HUNDREDS of mourners, many from Manchester’s gangland underworld, paid their last respects to the notorious crime enforcer Desmond “Dessie” Noonan yesterday.

His brother Dominic, an even more feared gangland figure, led the funeral procession the 500 yards from the family home on a council estate in south Manchester for the Requiem Mass at St Aidan’s RC Church.

Traffic came to a standstill as a traditional kilted pipe band led the way. Four black plumed horses drew the carriage carrying Noonan’s bulky body while a cortege of 12 black Daimlers each weighed down with suitably sentimental floral tributes, followed sedately in its wake.

The city has not seen anything like it. . . at least, not since the last Noonan died. More than 15,000 mourners joined the procession in August 2003, and parts of the city were cut off, when Damian Noonan, a familiar 22-stone figure, was interred after a holiday motorbike accident.

Dominic said: “Anyone who knows Dessie knows that he would love all this attention.”

If there was a passing similarity between the scene in the Southern Cemetery yesterday and the funerals of the Krays in London’s East End, it is no surprise. As with Reggie and Ronnie, the Noonan brothers, who come from a large and well-known Irish family, represent underworld royalty.

The Noonan brothers were in the thick of the gang wars that kicked off the “Gunchester” era in the 1980s and more often than not one or the other left their metaphorical dabs at the scene of armed robberies, prison riots and gangland murders.

Their reputation for violence and sheer longevity in a dangerous world placed them in a pre-eminent position and made it possible for them to broker deals between the warring, and often much younger, factions.

Over the years people in Moston, a poor working-class district whose residents complain of feeling abandoned by the authorities, including the police, have come to look to Dominic, Dessie and their gang for their own special kind of street justice.

In the recent fly-on-the-wall documentary MacIntyre’s Underworld on Five, Donal MacIntyre explained that when somebody was burgled, people would turn to Dominic Noonan to sort it out.

Dessie Noonan, 46, was stabbed to death close to his home in Chorlton last month as he and his brother were putting the final touches to their own legend as “invincible” crime bosses.

His name had been linked to dozens of armed robberies and several murders.

THE CLAN

• The Noonan brothers are among 14 siblings all with names starting with the letter D after Dublin, their original home city
  
  
• Dessie Noonan achieved notoriety when he and three others, including his brother Derek, walked free from Manchester Crown Court in February 1993 after a jury was unable to decide who murdered Tony “White” Johnson, an armed robber
  
  
• Dominic Noonan, now head of the clan, has spent 22 of his 40 years behind bars

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