The knot of youths lolling on a park bench or sitting astride their mountain bikes, occasionally exchanging extravagant greetings, looked as if they owned the place. They probably do.

This is Broadfield Park, a scruffy area in the centre of Moss Side, South Manchester, and the most fiercely protected gangland turf in Britain. People have died here in the name of tribal loyalty.

Jessie James, a schoolboy, was ambushed and shot in the early hours of a warm September night two years ago as he cycled through the park and into the inner sanctum of the notorious Gooch gang.

In hindsight, it was not the smartest idea for me, a middle-aged man in shirt sleeves and suit trousers, and most importantly a stranger, to start asking questions about their notion of loyalty to each other, their families and community.

A young man on a mountain bike fixed me with a withering look of contempt long before I reached the youths sunning themselves in the middle of the park: “You think about the word loyalty, man. You approach them boys, and mention that word, they will run you out of the park.”

One hundred yards away, police officers dealing with an incident involving Somalis on the corner of Broadfield Road were protected by body armour. The question was, did I feel lucky?

“I ain’t saying they will beat you or take away your glasses but you are the one who started talking about loyalty,” the man on the bike said. “They don’t speak to no strangers.” Others nodded in agreement.

Moss Side, the inner-city area that became synonymous with gun crime during the 1990s, is a rabbit warren of streets to one side of a highway. It is a constantly changing urban landscape of ethnicities, and hence gang loyalties.

Gang membership is fluid at any one time, with younger “soldiers” forming fresh offshoots. Guns, notably coveted automatic weapons, are the accessory of choice to garner “respect”.

One constant is the rivalry between the oldest gangs prompted by competition for control of the drug trade. Moving across Alexandra Road is not simply crossing a street but moving from Gooch to Doddington territory.

Jessie James, aged 15 and a promising student, was probably “fingered” wrongly as a member of the rival Doddington gang in front of Gooch boys. His mother, Barbara Reid, believes that her son was cut down in a hail of automatic gunfire because he refused to choose a gang.

In a revealing statement about gang loyalties, she told her son’s inquest: “They said to him to ‘choose’, but he did not want to. He wanted to be everybody’s friend. But they said that if he did not choose there is going to be enough blood around here. Three days later Jessie was dead.

“Jessie was cornered, pointed out and intimidated at every opportunity. He was coerced and compelled to join the gang. Time and time again until his death, Jessie humiliated the gangsters to their face by saying ‘no’ to the gang.”

Police officers have gone into prisons offering gang members the prospect of an early release in return for information, but Jessie’s murder remains unsolved and the wall of silence largely unbreached.

A group of youths, some wearing beanies under hoodies despite the weather, pull away from the main gathering. They wander down Great Western Street and past the Super Spoon, a popular Caribbean takeaway. There are more extravagant meetings of fists.

As night falls there will be patrols by the Greater Manchester Police Xcalibre unit, which has the job of keeping the warring factions apart.

Recently a senior officer suggested that the gangs were “running scared” after Operation Cougar, which has pushed up the number of stop-and-searches and disrupted the drug trade.

One Xcalibre officer recently told the Manchester Evening News: “Years ago when the gangs first emerged it was all about drug dealing, now it is not just that. The gangs can be into drugs, robberies and burglaries, but some of them do it just because they enjoy it.

“When you get them on their own, they’re not actually bad lads but they have somehow just got caught up in all of this.

“Sometimes little gangs can form in schools. The gangs then get a little bigger and before you know it the schoolboys are being groomed by older men to become part of a bigger criminal gang.”

After a spate of recent shootings, one worried father in Moss Side said: “Maybe it is time for parents to shop their kids to the police. I want parents who have kids that are in gangs to speak up because I don’t hear nothing coming from them.”

Meanwhile, the media are unwelcome visitors. “They called this place the ‘wild, wild west’ because of Jessie’s name,” one young black man said. He was not impressed by me, or anyone else, who comes to his part of the city asking questions.

Times Recommends

• The day they dropped a bomb on the banks
• Methodist minister sent herself hate mail
• Japanese insect to be used to fight knotweed