Peaky Blinders is an acclaimed BBC television series. Netflix has the first five seasons of it. Episode 1 of Season 6 has just premiered on BBC. My good friend Norman and I are watching it on Netflix. Today he said he didn’t understand the historical context of the show and how such a gang could have arisen.
So I sent him this email.
Norm, I'm going to try to give a brief rundown of history that may give you a better context for understanding Peaky Blinders. It will be good practice for me.
1850-1910 was the peak of the Industrial Revolution which changed the world. It was powered by coal, oil, steel and the railroads. It led to the creation of the first huge modern fortunes, like Rockefeller and Standard Oil. Their first product was kerosene in standardized cans. This replaced whale oil to light people's homes and businesses. Rockefeller also bought and controlled the railroads that transported the kerosene.
Andrew Carnegie, a Scot, made US Steel which allowed construction of railroads, bridges, locomotives, and tall buildings. Both he and Rockefeller bought up competitors or eliminated them by whatever means were necessary. They also ruthlessly exploited workers with 6 and 7 day weeks, 12 hour work days, child labor, and low pay.
A similar thing happened with coal mining. Parallel developments were happening in England. The coal mining there was centered in Wales. You can drive through Wales today and the land is covered with huge piles and mountains of slag leftover from mining.
Huge fortunes were created which endure to this day, millions of people were exploited, and improved living conditions did not filter down to the masses. Karl Marx and Frederick Engels published the works which established the principles of socialism and communism. There were other important thinkers and activists, too, including Eugene Debs in America.
These ideas were enormously attractive and compelling throughout the world, but especially in England, Europe, including Russia, and America. They were influential in the creation of labor unions. There were huge violent and deadly battles between union members and the private armies of the capitalists and owners in the early 1900s.
In those early years of the 20th century, automobiles were invented and the names of Henry Ford, Daimler Benz, and Ferdnand Porsche were etched into history. Porsche's very first car was electric! A huge monstrous thing. Ford revolutionized the world with mass production. (Henry Ford was a big time racist and supported the Nazis along with an important preacher to crowds and on radio named Father Coughlin.)
Teddy Roosevelt started the trust busting in America which broke up the Rockefeller's Standard Oil monopoly and others. Automobiles were welcomed as an antidote to the streets of big cities which were knee deep rivers of mud and horse shit. Millions of dead horses were a real problem. Automobiles were welcomed as a cleaner and more sanitary solution.
The innovations of Tesla and Edison electrified the world and ended the mass slaughter of whales. Dangerous open flames powered by kerosene were replaced by smokeless electric lights while the automobile industry, diesel locomotives and ships, and skyscrapers consumed mass quantities of steel, oil, granite, and concrete.
The crowded northern cities of Birmingham and Manchester were seen as the prime examples of the evils of predatory capitalism. They were hotbeds of labor unions and socialist/communist sympathies. The towns were ugly, noisy, dirty and crowded. Living conditions were awful. It was even worse in the smaller Welsh mining towns, Work days were long and dangerous in the short and long term. The entire north and west of England was polluted.
The police everywhere were on the side of the owners and in their pockets. The police were seen as mortal enemies of ordinary people for good reason.
Various organized criminal gangs were already established in European and American cities. The Sicilian mafia came over from Italy and became templates for the formation and operation of other gangs from different countries and societies. Gypsies (the name comes from 'Egyptian' - the gypsies, or Romanians, liked to imply they had ancient and mystical roots) were established throughout the civilized and industrialized world. Their strong internal family traditions and loyalties endure to this day. Gambling, fortune telling, pickpocketing, prostitution, small scale theft and cons - all were profitable crimes preying on universal human weaknesses. The other gangs operated similarly.
Then in 1914, following an assassination in Serbia, the completely unnecessary WWI is in full swing. That's a whole other story, but it was due to the hubris and wounded pride of the Great European powers, including Russia. It was the first industrialized war and the toll in deaths and maimed fighters was in the many millions.
Meanwhile the circumstances of a weakened czar, awful conditions for regular Russians, a defanged Russian military and the organizing ability of Lenin and others, the Bolsheviks prevailed, and Russia became the first Communist state. There were conflicts and it took a few years for Lenin's contingent to consolidate power. England covertly supported forces challenging Lenin, but they were unsuccessful.
Many in Europe and America supported the Russian Revolution and the ideals and aims of Communism and socialism. Thinkers, artists, and labor union leaders were swept up in the vision of a worldwide Revolution, the triumph of the people over the capitalists.
The brutalities of the Bolsheviks, the mass slaughter and purges of Stalin, and the overall failure of Communism to live up to ideals and objectives, led many, if not most, of these early supporters to renounce their support. Many of these artists later became the targets of Senator Joe McCarthy's efforts and were prohibited from earning a living for many years until McCarthy was denounced and his government backed witch hunt was ended.
The time after the war was called the Lost Generation. This was the millions of young European men killed and lost forever.. There were few young men remaining in good health.The consequences of this lost generation were tremendous.
It is in this environment that the Peaky Blinders and similar gangs flourished in England. WWI produced few surviving heroes. This is why Tommy Shelby's character enjoyed high esteem in that society, even with the police and politicians.
It was in this time that spiritualism enjoyed an expanded popularity and practice throughout Europe. Mothers and sweethearts wanted to contact the dead boys and men. Charlatans (and gypsies) took advantage of these tragic yearnings. Religious and mystical interest soared in Europe
There was an abundance of young fertile women and a shortage of young men. The results were predictable.
America was resented due to the fact that it escaped the ravages of WWI as well as the massive casualties. Yet it was entirely the entrance of American men and resources that ended the slaughter in Europe.
In the aftermath of the war and massive relentless death, people wanted life and pleasure. Prohibition in America generated another round of huge fortunes from smuggled liquor - including that of Joseph Kennedy, the origins of Kennedy wealth.
It also generated the allure of the stock market as a way for regular people to enjoy the possibility of wealth. And, of course, there were those who took advantage of the rush to buy stocks and made their own fortunes on the dreams and greed of millions.
We have then the Roaring Twenties. And they were roaring. This is the time of the Great Gatsby, of big luxurious and fast motorcars, jazz music, flappers abandoning long hair and long dresses, smoking cigarettes and drinking in public, excess in all regards.
Although WWI had created a horror of war and a universal desire to avoid such suffering at all costs, the forces were almost unavoidably building toward WWII, first and foremost the draconian war reparation costs that the allies had imposed on Germany.
The Twenties Roared. German suffering and resentment grew.
Then came the great crash of 1929. Fortunes quickly made vanished overnight. The whole world tumbled into Depression.
While FDR conceived and implemented the New Deal, Hitler's Nazi Party took over Germany, Imperial Japan invaded Manchuria, Mao Tse Tung was growing the Communist Party in China, and in short order, the path to WWII emerged from the turbulence.