A former gangland enforcer has said the Triads established themselves in Manchester before spreading “like a disease” across the country. Richard Musa said his one-time boss, the Wo Shing Wo kingpin Georgie Pai, first gained a foothold in Manchester’s Chinatown in the 1980s before expanding the organised crime operation to every major city in the UK.
Mr Musa said: “They started in Manchester and they spread. It’s like a disease that spread all around the country. And he [Pai] was the first one who actually introduced Wo Shing Wo into the UK.”
Pai’s rise to power
Pai, who was born in Hong Kong and was known as The Duck because he walked with a limp due to a hip defect, was Britain’s most powerful Triad godfather in the 80s and 90s, the Manchester Evening News reports. The fedora-wearing gangster, whose real name was Chan Yee Yau, was reportedly recruited by the Wo Shing Wo gang as a teenager. He rapidly built a name for himself by collecting protection cash and running illegal gambling dens.
Pai arrived in the country in 1975 on a tourist visa and began working at his parents’ Chinese takeaway in Glastonbury, Somerset. But the restaurant job was just a front for his criminal ambitions. Behind the scenes he was quickly establishing Wo Shing Wo’s UK operation while battling fierce rivals The 14K for control of the lucrative Chinatowns in Manchester, Liverpool, Glasgow and London.
Violence and surveillance
Mr Musa, 48, told the Tie Your Camel podcast: “It’s like a disease that spread all around the country. And he [Pai] was the first one who actually introduced Wo Shing Wo into the UK.” He said Pai was the first person in the UK to ‘chop’ someone with a machete as he built an empire from protection rackets, prostitution, human trafficking and counterfeiting, almost exclusively within the Chinese community.
“They will smash up the restaurant,” he said. “Throw paint on it. Excuse me for saying it, but they will throw s** and p***, human s*** and p***, on customers. That’s what they do.”
Mr Musa, who said he left the Wo Shing Wo about two-and-a-half years ago after converting to Islam, said: “Anywhere there’s a Chinatown in the whole world they [Triads] exist. This is serious organisation and it’s worldwide.”
Pai kept a close eye on his Manchester empire through an extensive network of CCTV cameras, look-outs and informers. Mr Musa said: “[In] Manchester, the Triad operation got the cameras all around the whole Chinatown. They can see the whole Chinatown. So there’s no one can come in and come out without them seeing you. That’s how they got it locked like that.”
Deportations and downfall
The first time he met Pai he was called to Manchester from his then London home to help out with a ‘beef’ against what he described as ‘freshies’, recently arrived Chinese people. He said he spent an uneventful night in a Chinatown diner before returning home. But the next day the feud exploded in violence.
He said: “The same night that I went back to London, it kicked off. There was a big machete attack in the restaurant. They start chopping up everyone inside the restaurant right downstairs to where I was staying.”
In 1977 Pai was arrested by police in London after not renewing his visa. Then, after serving a jail term for extortion over a protection racket in Winchester, Hants., he was deported back to Hong Kong. Throughout the 80s, Pai, who was also known as Crippled George and the Limping One, repeatedly slipped back into the UK using forged documents.
He was deported for a second time in 1983 and again three years later after being spotted by undercover officers driving a BMW in Bristol. But by 1991 he was back in the UK – and had firmly cemented his Manchester power base.
Then living in a £100,000 mansion in Altrincham, Greater Manchester, Pai was enjoying the fruits of his illegal labour. But he was also increasingly coming under the spotlight. With the authorities under pressure to deport him for a fourth time, Pai also came to the attention of the broadcaster Roger Cook. During a year-long investigation his show The Cook Report set up a fake video rental store in Chinatown called Flying Dragon Video. It filmed Pai’s mobsters attempting to extort the business before attacking its owner, a Hong Kong police officer who had agreed to front the undercover operation.
The publicity meant Pai’s reign of terror was over and left Manchester and moved to Cheltenham. He died during the pandemic and was buried in Bristol, the BBC reported.
Legacy of violence
But while Pai may no longer have been on the scene, the Triads definitely still were. In 1996 four Triad gangsters from Greater Manchester were jailed for life for the cold-blooded execution of Chinese student Eddie Hui, 28, who was gunned down while working in his uncle’s chip shop in Glossop.
In 2004 a young man was found dead in Chinatown. It was said the victim was a Triad member who had travelled to Manchester for a pre-arranged fight, before being ambushed by another gang. And in 2010 a feud between the Wo Shing Wo and long-term rivals 14K erupted in Chinatown. The 30-man battle, which left six men seriously injured, with two fighting for their lives in intensive care, was sparked by a stand-off in a karaoke bar.
A trial at Manchester Crown Court later heard that as the brawl spilled out onto the road outside the karaoke bar, the alleged leader of the Wo Shing Wo shouted ‘I’ve run the streets of Manchester for over 10 years – who do you think you are?’
