I Am Not A Gangster By: Bobby Cummines

Author: Bobby Cummines

‘I am not a gangster,’ I spat. ‘I’m a businessman trying to make a hard-earned crust. Understood?’ I didn’t give him time to reply. I took the barrel out of his mouth and smashed him in the face with the butt. His lip split, but he wasn’t a dead man. He seemed to appreciate that his life had been spared. He spluttered his ‘Ok, you’re not a gangster. You are not a gangster.’ Bobby Cummines is not a gangster. If you ask, he’ll tell you he was simply a businessman and it just so happened his business was that of a hitman, armed robber and fixer.This is the gripping true story of how one man ruled his north London manor with an iron fist – or more to the point a sawn-off shotgun called Kennedy.Bobby was sent to prison for the first time in 1967, aged 16, and over the next decade he established himself as a ruthless hardened criminal through a succession of lucrative protection rackets and robberies.His story is a shocking insight into a society where the rules are made by gangland leaders and if anybody dare break them they have to deal with the consequences. There is blood everywhere, people dying, shotguns firing, doorstep slayings and all-out gang warfare between Turkish, Greek and Irish firms and Chinese triads. The Krays, The Richardsons, The IRA and The Yorkshire Ripper all make appearances too.During a twelve-year stint in Maidstone, Bobby was introduced to the Open University. Education was his liberation and on his release, Bobby got back to business. Only this time his efforts saw him go from custody of Her Majesty’s Prison Service to coming face-to-face with the Queen herself…I Am Not A Gangster is a blisteringly honest account of the inner workings of the most infamous crime syndicates known and life inside Britain’s most notorious jails, but above all it’s a remarkable tale of redemption with the biggest turnaround in gangland history.