A Spectator's Notebook
ANOTHER STONE HAS been turned over at the Old Bailey and once again the public has had a glimpse of the grey gangsterdom that creeps and crawls beneath the surface of the West End. Of course it might be possible to make too much of this (so long as the thugs confine their razor-slashing to their own society no great harm is done, and no doubt the police find some of them useful), but there is something odd when a witness at the Old Bailey jovially admits to the title of 'Boss of the Underworld.' The manager of a restaurant where I was lunch- ing alone the other day looked over my shoulder at the evening paper I was reading. 'Huh!' he said, 'I know what to do with that lot. The police should round them up in one place and give them a handful of razors instead of food. They'd soon eat one another up until at last there'd be only one left to deal with—and he'd soon die of poison.' Short of some such desperate measure it's hard to see how these petty condottieri can be kept in reasonable order. With occasional exceptions, police action is ineffective. I have heard it suggested that there should be a public inquiry into the subject of West End gang- sterdom on the lines of the Lynskey Tribunal. There may well be a case for such an extraordinary step if there is no other way of bringing this intolerable state of affairs into the open.
Previous page
