When Peaky Blinders introduced the Billy Boys in Season 5, viewers were warned in ominous tones: “They represent the real devil of Glasgow.” For many fans, the line passed quickly amid the show’s stylish brutality. Yet behind it lay a grim truth. The Billy Boys were not fictional exaggerations—they were a real, terrifying Protestant gang whose shadow loomed over Glasgow in the 1920s, leaving scars that Scotland still debates today.
At the heart of the gang stood Billy Fullerton, a man born into the poverty of Bridgeton in Glasgow’s East End. After failed attempts at legitimate work in the shipyards and an unrealized football career, Fullerton channeled his ambition into something far darker. By the early 1920s, he had forged the Billy Boys into what many historians consider the largest and most disciplined street gang Britain had ever seen.
At their peak, the Billy Boys numbered as many as 800 men. They were not a loose rabble but a quasi-military organization, divided into 40-man units, each led by a lieutenant who answered directly to Fullerton—known reverently and fearfully as “The Chief” or the “Razor King.” Armed with razors, clubs, and sheer numbers, they controlled territory through intimidation and ritualized violence.
Sectarianism defined their existence. The Billy Boys were fiercely Protestant and violently opposed to Glasgow’s growing Irish Catholic population. Bloody clashes with Catholic gangs such as the Norman Conks and the Kent Star were common, especially during Orange Walks, when the Billy Boys deliberately marched through Catholic districts to provoke confrontation. These were not spontaneous street fights but ideological battles rooted in identity, religion, and power.
Politics soon deepened the danger. Fullerton aligned himself with extremist movements, founding the Glasgow branch of the British Union of Fascists. His gang acted as muscle for Oswald Mosley during speeches in Scotland, lending fascism an intimidating street presence. Even more chilling are reports linking Fullerton to a short-lived Scottish Ku Klux Klan offshoot known as the Knights of Kaledonia Klan.
The Billy Boys’ most enduring legacy, however, is a song. Sung to the tune of Marching Through Georgia, “The Billy Boys” featured lyrics threatening to wade “up to our knees in Fenian blood.” Decades after the gang’s destruction, the song echoed from sections of Rangers F.C. support, embedding the gang’s hatred into football culture. Its eventual ban from Scottish stadiums in 2011 only highlighted how deeply the past still resonates.
The reign of the razor gangs finally ended in the late 1930s under the crackdown of Percy Sillitoe, but the memory remains. Billy Fullerton died in 1962, remembered by some as a local protector, by others as a symbol of Scotland’s darkest sectarian years. The Billy Boys were not just television villains—they were a disciplined army of fear, proving that the “devil of Glasgow” was once terrifyingly real