 map is currently being developed.
London Street Gangs from the early 1900's
An interesting look through history shows that just like today gangs were prevelant in deprived areas and many of the headlines back then talked of rising youth crime and gang violence. Like today the gangs took their names from the streets and districts they were located.
These are well documented by Fergus Linnane in his books "London Underworld: Three centuries of vice and crime", and also the "Encyclopedia of London Crime".
This was the first map i ever attempted for London gangs based on the 2000-2003 period. Its influence was drawn from some very volatile drug and gang wars that were heavily documented by the British media during this period.
This included the rival Sikh/Hindu drug gangs the Batts and Kanaks in the Southall area.
Ongoing drug wars between "Yardie" gangs in Harlesden and Stonebridge in north west London that involved the Lock City Crew, Kickoffhead Crew, Cartel Crew and Mus Luv Crew.
Some of the bloodiest years witnessed in the Tottenham Mandem vs Hackney Boys feud, and also between the Turkish 'Tottenham Boys' and 'Bombacillar' from Hackney borough.
The integrated beef surrounding the Poverty Driven Children, Gas Dem Crew and media labelled "Muslim Boys" in Lambeth, as well as south London cross borough rivalries that mainly focused around the Peckham Boys and Ghetto Boys.
Finally, the long ongoing rivlary between Bengali gangs that were often being associated with extreme violence in Tower Hamlets as a result of gangs such as the Brick Lane Massive, Stepney Posse, Shadwell Massive and Bethnal Green Massive.
Main gang areas between 2000-2003 within Greater London
E, N, SE, SW, W London Gangs 2004-05
COPYRIGHT (2006) WWW.PICZO.COM/GANGSINLONDON & JM & JTB
The 2004-05 gang map included a large number of gangs and also cliques that had recently became independent. This was the first detailed map completed early in 2006 and was contributed to by a number of people and notably, much of north London and east London from Hackney upwards was heavily contributed by the hard work of JM, the south London areas by JTB with additional contributions from people in the boroughs of Brent, Greenwich, Hammersmith & Fulham and Tower Hamlets.
This became a solid base for future mapping. A lot of the information was compiled when gang media was relatively scarce in terms of open source information such as on the internet. At this time gangs outside of the London postal areas were not entertained.
A large majority of the gangs on this map are still in existence today, some have disbanded or seperated into smaller gangs, others have joined to become larger gangs. Some rivalries have remained, new ones have arose and some have even been put to bed.
London Gangs 2007
London Gangs (London PostCodes Only) and Deprivation. All the coloured bits are the most deprived 25% of government SOAs in England. Most deprived areas are Hackney/Tower Hamlets/Newham etc. No gangs present are in the least deprived areas. The white section between north weezie and Brixton is the West End, Knightsbridge and South Kensington. The other large white areas in the north west (Barnet) and far south west (Wandsworth/Merton) have fewest gangs owing to less deprivation).
At the time this was created it was the most detailed London gang map i had attempted. It was more of a map showing the location of the sets and cliques rather than overall gang territory, and how there were strong links with deprivation. The accompanying list of cliques mapped here appeared in two media press releases listing London gangs (by the BBC and Evening Standard) and so when reported it came across as an exponential rise in the number of gangs, but really it was just their misunderstanding of what cliques, alliances and allegiances were in existance at the time.
Its common to read police and media press releases where they mention multiple gang names not realising they are variant names of one gang rather than multiple different gangs.
Street gangs in outer London boroughs (outside of the London Postcode areas) - 2008-09
I have never had an interest in focusing on gangs outside of the London postal area. Mainly because it is time consuming but because i am not familiar with those areas i dont know the extent to which it is a copycat thing - i dont doubt that there are some real gangs out there, but probably only a fraction of those on the map.
This map was created purely from gang names forwarded to me from young people in each of those outer boroughs. There are about 50 gang names included. I struggle to come to terms with the fact that gangs can exist in some of those boroughs, for example, Harrow and Sutton which are wealthy low crime boroughs.
Barking & Dagenham:
CHS/Cash Highly Stacked RM6
Dville/OSG RM10
DOC/Devils of Chadwell RM6
Gascoigne IG11
Goresbrook Village RM9
Harts Lane IG11
SWAT Team RM6
Thamesview IG11
