I used to be a feared gangster… locked up with the Krays

So, what’s it like getting shot?

Not necessarily the question you would ask someone who may have just alighted from a Clapham bus service. But retired-London gangster Ronnie Field is different. 

With a look of indifference bordering on a smirk he admits: ‘It hurts. Frightening, annoying and it gives you the right hump.’ 

May have even been an inconvenience. With a critical eye, he suggests of his would-be murderer, ‘I didn’t even know the geezer. I never found out why. I must have upset someone. They should have just come and see me… or Joe. 

‘They paid someone to do something and they didn’t do it right.’ 

When asked about the gunman, Ronnie pauses briefly. ‘Allegedly, he got shot… well he got shot twice, actually.’

Ronnie is incredibly critical of his would-be-killer’s trade craft. 

‘I didn’t know he was coming after me. He could have walked straight up to me and done me.’ 

Ronnie said the attack opened fire too far away, putting a hole in his trousers. And the assailant was using too small of a gun. 

‘He should have used a .38.’ 

‘He was an amateur. I was one of his first… I guess I was his last.’ 

He said the police were not too interested in the attempt on his life. ‘I think they were a bit choked that I was not dead. They are a bit like that, the police.’  

Holding court in a club in south London, the 77-year-old asks about a former comrade. ‘I was just about to ring Freddie before you arrived. How was he?’

Ronnie wanted to know how the former Kray enforcer Freddie Foreman was getting on. Foreman, 92, is living in an assisted living facility in north London.

Both of them had direct dealings with the Twins. Ronnie and Reggie Kray.

A pair of notorious felons whose fame far outstripped their talent. Still, for many years they received respect and recognition, which was entirely undeserved for some in the criminal fraternity.

‘There won’t be no come-back now, you know,’ explains Ronnie, ‘they’re dead’.

Field insists the true governor of London of the time was his boss and mentor, Joey Pyle. 

Pyle was the United Nations peace keeping force of the London underworld scene. 

If you needed a licence or permission to carry out an action, you would have to seek out his blessing. 

He would adjudicate misgivings, misfortunes and misdemeanors without need of an appellant court. Joey’s word, according to Ronnie, was the law.

Not expected to live past 21, a union flag flies over his shoulder, and depending on how the book sells, HMRC might receive a cheque. The first in a while, he said.

Ronnie once asked his mentor about getting the headlines and appearing with the rich and the famous. The response was stoic, without the pain and suffering. Life was good: ‘Let them have it, we’ll keep on collecting the cash.’

Welcome to gangland London.

Ronnie’s father served during the Second World War and when he was demobbed, took his training with him. As one of the bomb disposal crew he was well acquainted with the use of gelignite. In the army it is a powerful explosive which can be used to detonate an unexploded bomb.

In civilian life, it could be used in a quarry, but bringing it into a bank and pressing it into the safe, it was more lucrative. Safe crackers worked in silence. Safe blowers made noise.

Such skulduggery was too much for Ronnie. Blowing a safe took time. Easier to enter the bank with a pump action shotgun and fire one round into the ceiling to scare all the customers and staff.

For a time, if the legend is correct, the first round was fired into the ceiling, blasting a hole and showering plaster dust around the room.

With a quick rack of the shotgun, the first round is ejected and the second is seated firmly. This time, however, it is alleged, the lead shot has been replaced by rock salt. It is claimed from those who know, the rock salt will sting and not tear bone and flesh from sinew.

All Ronnie will commit to is ‘allegedly’.

‘Joe was definitely the governor and Johnny Nash.’

The Nash firm had six brothers including Jimmy Nash who escaped the hangman’s noose after avoiding conviction for the murder of a barman in an illegal drinking den in south London.

Of the twins, Joey Pyle advised Ronnie: ‘Let them have the glory… we’ll have the money… he was right wasn’t he, sensible’.

‘I mean, there’s a lot of firms now, quite a few firms made up of brothers. I don’t want to say their names but I’m mates with them all.’

While gangster based in Islington, North London, Pyle  was known as an underworld fixer with connections across the globe.  

‘Joe Pyle was a gentleman. A gentleman to ladies. He saved a lot of people from getting killed. Lets say if me and someone else were having an argument, we’d go to Joe and save someone from getting hurt. 

‘Every firm in London knew Joe and Joe knew them all. They all respected him. The Twins respected him. 

‘He was a diplomat. It didn’t matter where he went, everyone knew Joe… all the clubs up the West End and the East End.

‘He never had to buy a drink, everyone would send him a drink over. The clubs never used to charge us. 

‘When they say Joey Pyle ran protection rackets, he didn’t. People would ring him up and ask him “Joe, we’re getting a lot of trouble here, can you sort it for us?” We’d go down there and sort it out and a couple of us would call in every Friday to so everyone would know that Joe was using that pub or club. There wouldn’t be any trouble. 

