Inside the child gangs of London

For a brief moment it looks as though Radar, a tough-talking, streetwise 17-year-old, is about to cry, the second time in the space of a few minutes that he has been on the verge of becoming tearful. It first happened when he started to talk about the deep love he feels for the friends he grew up with. Now, in a split-second of hesitation, I see that same look on his face again, just before he begins talking about the streets where he was raised.

"I love my ends," he says, his voice thick with emotion. "I can't explain it. People say, 'How can you love a street or a block of flats?' but it's where I come from. It's my roots. Everything that's ever happened to me happened right here. No one can take that away from me, ever. I won't let anyone take it away."

We've just made the short walk from the quiet residential streets around Wandle Park where Radar grew up with his mum and two younger siblings, through the covered walkway and across to the bustling concrete heart of Croydon's central shopping area.

One of London's largest boroughs, Croydon mixes affluent suburbs to the south with seriously deprived inner-city areas further north, and it is here in particular that the youth gang mentality that has spread across the capital and led to 11 murders so far this year has taken root. For Radar, a fully-fledged "soulja" with local gang DSN - Don't Say Nothing - day-to-day life outside of the pupil referral unit where he is finishing his education after being excluded from Addington High School is dominated by an increasingly violent turf war, all in the name of "repping the ends" or defending the territory.

Confrontations occur almost weekly, and earlier this year one major battle was caught on CCTV cameras as 30 youths, half of them belonging to DSN, the remainder to their Gipsy Hill-based rivals Gipset, brazenly fought a pitched battle with knives, chairs, sticks and boots in the middle of the town centre just outside the main entrance to the Whitgift shopping centre, sending terrified shoppers fleeing for safety. The fact that no one was seriously hurt was down to luck and little else. Not everyone is so fortunate.

In March, 15-year-old Sofyen Belamouadden was stabbed to death in the ticket hall of Victoria Underground station after a fight between two rival youth gangs. Other murders have followed in quick succession. Godwin Lawson, 18, was stabbed to death and two friends were wounded when they were attacked in Hackney, east London. On May 5, 16-year-old Nick Pearton was chased through a playground by a mob of youths wielding knives and baseball bats before being fatally stabbed.

For many young Londoners, regular violent confrontations are becoming increasingly commonplace. "When you're in a fight, you don't really have time to think about what you're doing," says Radar. "The adrenaline's pumping. It's crazy. You use whatever you can, you do whatever you can 'cos at the end of the day, you want to make sure you're the one who walks away. You don't hesitate. You do the worst things you can do. If there's something in your hand, you're gonna use it. Swing it out fast and hard. It's a fight. It's not a game. There's a war going on. If you don't, they're gonna happen to you.

"Sometimes it just kicks off, but sometimes you know it's coming, so people have time to go and get their weapons if they need to. I didn't. I never go anywhere without this." Radar taps his waistline with the flat of his hand. For a moment I think he's showing me where he keeps his knife, but then I realise he is actually talking about the heavy metal buckle on his belt in the shape of a flying eagle with thin, sharply angled wing tips that would not be out of place on a ninja star. The belts are a DSN trademark and make reference to their Brixton-based allies, the Bird Gang. "This is a wicked weapon," he continues. "Wherever you hit someone, they bleed."

Croydon has long been something of a hot spot of youth gang activity. On April 18 this year 16-year-old Wesley Sterling was stabbed to death at a birthday party. His murder was originally attributed to DSN but members of the gang have since flooded internet chat rooms with passionate denials of their involvement.

Ironically it was the internet that led to DSN's initial notoriety after a self-styled general of the gang, Joland "Dexter" Giwa, uploaded a video clip banning other gangs from entering DSN territory in 2006. The gang soon found itself fighting with Gipset as well as the Mitcham-based Terror Zone and a Thornton Heath gang known as Shine My Nine.

Gangs all around the country now rely on internet sites like YouTube, MySpace and Facebook to goad one another and to set up prearranged fights. Other battles come about as a result of one group making "raids" into the territory of another. In Croydon, the Whitgift has been the scene of at least a dozen clashes in the past two years. Additional security staff and police patrols have failed to completely eliminate the problem.

Attacks on rival gang members are often uploaded to the internet. One notorious clip showed DSN members beating up a rival from SMN before forcing him to strip naked and claim allegiance to their gang.

Within hours of dying, every murder victim will have an online tribute page opened in their honour. Inevitably, this soon becomes a new front in the battle of accusations and counter-accusations between rival gangs.

So powerful is the lure of the internet that when DSN leader Dexter was imprisoned for assault last year, he used a smuggled mobile phone to post pictures of himself in his cell to his Facebook account shortly before his release and told friends he would be "touching road real soon".

Although 15 senior figures from DSN were arrested last year, this has led to a restructuring, with low-level members - like Radar - rejoining and getting involved in shoplifting and general disorder, while mid-level members move into drug-related crime and cash-in-transit robberies. Last month, Croydon borough commander, Chief Superintendent Adrian Roberts, announced that the local anti-gang unit was to be expanded amid concerns that DSN continues to be a major threat to the area. Across the capital, gun crime is up by 21 per cent and the police have noted an increase in gang-related "reputational shootings".

The desire to rise up the ranks is, according to Radar, a key to many of the random acts of violence that take place around London and beyond. They are simply initiation ceremonies where youngers are carrying out the bidding of elders in order to earn their spurs.

"The shankers and bangers are getting younger and younger because the elders realise they don't have to do their own dirty work," says Radar. "There are plenty of youngers who want to make a name for themselves and think the best way to do that is to go shank someone. If you do something like that, everyone gets to know about it and, suddenly, you're the man. People respect you, people are scared of you. I won't talk about the things I've done myself. You do what you have to do to survive, to fit in. And if you live in hell, sometimes you have to turn into the devil. You get me?"

For many boys, especially those between the ages of 12 and 15, the easy availability of sex is one of the major attractions of joining a gang. Girls within the gangs will often become sexually active from the age of 12 and go on to have several gang members as sexual partners within a short space of time. The higher the rank of the gang member, the wider his choice of possible partners.

The money for such activities comes from a range of crimes but most often from involvement in the drug trade, though the risk of being robbed by other dealers means few of the younger gang members do more than dabble with the retail side of the business. Instead they might make £20 a time working as a runner or courier or get paid £100 per week to hide something in their homes. It all means that even the youngest members of gangs can find themselves with the ability to earn good money.

But while older members of the gangs are concerned with making money, the younger members are more interested in being part of a group they feel closer to than their own family.

"People always say, just walk away from it - but you can't do that," says Radar. "It's not that easy. The drugs, the guns, they're everywhere. Ninety per cent of the people I know are involved in this thing. I've been to prison, I've got friends who are still there. I've got friends who are dead, but that's just the way things are. I can't walk away from my entire life. It's the only thing I have. If I walk away now, it's all been a waste. Nah. The only thing I can do is keep going down the same path and hope it leads somewhere. Not to the graveyard, not right back to the same fucking estate you started from, but somewhere else. Somewhere better."

Gang Land by Tony Thompson (Hodder & Stoughton, £16.99)