Dr Jacques COULARDEAU

BBC – PEAKY BLINDERS – 2014 – SERIES 2

This second series widens the geographical frame and leads the Shelby’s to London. The Irish are definitely on the back burner and Winston Churchill is quite obviously playing a game of his own against the “new cop who came from Ireland” and cannot think in other terms than the IRA. Winston Churchill must be seeing beyond the Irish problem and seeing that the inner English problem is more dangerous for the crown than the Irish rebellion to which anyway they yielded then.

That’s where moving to London and trying to start an export business the Shelby’s came in full confrontation with two other organized shady and fuzzy business gangs in this field of entertainment, alcohol and tobacco. The Italians and the Jews. The Italians want to be over everyone, so the Shelby’s who are identified as the Gypsies tie up an alliance with the Jews against the Italians who saw the danger and then tie up a new alliance with the Jews against the Gypsies. Three groups that are defined ethnically, culturally and religiously who try to take control of the entertainment business with the enormous US market presently shaken by prohibition and yet next door to Canada which is not concerned but is a marvelous entry gate.

Those three groups are in a struggle that looks more like a war but it is essential to understand modern England. England had a bill of rights and other more common law than constitutional basic civil rights but for a long time limited to the Protestants, the Catholics being excluded. When they had to move away from this segregation they introduced or maintained (since Italian and Gypsies are Catholics and Jews are not exactly Protestants) other discriminations against other communities essentially seen as non-English. The Italians are obvious since they are of foreign origin and Mussolini is going to come to power and Italian refugees, mostly communists, are going to increase in numbers. The Jews are less obvious but anti-Semite feelings in England have always been high in the past, Shakespeare being a good example there, or Dickens. And these Jews have strange customs that are kind of shocking to the English. Finally the Gypsies have always been some kind of social enemy and social marginal group that was always engaged in shady business with the reputation of practicing prostitution, drug dealing, illegal betting and illegal fights, and many other niceties of the type.

The most dangerous fact is that they are all back from the First World War where they learned how to use weapons and how to fight and they do not want to be downtrodden any more.

In this society the real danger is the possibility for the communists to conquer a vast influence based on discontentment. So the best way is to come to terms with some of the shady groups so that they will entertain the lower classes and prevent discontentment from becoming dangerous revolutionary enterprises or adventures. In this second series this communist danger is mostly marginalized and Winston Churchill wants to take the control of the entertainment business and he considers the gypsies are the least dangerous in that line.

So while the “new cop” from Ireland, who does not from my point of view deserve a name because he is not doing police work but civil war military action, is going on with his plan of getting rid of one higher up military officer who has in a way or another in the “new cop’s” mind betrayed his ideals in Ireland, and what’s more he is going on with his secondary plan of using Thomas Shelby to fulfill the first, Winston Churchill plans saving Thomas Shelby from the hands of this “new cop from Ireland” and keeping him in store for some objective we cannot know.

This exploration of discriminatory and racist England is interesting because we would not think it was like that so little time back, and yet it is the lessons learned from this period that explains the policy with various communities who have their autonomy and their self governing powers in various fields like education. What others in the world call communitarianism is totally recognized in England and it works rather well when connections and relations are established between and among the communities within city councils and borough boundaries. We are here at the roots of English reformist conservatism which kills the left most of the time who wants to impose some principles that go against practical realism in social matters.

Of course this series has to get rid of a couple of people who are blocking the future and to save a couple more without whom there would be no future. In other words the next series is thus clearly prepared.