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,
The Richardson Gang and tooth removals, he said that it was "all false... Today, we wouldn't have even been charged, let alone gone to prison." The Richardson gang and the Kray twins were engaged in a turf war in the mid- to late 1960s. Charlie Richardson and George Cornell had first met the Krays while in Shepton Mallet Prison. Tensions came to a head in 1965–66. During a Christmas party at the Astor Club in December 1965, Cornell called Ronnie Kray a "fat poof" and a fight ensued. On 7 or 8 March 1966, Richard Hart, one of the Krays's associates, was shot