Risky Business - How The Kray Twins Made Their First Fortune
Introducing the Long Firm, according to Ronald and Reginald Kray.
Ronnie and Reggie - two names that still carry a lot of weight. Say them to the wrong people in the wrong part of town and you'll find yourself on the wrong end of a very hard stare. Though neither of them have been with us for well over a decade, the Kray twins are, to use the argot of gangster film Performance, still capable of applying a bit of pressure.
If it was their relationship with respectable society (Judy Garland, Johnny Ray, Lord Boothby) and the murders of George Cornell and Jack 'The Hat' McVitie that secured their place in infamy, fascination with the Krays isn't restricted to these areas. In his award-winning debut novel, Jake Arnott used a composite of Ronnie and Reggie - psychotic homosexual Harry Starks - to investigate other aspects of their lives. These included the way in which men with widely acknowledged criminal connections were able to make a mint without attracting the constabulary's attention. The answer, it would emerge, lay in the title to Arnott's book, The Long Firm.
The Long Firm is a quite ingenious con. Although it wasn't invented by the Krays - as you might imagine, its precise origins are rather cloudy - you could argue that they were people who perfected the 'art'. To pull of this particular hustle, you would require:
* A frontman
* A small amount of investment capital
* A place of work (i.e. an office)
* A warehouse
* A large number of people willing to buy goods without asking how said goods were obtained
* The constant threat of violence
As for putting the con into play, first, the brothers - or, more likely, one of their 'chaps' - would find a 'front', who was usually someone in debt to the twins. The front would then go about setting up a wholesalers. To make this look utterly convincing, the man in question would rent both an office and a warehouse and would have stationery printed up. He would then set about buying up stock. Then, by making sure that their first bills were paid the moment they arrived, the front would be offered credit. It was now that the Long Firm really went into overdrive. For with the bank satisfied by the sizeable sums being deposited and the manufacturers pleased with the prompt payments, the money men were exactly where the twins wanted them.
The final phase of the Long Firm saw the twins' proxy place maximum orders with the manufacturers. An order would then come from on high to 'hit the floor'. This meant opening up the now-full warehouse to the public and selling off the entire stock in the space of a few hours. Once everything was sold - it wasn't unusual for the boys to clear £30,000 in a single morning - the front would empty the bank account and then he and every one else involved in the scheme would disappear off the face of the planet. Or, to be more specific, in the direction of the twins' stomping ground, Bethnal Green. And if the head of the dummy company was caught, he'd remain tight lipped, a spell inside simply giving the money Ronnie and Reggie deposited in a Swiss bank accountant on his behalf time to accrue some interest.
Long firms weren't the only schemes that lined the twins' pockets. For a while they enjoyed considerable success running night clubs and casinos, although Ronnie's increasingly eccentric behaviour (at one point he became convinced the Russians were after him) and the boys' regular stays at Her Majesty's pleasure eventually put pay to such legitimate forms of employment.
Protection rackets also kept the brothers and their associates in nice suits and good scotch. While many shops and establishments were happy to pay the Krays for the novel security service they offered (basic operating procedure: pay up or we'll smash the place to bits) one man at least was quick to show them the door.
As comedian and owner of The Establishment Club Peter Cook told Clive James,
"I was in my office one evening and some emissaries of Ronald and Reginald paid me a visit, asking whether I'd like to make use of their protection services. I said, "Please tell Reggie and the gay one that I really appreciate their interest, but we've a police station just two doors down and I believe they're rather good at dealing with that kind of thing. And I never heard from them again!"