Mick -The Entire Manchester Underworld PT2

Doing an update on this early post, I hope to clarify some points, which I did put in a later post.  For a number of years, a man claimed to me "I am well known throughout Manchester!" yet he had the most incredible difficulty in naming various people from the area.  He also had no knowledge of some of the biggest names from the 60`s.  He always mentioned the ONLY name he knew.  Mick Tainey.  I asked about other Manchester names many times but he always talked around it.  I tried to find out about this major league criminal but nobody seemed to have heard of him, considering he was supposed to have had "His own criminal organisation."  Through one forum, I did receive a possibility, that were some Taineys around the Eccles area of Manchester.  However, the person who supplied this  did not know any more.

    This "well known man" even claimed that Tainey was the leader of the "Quality Street Gang" but I knew this was rubbish.  The truth came out with the book by Jimmy The Weed Donnelly.  This big time villain turned out to be Mick TIERNEY, a strong arm man from Moss Side, who had a habit of being armed all the time and provided protection for some of the shabeens in Moss Side.  This provided most of his income, with other monies coming from various scams and rackets.  It does not show much for the head of a "Criminal Organisation!"  This man said that one night, in a pub there were around thirty guys and Tierney told two to go out and help this man over something.  Wow!!  Criminal Organisation, hey?  Tierney was closely associated with two other men, with more fearsome reputations than him;  Mick Lennon & Brian "The Bear" Dunn, and they had the same hold.  They would tell whoever to do something, and these individuals would not dare refuse.  Truth can be quite a let down.

    One story he told was that Tierney was sparked by a Bradford man called Len Knox whilst in Strangeways.  I do not know if this is true, but he said Tierney was one of the top men in the prison at the time, so it should be common knowledge amongst older villains.  Donnelly told that  Tierney died from cancer in the nineties.