Kray twins Party, in power from October 1964, but with a wafer-thin majority in the House of Commons and the prospect of another General Election needing to be called in the very near future, did not want Driberg's connections to Ronnie Kray (and his sexual predilections) to get into the public realm. Ronnie Kray shot and killed George Cornell, a member of the Richardsons (a rival South London gang), at the Blind Beggar pub in Whitechapel on 9 March 1966. The day before, there had been a shoot-out at "Mr. Smith's", a nightclub in Catford, involving the Richardson gang and Richard Hart,
Astor Club club in the—at the time—very disreputable area of West London known as Notting Hill. He was acquitted amid talk of "jury nobbling" and interference with witnesses, but the following year was accused of Grievous Bodily Harm (GBH), convicted and sentenced to 5 years' imprisonment. It was at the Astor in December 1965 that the infamous East End (East London) Kray twins had a confrontation with the South London criminals known as the Richardson Gang; during that face-off, the gangster George Cornell is said to have referred to Ronnie Kray as a "fat poofter" (in another version, "a big fat poof"),