The True Story of Peaky Blinders's Fascist Villain, Oswald Mosley
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While the hit British crime show Peaky Blinders keeps an eye on history (the show's titular gang was inspired by a real-life Birmingham gang of the same name), it's characters have always been works of fiction. That is, until season five debuted, introducing Oswald Mosley, the latest villain that the Shelby family is destined to face off against.
Unlike Tommy Shelby's previous adversaries, Mosley, who looks poised to be a thorn in Birmingham's side in season six, is based on a historically controversial political figure. Here's everything you need to know about the real life Mosley.
Mosley's Early Life
Born into wealth on November 16, 1896, Mosley would later inherit the hereditary title of 6th Baronet. A champion fencer, he attended Winchester College, and became a cadet at the Royal Military Academy at Sandhurst shortly before the start of WWI.
In 1914 he was commissioned into a cavalry unit, but instead volunteered to earn his pilot's license so that he could join the Royal Flying Corps (a predecessor to the Royal Air Force). It was a decision that ended up cutting his military career in the field short—a 1915 plane crash left him with a broken ankle. That injury led to him being invalided home from the Western Front to serve behind a desk in the Ministry of Munitions and the Foreign Office for the remainder of the war.
His Career in Politics
Despite disappointment over his abbreviated military career, Mosley quickly set his sights on politics. A famously charismatic orator—the Westminster Gazette once described him as “the most polished literary speaker in the Commons”—he won his first election for MP for the Conservative Party at the age of 21. However, over time Mosley came to clash with the party's policies and shifted to first the Independent and then Labour parties, serving in the House of Commons from 1918 to 1931.
That year, Mosley lost his seat after founding his own political party known as the New Party. With meetings guarded by a group of toughs known as "Biff Boys" who functioned as a sort of de facto militia for Mosley, the New Party marked the first hint of the violent political expressions that Mosley and his followers would become known for.
In 1932, following a trip through Europe, in which he became enamored with Benito Mussolini's fascist regime, Mosley changed the name of his party to the British Union of Fascists (BUF).
Mosley's Role in the Rise of Fascism in Britain
Though he had previously espoused socialist views, his new direction for the party was based on an intensely anti-Semitic, anti-communist doctrine that would dampen the powers of Parliament and restrict imports from outside of the U.K. He took heavy inspiration from Mussolini, naming the party's official newspaper The Blackshirt after Mussolini’s militia, and developed black uniforms for its members before the practice was banned by the Public Order Act of 1936.
Thanks in part to Mosley's skill as a public speaker, as well as rising political discontent in Britain, the BUF began to gain traction, boasting as many as 50,000 members at its peak, including figures like Daily Mail and Daily Mirror owner Viscount Rothermere. In 1933, the Daily Mail even notoriously ran the headline "Hurrah for the Blackshirts!" in praise of the BUF.
The party's rise was far from meteoric, however. Several displays of violence helped turn public sentiment away from Mosley's edicts; most prominently the 1934 Olympia Rally and the 1936 "Battle of Cable Street." At the former, the BUF's paramilitary wing brutally attacked anti-fascist and Jewish dissenters who came to protest Mosley's speech to some 12,000 supporters. At the latter, opponents broke up an attempted BUF march through a Jewish area of east London intended to incite fear among the residents.
Both incidents garnered large-scale public attention that helped turn the tide of public opinion against the BUF, though Mosley did hold on to a number of supporters through a platform that argued that Britain could avoid a second world war and maintain peace by siding with Germany's Nazi party.
Nonetheless, the BUF was never successful in winning a single parliamentary seat.
The End of Mosley's Political Career
When Britain became entrenched in WWII, support for Mosley's BUF effectively ended and the party was banned by the government in 1940. Mosley, along with his second wife and numerous other fascist supporters, were interned at Holloway prison for the majority of the war, but Mosley was released in 1943 due to an illness and placed under house arrest.
After the war, Mosley moved to Ireland for a period and then to Paris, but he kept after his political ambitions. He formed a group known as the Union Movement which called for the continent of Europe to be brought under the governance of a single nation-state as well as the forced repatriation of Caribbean immigrants. The movement never gained significant traction—Mosley stood for re-election in 1959 and 1966 but failed both times. In 1973, the Union Movement was dissolved.
Mosley lived out the rest of his life abroad, publishing an autobiography in 1968 titled My Life. He died on December 3, 1980 at the age of 84.
Mosley's Wives
Though Mosley was known as a notorious womanizer, he was legally married twice.
In 1920, he married his first wife, Lady Cynthia Curzon, the daughter of prominent political figure Lord George Curzon, in a wedding attended by King George V and Queen Mary. The couple shared an interest in politics, Cynthia was elected as a MP for the Labour party in 1929. In 1931, she followed him into his New Party but never sought election again. During their marriage, Mosley reportedly had numerous affairs, including with Cynthia's youngest sister and her stepmother as well as other women, according to a biography by his son Nicholas Mosley. Cynthia died of peritonitis in 1933, leaving behind three children.
Three years later, Mosley secretly married Diana Guinness, one of the notorious Mitford sisters with whom he had been carrying on an affair for several years. Diana was married to brewery heir, Bryan Guinness when the two met, but ultimately left him for Mosley. The wedding was held at the home of Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels, and included on the guest list was Adolf Hitler. The couple determined not to go public with their marriage for two more years, until the birth of the first of their two children in 1938. The couple remained together for the rest of Mosley's life, despite rumored infidelities. Diana died in Paris in 2003 at the age of 93.
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