Lessons from Tommy Shelby: The Peaky Blinder from Birmingham

“Don’t expect what you give... Not everyone has a heart like you”

— Tommy Shelby

Tommy Shelby returned to Britain in 1919 as a War Hero from the First World War and was honoured for his bravery at the Battle of Verdun and the Battle of Somme. However, there was more to the war than laureates for Tommy — it changed his life forever with trauma and altered his perspectives on life and society eternally.

Tommy returned to Birmingham, the home of heavy metals, famous for its role as a hotspot in the industrial revolution in the 19th Century. But Britain at the end of the First World War was marred by newly minted revolutions, despair, sybaritism, and rocked by economic upheaval and social injustice. It is in this New Britain, in Birmingham networked with canals from Sherborne Wharf and pubs clouded with cigars and, laden with whisky jars as flower pots that Tommy sought to raise his family gang: The Peaky Blinders.

There are many lessons we can learn from the life of this war hero, Tommy Shelby, and his breakthrough in a rotten ecosystem.

FAMILY:

The Peaky Blinders is more than a Society; they are a family. In fact, a family of Shelbys. He showed us through the ultimate sacrifices he makes for Arthur (his brother who…