Bad blood
A northern city sees a ferocious outbreak of gang violence
MEMBERS of rival gangs were often taken aback when they met Paul Massey. A softly spoken, plainly dressed man, he did not seem like a typical gangster. His nickname, “Mr Big”, referred to his local influence rather than his stature (he was barely five feet tall). He even claimed a moral conscience: despite reputedly controlling much of Salford’s drug market, he professed to despise heroin and would put up flyers warning, “Use smack and get smacked”. In 2012, with his criminal past avowedly behind him, he ran for mayor of Salford and won only slightly fewer votes than the Liberal Democrat candidate.
This article appeared in the Britain section of the print edition under the headline “Bad blood”
From the December 19th 2015 edition
Discover stories from this section and more in the list of contents
Explore the editionDiscover more
British MPs vote in favour of assisted dying
A monumental social reform is closer to being realised
The slow death of a Labour buzzword
And what that says about Britain’s place in the world
Britain’s Supreme Court considers what a woman is
At last. Britons had been wondering what those 34m people who are not men might be
Can potholes fuel populism?
A new paper looks at one explanation for the rise of Reform UK
Are British voters as clueless as Labour’s intelligentsia thinks?
How the idea of false consciousness conquered the governing party