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Max Mosley: multimillionaire and fascist
by PETER FROST
Max Mosley (right) acting as election agent for Walter Hesketh (left), the British Union Movement candidate in the in 1961 Moss Side parliamentary by-election

WHEN I was asked to write an obituary of Max Mosley for our paper, I thought seriously about whether we should use our valuable space for such an article.

However when I saw the rest of the media singing the praises of the man as someone who had made some £15 million as the champion of Formula One motor racing and only briefly mentioned in passing that his father had been Oswald Mosley, the pre-war leader of Britain’s fascist Blackshirts, I knew what had to be done.

What none of them mentioned was that Max Mosley remained a fascist his whole life. 

He kept alive the opinions of his parents, Britain’s best-known fascist Blackshirt leader Oswald Mosley and Diana Mitford. Mitford was a supporter of Hitler and his Nazi Party all her life.

Diana and her sister, Unity, were regular visitors to Nazi Germany. They met Hitler, Himmler, Goering, Goebbels and many other senior Nazi leaders and enjoyed the Nuremberg rallies.

In October 1936, Diana and Oswald Mosley were secretly married in Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels’s home in Berlin. 

Both had been married before. Hitler was the guest of honour at the wedding. He gave the couple a silver framed photograph of himself as a wedding gift. 

Diana talked to Hitler about the possibility of establishing a pro-Nazi radio station in Britain. 

In 1938 she was told there were plans to build a transmitter on a North Sea island. However, the project was abandoned on the outbreak of the second world war.

Max was born on April 13 1940. Less than six weeks later his traitorous parents were interned as allies of Hitler in his war against Britain.

Post-war Max would support his father in his futile attempts to re-establish various fascist parties and groupings. 

As an election agent, Max Mosley put his name to a leaflet from a candidate supporting racism and urging the government to “send coloured immigrants home.” [[{"fid":"31510","view_mode":"inlinefull","fields":{"format":"inlinefull","field_file_image_alt_text[und][0][value]":"An election pamphlet written and published by Max Mosley as election agent for Walter Hesketh in a by-election in Manchester warned of the dangers of ‘coloured immigration’"},"type":"media","field_deltas":{"1":{"format":"inlinefull","field_file_image_alt_text[und][0][value]":"An election pamphlet written and published by Max Mosley as election agent for Walter Hesketh in a by-election in Manchester warned of the dangers of ‘coloured immigration’"}},"link_text":null,"attributes":{"alt":"An election pamphlet written and published by Max Mosley as election agent for Walter Hesketh in a by-election in Manchester warned of the dangers of ‘coloured immigration’","height":"274","width":"463","class":"media-element file-inlinefull","data-delta":"1"}}]]

His name appears on the four-page obscene racist document alleging immigrants brought “leprosy, syphilis and TB.”

Max Mosley’s fascist efforts ranged from being agent for his father Oswald in the 1959 general election to street fighting in the Notting Hill race riots.

On September 4, amid continuing riots, the Daily Sketch published a photograph of Max and his older brother Alexander in Notting Hill.

Max displayed his knuckles, damaged from fighting against black and white anti-racists. Max was among dozens of fascists arrested.[[{"fid":"31511","view_mode":"inlinefull","fields":{"format":"inlinefull","field_file_image_alt_text[und][0][value]":"Oswald Mosley supporters of the British Union Movement holding an open air May Day meeting, in 1948"},"type":"media","field_deltas":{"1":{"format":"inlinefull","field_file_image_alt_text[und][0][value]":"Oswald Mosley supporters of the British Union Movement holding an open air May Day meeting, in 1948"}},"link_text":null,"attributes":{"alt":"Oswald Mosley supporters of the British Union Movement holding an open air May Day meeting, in 1948","height":"355","width":"660","class":"media-element file-inlinefull","data-delta":"1"}}]]

When in the 1950s he got interested in motor racing, he was delighted to find that many involved in the sport were spivs turned millionaire car dealers with fond memories of his father Oswald and his marauding Blackshirt fascist thugs.

He would eventually turn his newly found sport into a multimillion-pound empire that finally saw him as one of the owners of Formula One motor racing.

That didn’t stop his fascist activities. On July 31 1962, he would join his father Oswald and his anti-semitic thugs as they marched in the Jewish quarter in Hackney, east London, chanting “Jews out!” 

It was an echo of the famous 1936 battle of Cable Street where thousands of workers, Jew and Gentile, stopped Mosley and his Blackshirts marching through London. 

This time father Oswald was floored in the ensuing riot while son Max was charged with threatening behaviour. 

Some reviews have claimed that Max Mosley was some kind of defender of the public against intrusive journalism. 

His crusade against newspapers started when they reported on one of his sadomasochistic sex orgies involving five prostitutes in German military uniforms, striped concentration camp-style pyjamas and Nazi regalia. 

The now defunct News of the World filmed one such event lasting five hours in Mosley’s £2m riverside flat on London’s Chelsea Embankment. He had paid the prostitutes £2,500 in cash.

Mr Justice Eady told the hearing it was clear that Mosley “threw himself into his role with considerable enthusiasm” but still ruled in favour of Mosley. 

Max Mosley spent some of the wealth of motor racing to financially sponsor various political parties, including both Tories and Labour. 

This was part of an attempt to delay the ban on tobacco advertising on race cars. 

Sadly former deputy Labour Leader Tom Watson accepted £500,000 from him before Jeremy Corbyn refused any more payments from Mosley.
 
Max Mosley was often interviewed by the media. Whenever this happened he could always be relied on to spout reactionary and extreme right-wing views, although when challenged he would always try to airbrush out his fascist history.    

Occasionally somebody dies who deserves no praise, no respect, no obituary. Max Mosley was one such person. 

He will not be missed and the world will be a much better, much cleaner place without him.

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