The Observer
News 11.08.19 13This charming monster: how
Peaky Blinders took on Mosley
Creator Steven Knight
talks to Sarah Hughes
about the fi ne line the
show had to walk in
depicting the fascist
leader in the new series
Fascist leader Oswald Mosley has fea-
tured on TV and fi lm before, but the
portrayal of the charismatic dema-
gogue of the 1920s and 30s can rarely
have been so timely.
Mosley, the Labour MP who would
go on to found the British Union of
Fascists, is the main antagonist in the
forthcoming fi fth series of the Bafta-
award winning Peaky Blinders – and
the show’s creator, Steven Knight,
says despite the politician’s abhor-
rent views, the decision to feature him
prominently was an easy one.
“The show always leapfrogs for-
ward two or three years with each
series, and in 1929 the most eye-
catching storyline, and the one that
felt the most resonant to now, was the
rise of fascism and the growth of pop-
ulism and racism in politics across
Europe,” he says.
“Given that we ended the last series
with [lead character] Tommy Shelby
getting elected as a Labour politician,
it seemed inevitable that he would
Pirates of the Caribbean and The
Hunger Games, describes the role as
“the most grown-up thing I’ve ever
done ”, and prepared for it by watch-
ing clips of the fascist leader address-
ing the faithful.
“You can see from watching the
footage that’s out there of him that
he was both incredibly charismatic
and incredibly manipulative,” he says.
“What was important was trying to
get the essence of him without doing
an impersonation, because I want the
people who remember him to feel
that there is real fl avour of him there.”
It was important, too, not to under-
estimate the appeal of Mosley’s pop-
ulist message. “It’s easy to see how
and why people fell for it without
agreeing with anything he says,” adds
Clafl in.
“It’s the same as the Trump situ-
ation. People wanted change. They
felt that what was happening in pol-
itics wasn’t working, and they aren’t
really listening to what’s being said.
They’re just thinking, ‘oh, this all feels
refreshing and new.’”
Anthony Bryne, the series director,
agrees, describing the populist poli-
tics of the time as an ideology that’s
“ spreading like a virus, and it seems
as though there’s no cure for it”.
The show also has fun drawing
parallels with Tommy Shelby’s own
attempts to present himself as a man
of the people. “To begin with, Mosley
and Shelby are very much the same
side of the coin,” says Knight.
“What I’m interested in exploring
is how an amoral person [Shelby],
whose ideas of human value have
been destroyed by his experiences in
the fi rst world war, responds when
confronted by this ideology.”
While the series will have twists
and turns along the way, it seems
that its creator may be hoping
its ending holds a message for
today’s politicians. “My hope
would be that [viewers] know that
history was the judge of Mosley,
as it will be of all those people
who offer simplistic solutions to
complicated problems.”Peaky Blinders returns on
BBC One at 9pm on Sunday
25 AugustOswald Mosley
at a fascist
march in south-
east London,- Getty
come into contact with Mosley – and
interesting to consider what both
men might have in common as well
as what marks them apart.”
The dapper Mosley was celebrated
when younger for his sharp style and
“personal magnetism”; Knight admits
that the show had to walk a fi ne line
when depicting his appeal.
“All the stories about Mosley men-
tion his charisma, and in Sam [Clafl in]
we cast an actor who could portray
that, but I also wanted to refl ect the
fact that for lots of people his poli-
cies appeared horribly attractive. I
wanted audiences to remember that
he wasn’t somebody spouting things
that people didn’t want to hear but
rather someone who people did lis-Sir Oswald Mosley of Ancoats , sixth
baronet (1896-1980), has been
portrayed and pastiched on British
television and in fi lm in a string of
dramas and satires.
In 1998, the actor Jonathan Cake
played the fascist leader in Channel
4’s Mosley , a drama based on books
by Mosley’s son, Nicholas.
One of the fi rst to base a character
upon him was the writer Aldous
Huxley. Everard Webley in his 1928novel Point Counter Point was
inspired by Mosley’s Labour party
days. PG Wodehouse’s unappealing
Roderick Spode , a character seen in
TV adaptations of the Jeeves books,
was also based on him.
HG Wells’s Th e Holy Terror
features a leader, Lord Horatio
Bohun, who owes much to Mosley,
while the BBC revival of Upstairs
Downstairs included scenes of
Mosley during the Cable Street riots.A screen history
ten to. That’s what was so terrifying
about him.”
With the notorious 1936 Battle of
Cable Street , in which Mosley’s fas-
cists were sent packing from London’s
East End, some years away, the show’s
version of the politician is very much
the man described by the Westminster
Gazette as “the most polished literary
speaker in the Commons”. A young
and arrogant politician on the make,
whose thuggery is hidden under a
polished veneer, he is still convinced
that he can bend the Labour party –
which he joined after a spell fi rst as a
Conservative MP and then as an inde-
pendent – to his will.
Claflin, who made his name on
Hollywood blockbusters such asLEFT
Sam Clafl in
plays Mosley in
Peaky Blinders;
below, Cillian
Murphy as
Tommy Shelby.sprea
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