‘No one got hurt. It was nice. And no-one had to pay!’ 

Unlike other members of London’s gangland fraternity, Joey Pyle and Ronnie Field were determined to keep a low profile among the wider public. They avoided dating film stars and being photographed in clubs with celebrities and politicians. 

For Ronnie, this approach was entirely pragmatic. ‘It was a good thing [avoiding publicity] when you were doing what we was doing. Now it don’t matter because we are not doing nothing. 

‘Joe’s dead now and I’m not doing nothing. I’m not going to mug anyone off or insult anyone.’

According to Ronnie, courting publicity when you are a career criminal is bad business. Especially, when your association brings the attentions of US Federal authorities. 

‘Joe was connected to the Gambino crime family. When they came over here we would all be drinking together. He was well respected all over the world.’ 

Ronnie admits that the FBI probably have a file on him somewhere in their vaults. ‘I don’t want to see it. They might not know as much as they think they know…’ 

He laughs at the prospect of staying ahead of one of the most formidable crime fighting organisations in the world. ‘I suppose there is a file. I was with Joe for many, many years. 

‘When I’d get nicked, I haven’t been nicked that many times, but when I was nicked it was always pretty serious. 

‘They used to say to me: “Just tell me everything you know about Joe and this will all go away. They were willing to let an armed robber free to send Joe away.’ He chuckles… ‘An alleged armed robber at the time.’ 

However, when brought before the judge and jury, the police, according to Ronnie, had subtle methods of tipping the balance away from him and towards a conviction. 

‘It doesn’t help when you have all those gun police outside and the judge has two armed Old Bill sitting behind him. It doesn’t go down well… you’re not going to get a “not guilty”. 

‘They [the jury] would stand outside and when the helicopter come, there would be armed police popping up everywhere and the jury would be standing outside waiting to go into court and they knew ours was the trial they were working on. 

‘It didn’t give us much of a chance. But mind you… we was guilty.’ 

He insists that he and Charlie Kray were set up to face serious drugs charges.  

‘What they did to me and Charlie Kray. I’m no drug dealer and nor was Charlie. We came away being the biggest drug dealers in Europe – £300m of cocaine – that’s what they said we had. We didn’t have enough to cover a bit of salt paper.’ 

 He said his father once asked him why he carried the additional risk of carrying a gun into a bank while he blew up safes using gelignite. 

‘I’ve never blown a safe. It’s easier to get someone to open it for you. My dad said to me “why do you rob banks with a gun”. I said to him that we were only in there three or four minutes. He was in there all night. It’s a big difference for the same amount of money… but less bird.’ 

When asked about the Hatton Garden Diamond Geezers raid, Ronnie’s CV was perfect to earn a spot on the team. 

However, without a second thought, Ronnie has a surprising reply when asked for his professional opinion on the raid. 

‘I wouldn’t have gone. Too much money. Have you ever heard of anyone getting away with these multi-million pound jobs? 

‘They don’t, do they. They chase them forever. I’ve got friends now who are still being chased. I can’t say their names, but one had just come out. He had been away for 30 years and they are still chasing him around the place. 

‘Turning up to wherever he is. They don’t like to leave you alone.’

He also said using personal cars on such a job was poor tradecraft, as was using a pensioner’s pass to travel on the tube. According to Ronnie, when a job is so big the authorities are willing to allocate incredible resources to capture you.

‘They should have known better,’ he quipped.  

Forward planning is crucial, according to Ronnie, when planning a raid: ‘I used to look at where it is and whose money it is, for a start. If it is government money I’d leave it where it is, because you don’t want to get involved in that. They don’t like losing a few quid… also who’s organising it and that sort of thing. 

‘I worked with the same people all the time. There were about eight of us. Three or four of us would be involved in each job.’ 

When asked if keeping the numbers down was due to security or compartmentalising details of each raid to only those who are directly involved, Ronnie laughs. ‘We were just a firm going around robbing banks. I’ve only been in prison three times. 

‘I’ve been working since I was 16, so, my track record ain’t bad.’ 

Ronnie said he isn’t worried about the police now as he is retired. ‘It wouldn’t be worth putting me away now. They wouldn’t get many years out of me… another five and that would be their lot.’  

In the late 1970s a revolutionary new television series was produced by Thames. It was required viewing from both sides of the criminal divide. 

George Carter and Jack Regan, played by Dennis Waterman and John Thaw were The Sweeney. An unflinching look at law enforcement in London. Unlike earlier TV shows, there was no clear right and wrong in each episode. Getting the job done trumped acting according to the book. 

Ronnie never met Waterman and Thaw, although he was well acquainted to those in the Flying Squad – the unit tasked with tracking down gangs of bank robbers.   

