The last days of the 20th Century saw a major crackdown on Manchester's warring gangs. But soon new groups emerged, with names like the Young Gooch Crew, the Moss Side Bloods, the Old Trafford Crips, the Longsight Street Soldiers and the Fallowfield Mad Dogs. Younger and even more violent than their predecessors, they baited their rivals with explicit grime tracks and internet videos and unleashed a wave of bloodshed. SHOOTERS tells the story of these gangs and their various alliances, feuds and crimes. Using detailed court testimony and inside accounts, it gives a rare insight into the lethal conflict between the Pitt Bulls and the Longsight Crew; tells how two underworld armourers dubbed Bobby the Gun and the Merchant of Death supplied the gunmen with reactivated weapons; chronicles the infamous bloodbath at the Brass Handles pub in Salford, when two would-be assassins were themselves executed; and reveals the inner workings of the drug-dealing L$$ posse. It also recounts the story of Gooch leaders Colin Joyce and Stephen Amos, whose arrest for murder led to one of Britain’s biggest-ever trials; pieces together the events behind the notorious killings of teenagers such as Jessie James, Giuseppe Gregory and Louis Brathwaite; examines the methods of the audacious armed robbers of Salford; and describes the rise of lethal Asian gangs and their influence in the neighbouring towns of Bolton and Oldham. SHOOTERS is a powerful account of one city’s ongoing struggle with the law of the gun.

**Includes fascinating stories about Billy Fullerton, leader of the Billy Boys, featured in the latest series of BBC's Peaky Blinders** 'A new type of criminal is in our midst - a dangerous, ruthless, well-armed man, who will stick at nothing, not even murder. He is introducing into this country the gangster methods of Chicago and New York... Trade depression has thrown into unemployment thousands of unskilled youths who have nothing to do but lounge about the street corners of our slums in gangs.' John Bull weekly newspaper, 1932. During the 1920s and 1930s, Glasgow gained an unenviable and enduring notoriety as Britain's gang city - the 'Scottish Chicago'. Now Andrew Davies, author of the acclaimed The Gangs of Manchester, brings to life the reign of terror exerted on Glasgow by gangs like the Billy Boys, the Kent Star, the Savoy Arcadians and the South Side Stickers. Out of the most dilapidated and overcrowded tenements in Britain, stepped young men and women dressed like Hollywood gangsters and their molls. On the city's streets, they took centre stage in dramas of their own making, fighting territorial battles laced with religious sectarianism and running protection rackets modelled on those of the American underworld. Drawing on fifteen years of original research, Andrew Davies provides compelling portraits of legendary figures such as 'Razor King' John Ross and Billy Fullerton, leader of the Billy Boys - described as the 'Al Capone' of the city's East End. He sheds new light on the way the city's police and judiciary dealt with the gangs and reveals the fascinating role played by the media in creating myths of the underworld. During what the Daily Express described as 'The War on the Gang', Glasgow's police were led by Chief Constable Percy Sillitoe (who later became head of M15), determined to maintain the image as a tough, gang-busting cop he had forged in Sheffield during the 1920s. This dramatic story, played out against the backdrop of the most volatile of Britain's cities, provides a new window onto the most turbulent period in modern British history and a timely reminder of how deprivation, unemployment and religious bigotry are a toxic cocktail in any era.

In the late 1970s, a small body of violent young trend-setters exploded out of England's north-west to bewilder, terrify, and eventually enlighten the rest of the country. Their novel hooligan style came to be known as the "casual" movement, with its wedge haircut and obsession with expensive designer clothing and training shoes, but the story of how its original perpetrators emerged from disparate beginnings has never yet been completely detailed. Ian Hough came of age at the epicentre of the explosion, in 1979 in north Manchester, where outsiders branded these unlikely-looking pretenders "Perry Boys", due to the Fred Perry polo shirts they wore with their narrow cords, "effeminate" hairstyles and Adidas Stan Smith trainers. Hough witnessed the sudden ramping up of an age-old rivalry between Manchester and Liverpool's Scallies, as the two cities' football hooligans realised each was a carbon copy of the other, and how they all in turn were embracing a form of organised violence, thievery, and thinking that was yet to see the light of day elsewhere in the UK. As the enlightened tribes of the north-west dug in for the long war, slashing each other with craft knives and engaging in battles involving thousands, the rest of Britain began to pick up the styles for themselves. He describes, in vivid and often humorous prose, how the Perry Boys waged a style-war on their lesser-evolved peers within Manchester, kick-starting a national fashion eruption whose tremors are still being felt today. The book moves confidently through the 80s underground, as the psychedelic fragments of what came to be termed the Rave scene gravitate from the council estates and football stadia of Manchester, into the nightclubs, where the jaded Perry Boys were waiting all along. Manchester's subsequent descent into rampant mayhem, in the form of gangsters, drug dealers, and music, now bathed in the strange purple glow of hallucinogenic drugs like Ecstasy, spawned the "Madchester" scene of modern urban legend. The sense of unreality and optimism which accompanied Manchester United's domestic and European successes later became inextricably dovetailed to the scene in the city, and Hough takes the reader on an intense trip through those heady times. Rounding the book off with the story of how this unlikely new style had proved contagious across the UK, and how its perpetrators proceeded to travel the globe in search of greener pastures, Hough describes the mass exodus of young people, many of whom exported the philosophy of the Perry mindset, grafting and simply travelling for its own sake, around the globe. This book is for anyone who is interested in how things began, whether it was football hooligan culture or the Rave mentality, as the world grew smaller. It is a testament to those who lead, and a mesmerising read for those who have followed.

BBC RADIO 4 BOOK OF THE WEEK SHORTLISTED FOR THE ORWELL PRIZE 2012 SHORTLISTED FOR THE CRIME WRITERS ASSOCIATION NON-FICTION DAGGER AWARD ‘THE MOST IMPORTANT CRIME STORY OF THE DECADE’ Scottish Mail Manchester. London. Glasgow. In the summer of 2011 violence erupted in our inner cities and many blamed gang culture. But is the truth so simple? Hood Rat tells the human stories that the media miss: of young men who have fallen through the system, and of one young woman with a vision for change. ‘Unflinching. It penetrates environments that most of us only ever glimpse’ Observer ‘Impressive. Knight uncovers the sort of stories that never make the news’ Scotsman ‘This British sensation is a must. Disturbingly compelling’ Marie Claire ‘A gripping novelistic immersion in the lives of young criminals’ Louis Theroux ‘The British Wire’ BBC Radio 5 Live

A thrillingly fast-paced play about youthful disaffection, protest and violence, drawing on the history of youth gangs of nineteenth-century Manchester.