Writer seeking information about Birmingham links to drug gangs.
Journalist and author Kieran Fagan (pictured) is trying to track down anyone who can remember the activities of Triad gangs in the 1970s.
Kieran, who is a member of Birmingham Press Club, is undertaking a project which involves researching the connection between the Hong Kong Triad 14K Triad in Liverpool, Walsall, Birmingham and Ireland in the late 1970s.
“I’d love to know whether any of your readers have any information they are prepared to share,” said Kieran.
The Dublin-based former Irish Times journalist said that on 19 July 1979, two groups of Chinese restaurant workers fought a pitched battle with catering knives on a busy Dublin street. Two men subsequently died of their injuries, one was blinded in both eyes for life, while others received less serious knife injuries.
The battle was ostensibly over which faction of Hong Kong Triad 14K was entitled to collect protection money from Chinese restaurants in Dublin. Traditionally this had been the property of a Cork-based faction of 14K, but some members believed that Dublin “belonged’ to a North of England faction of 14K.
Adherents to the Cork leadership descended on disloyal Chinese in a restaurant in Dublin’s Middle Abbey Street and bloody battle was joined in the street outside the New Universal restaurant, which was then closed before re-opening a year later as The Friendly House!
True crime writer Kieran Fagan believes a bigger prize was at stake – control of Ireland’s then infant drugs trade, where Triad 14K had a presence in Birmingham and Liverpool, and may have seen a business opportunity the other side of the Irish Sea.
Kieran, whose email is Journalist and author Kieran Fagan (pictured) is trying to track down anyone who can remember the activities of Triad gangs in the 1970s.
Kieran, who is a member of Birmingham Press Club, is undertaking a project which involves researching the connection between the Hong Kong Triad 14K Triad in Liverpool, Walsall, Birmingham and Ireland in the late 1970s.
“I’d love to know whether any of your readers have any information they are prepared to share,” said Kieran.
The Dublin-based former Irish Times journalist said that on 19 July 1979, two groups of Chinese restaurant workers fought a pitched battle with catering knives on a busy Dublin street. Two men subsequently died of their injuries, one was blinded in both eyes for life, while others received less serious knife injuries.
The battle was ostensibly over which faction of Hong Kong Triad 14K was entitled to collect protection money from Chinese restaurants in Dublin. Traditionally this had been the property of a Cork-based faction of 14K, but some members believed that Dublin “belonged” to a North of England faction of 14K.
Adherents to the Cork leadership descended on “disloyal” Chinese in a restaurant in Dublin’s Middle Abbey Street and bloody battle was joined in the street outside the New Universal restaurant, which was then closed before re-opening a year later as The Friendly House!
True crime writer Kieran Fagan believes a bigger prize was at stake – control of Ireland’s then infant drugs trade, where Triad 14K had a presence in Birmingham and Liverpool, and may have seen a business opportunity the other side of the Irish Sea.
Kieran, whose email is [email protected], is particularly interested in Triad members in and around Walsall – at least one of the participants in the street battle had a Walsall address.
In his book Drug War – The Secret History (published in 2018 by Milo Books) Coventry investigative journalist Peter Walsh revealed how heroin first flooded into Birmingham and the Black Country via a Triad gang. He also recalled the trial of a Chinese restaurateur from Walsall who was jailed for nine years in the 1970s after smuggling heroin into the UK.
Peter’s book is regarded as the first ever full account of the UK’s fight against the illegal importation of drugs.