‘They… [the Sweeney] did a lot of shouting. They did a lot of knocking you about. Whatever they said you done, you got a guilty anyway. Nine times out of ten, I’ve got mates who have gone away for things they didn’t do. The courts think “they didn’t do this one but they’ve done something else”.’ 

On arrival in Parkhurst Prison in the early hours of the morning, Ronnie was led into the governor’s office to meet a reception committee. 

He said he was taken from Liverpool overnight to the Isle of Wight. He was in the back of a van with one arm tethered to the roof and the other to the floor. He said the van travelled at high speed with the sirens blaring for several hours. 

The prison officers all had earmuffs to protect them from the oppressive sound. 

‘The sea was tossing us all over the place. When we got there, this screw asked if I was someone special as there were two people to meet me. 

‘I thought it was Old Bill. But it was Ron and Reg. They gave me a bag of tobacco, milk powder, tins of soup and a couple of tins of salmon. It was proper little treasure trove in the nick. Especially sugar and tobacco. I didn’t smoke either, but it was handy as you could swap it for other things.

‘I thought they were very generous. You knew where you was. If you upset Reg, you had a fight on your hands. Ronnie was definitely off his head. I think Reggie was as well. 

‘Reggie could hide his emotions. Ronnie couldn’t. Reggie would sit there and see you a couple of days later in the toilets and stab you, you know what I mean? Ronnie would come straight at you. He didn’t think of consequences. I guess it doesn’t matter when you are looking at 30. 

‘The did well over their 30. Reggie only got out for eight days before he died. Ronnie only got out for Reggie’s funeral.’ 

However, for the past two decades, Ronnie has been officially retired. Running out of a bank carrying a cricket bag stuffed with cash requires a great deal of fitness. 

‘I’m retired. A long time. I’ve been out 22 years, I aint saying I haven’t done anything wrong in that time. Silly things. But I’ve not hurt no-one or robbed anything since I’ve come out. 

‘I think it’s an achievement that I’m still alive. Joe said I wouldn’t reach 21. I’m 78 this year. I’ve been shot, stabbed and run over. They are all painful. You can’t say which is worse.’ 

On the new generation of criminal. ‘Pack up now before you spend 20 years looking out a little window. It aint worth it. It aint worth it at all. It’s not because I’m scared of prison. It seems futile to me. You’re away from your family. My daughter was grown up by the time I was out.’ 

‘Bank robbing as a profession is a thing of the past. The banks don’t carry the money anymore. It’s all in a machine in the wall. I went to get £10,000 the other day and I had to wait two days for it… in a bank. 

‘I said you were lucky this weren’t a few years ago. I tell you what does seem strange, being asked into the manager’s office sitting having a cup a tea. A few years ago, I’d have had him on the floor. We all laugh about it, but it must have been frightening seeing us coming in or seeing any firm coming in, masked up. 

‘My girlfriend was in a bank in Raynes Park when someone came in and robbed it. 

‘What’s more frightening. A shotgun with two big holes or a pistol with a little hole. 

‘A pathologist said at one of our trials that salt would kill you from eight feet.’

‘You aint there to massacre everyone or cause mayhem. You are there to get a few quid and run. We never set out to hurt anyone. 

‘It’s like those people I shot in Leeds. I didn’t set out to hurt anyone. It was a bit of work that came on top. No one was more regretful than me… I suppose apart from the people who were shot. It wasn’t something we wanted. 

‘It was wrong information. The fella who put the work up said as soon as you get through the door there’s a counter and when I blew a hole through the door, the door wasn’t steel lined like he said. A 12 bore. It fell to bits. The splinters went in and 20-odd ball bearings from the cartridge. There were women and geezers sitting there sorting out wage packets. We shot off. One geezer ran at me with a big spanner. Every floor we ran down there were people challenging us. With a shut gun, the know it’s real.

‘I don’t enjoy hurting people and I’ve got regrets about the people that I shot. I’ve got regrets about the families of some of the guards. Looking back know I think “bleeding hell” I know what it’s like having a gun pointed at me. It’s frightening. I regret hurting people. I know there are people out there who think I’m talking b******s, and they can come and tell me if they like…’ 

Another regret Ronnie said he had, was the one job he let get away. He had just come out of Parkhurst when a lucrative offer was made. 

‘This fella came to me with a bit of work the week I got out and I thought… no, I don’t want to do that, it sounds too much money. They are going to get caught… they didn’t get caught and they all have lovely places now. But I could have gone on it, they wanted me but it was my decision. I still see them now. I turned it down and I shouldn’t have done.’ 

• Nefarious: A life in Crime. My life with Joey Pyle, The Krays and other faces by Ronnie Field and Martin Knight by Harper Collins is out now in all good book shops £22