BBC’s Blackshirt blooper
Fascist uniform mistake in new drama ‘plays fast and loose’ with history
A MAJOR BBC drama about the Second World War will depict British Fascists wearing their notorious Blackshirt uniforms almost three years after the outfits were banned by law.
World On Fire, starring Sean Bean, Helen Hunt and Lesley Manville, opens with Oswald Mosley addressing a Fascist rally in Manchester in March 1939.
Mosley, played by Jonathan McGuiness, and his extremist cronies can be clearly seen wearing the uniform as his supporters repeatedly shout ‘Blackshirts!’ over and over again while delivering Nazi salutes.
But historians say the depiction is inaccurate because the wearing of political uniforms, including the Blackshirt outfit, had been banned years earlier by the Public Order Act 1936.
The law was introduced to curtail the activities of Mosley and the British Union of Fascists following the so-called Battle of Cable Street which took place on October 4, 1936.
Police, called out to protect a march by Mosley and his followers, clashed with thousands of anti-Fascist demonstrators who did not want the march to proceed through London’s largely Jewish East End.
Under the provisions of the Act, which was rushed through Parliament, all political uniforms including black shirts were banned.
The legislation remains on the statute book.
The black polo neck shirts worn by Mosley and his followers, which were modelled on his own fencing jackets, were infamous in Britain in the early 1930s.
But after the Public Order Act was introduced, Mosley and his followers adopted civilian clothes at rallies. Historian Professor Julie Gottlieb said: ‘It would have been unlikely that Mosley and his supporters would have worn the Blackshirt uniform in 1939.
‘Under the Public Order Act, the wearing of the “traditional Blackshirt” uniform was banned.
‘Available images of British Union marches in the lead-up to the War clearly show that members wore an unofficial uniform, dark shirt and blazer or sports jackets.
‘The posters for the Earls Court rally that year show Mosley represented in a shirt jacket and definitely not the uniform.’
Second World War historian Guy Walters said it sounded like the BBC was playing ‘ fast and loose’ with the facts when it came to the wearing of the uniforms, even though ‘Blackshirt’ continued to be used as a term of abuse after the introduction of the Act.
The BBC has high hopes f or the seven-part drama, written by acclaimed dramatist Peter Bowker, which follows the fortunes of families in four different countries – Britain, Poland, France and Germany – during the first year of the conflict.
A spokesman for the show said: ‘We find in research that those wearing the Blackshirt uniform at such a rally would have had the option to cover them with overcoats and jackets once they left the building.
‘They were then at a lower risk of being reported/arrested.’
World On Fire starts on BBC One later this month.