Yes, Britain's legendary gangsters had a mum and anyone watching the film on television this evening would see the power of a mum. Without a mum you face a world blindfolded; a long and silent journey where you find your own path and hear just your own screams when you lose your way.
Paradoxically in the film the mum teaches her boys not to fight each other but to stick together and fight 'them' out there. Without their mum reprimanding them for knocking the shit out of each other in a boxing ring - I mean without a mum at all, how would life have panned out for them? Why is the mum (played by Billie Whitelaw) actually the central character in the film? Perhaps it is neither here nor there that the mum of the Krays' is so powerful and that only I perceive it as such because I had no mum and I fought the world with bare knuckles on my own. I took some bruisings but cannot ever recall losing a fight. The number of times I would plead with an aggressor who was provoking me and presumably thought I was easy meat, to back off, not because I was scared of them but scared of my own strength fuelled by a deep rage that they had a mum and I didn't.
Only once did I ever walk away from a fight when two thugs picked on me and a mate when we were about 30 years old because we were 'posh'. My mate, who grew up in Hong Kong with knives on the street, raised his fists but I grabbed him and yelled 'run'. I knew in a split second by the look in these guys' eyes they would have killed us. It is all in the eyes and nothing to do with size. Some times in life you perservere and fight (other people's battles as well) and other times you just walk away.
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