Max Mosley’s dark past of conflict, kinky sex and ‘racist shame’
MILLIONAIRE Max Mosley turned on the press after winning a privacy case when his sadomasochistic sex orgy with five hookers was exposed.
But darker secrets unearthed about the privacy crusader’s past embarrassed his supporters in the Labour Party.
Racist language was found in an election pamphlet which was published with his name on it as an election agent on a far-Right party’s fading election leaflet.
And a deeper probe into his past has shone a light on claims of diehard support for his fascist Hitler-loving father Sir Oswald and participation at street events which became violent.
Max Mosley died from cancer aged 81 on May 24, 2021.
Bernie Ecclestone, who was also head of F1, confirmed that Mosley had died at his Chelsea home.
He said: "I am pleased in a way because he suffered for too long."
Here — in The Sun’s Mosley Files — we reveal the controversies behind the man who through a trust fund helped bankroll a war on the press.
Spotted at street clashes with dad
THE young Max Mosley stood alongside thugs supporting his fascist father and was caught up in brutal street clashes and a melee at an election rally.
Sir Oswald’s far-right Union Movement thugs moved in when trouble broke out between white teddy boy gangs and black locals in London’s Notting Hill in August 1958.
West Indian homes were firebombed over several nights and black passers-by savagely assaulted.
On September 4, amid continuing riots, the Daily Sketch published a photograph of Max and his older brother Alexander in Notting Hill.
The knuckle of one of grim-faced Max’s fists appears to be cut while his other fist bears a sticking plaster.
Mosley solicitors took legal action against the Sketch over suggestions the pair fought alongside the teddy boys.
The next day, the Kensington News told how “Kill the N*****s” had been shouted from the crowd.
An earlier picture from May 1958 shows Max caught up in an altercation with an opponent at a by-election rally in Islington North.
His left arm is extended towards the face of his enemy, who is being held around the head by Alexander.
Later, on July 31 1962, Oswald and his neo-fascists marched in the Jewish quarter in Hackney, East London, chanting “Jews Out”.
- Labour deputy leader Tom Watson will keep the £540,000 donated to him by Max Mosley
- Former F1 boss Max Mosley admitted an election leaflet with his name on it was ‘probably racist’
- Labour No2 Tom Watson urged to give back £500k Max Mosley donation after former F1 boss’s racism scandal
- Labour say they’ll refuse to take more cash from Max Mosley after racist leaflet scandal – but deputy leader Tom Watson won’t return £500k donation
- Max Mosley faces probe over whether he lied in infamous orgy trial
- Police to investigate Max Mosley after being handed dossier on his racist leaflets by prosecutors
Oswald was floored in the ensuing race riot and Max was among dozens arrested.
He was charged with threatening behaviour, but acquitted at magistrates’ court the next day when he argued he was simply defending his father.
Mosley has always denied being involved in violence on behalf of UM and claims he broke from them in 1963.
S&M session with five prostitutes
MAX Mosley’s crusade to tame newspapers was triggered when a sadomasochistic sex session with five prostitutes was exposed.
The now defunct News of the World filmed his kinky five-hour session with hookers seemingly sporting German military garb and striped prison camp-style pyjamas.
But he won a landmark privacy case in 2008 when a judge ruled that the expose breached his privacy and that the £2,500 romp was not “Nazi-themed.”
London’s High Court heard Mosley — calling himself Mike — staged the orgy at a £2million riverside flat on London’s Chelsea embankment after paying the prostitutes £2,500 cash.
Mr Justice Eady told the hearing it was clear that Mosley “threw himself into his role with considerable enthusiasm”.
But he ruled in favour of Mosley that there was no Nazi element to the orgy, as the newspaper had claimed, and that the story was not in the public interest.
The judge decided that although the young women “victims” wore striped pyjamas they were not Nazi-related clothes.
Mr Justice Eady concluded: “Beatings, humiliation and the infliction of pain are inherent to S&M activities.
“So, too, is the enactment of domination, restraints, punishment and prison scenarios. Behaviour of this kind, in itself . . . does not entail Nazism.”
Mosley’s court victory encouraged him to pump millions into anti- newspaper campaigns and to bankroll new press regulator Impress through a family trust.
The pamphlet
As an election agent, Mosley put his name to a leaflet from a candidate supporting racism and urging the Government to “send coloured immigrants home”.
The mogul aligned himself with his father Sir Oswald’s fascist Union Movement and supported one parliamentary candidate.
His name appears as an agent on a four-page document alleging immigrants brought “leprosy, syphilis and TB”.
It claims: “Coloured immigration threatens your children’s health.”
Mosley himself is reported as allegedly calling for a “law to send immigrants back” while campaigning for Walter Hesketh in a by-election in Manchester, we can reveal.
In a local newspaper article from November 1 1961, less than a week before the vote, Mosley told reporters immigrants would be “sent home”.
He said: “A law to send them all back where they came from — that’s what we would advocate. You wouldn’t call it deportation, they would just be told to go.”
The article raises further questions about Mosley not knowing about racist pamphlets as they are directly referred to in the piece.
Previously asked about the leaflet, which until now has remained in archives in Salford, Mosley told a court he had no memory of it.
He added that it was “nonsense” to suggest he had distributed such material.
During an interview with Channel 4 News, Mosley did accept that the connotations in the leaflet — “if genuine” — were racist.
The racist
WALTER Hesketh, a celebrated cross-country runner, joined the Union Movement at 28.
The son of a Manchester cop, he fought the 1961 Moss Side by-election on immigration and housing.
That October, the dad of three told a newspaper that “coloured people” who came to the UK after 1945 “should be sent home”.
He came last in the vote won by the Tories.
Wife Margaret stood in the local city elections in 1962, also representing the Union Movement.
In 2008, Mosley described Hesketh as “nice enough”.
The evil legacy
MAX Mosley’s fascist father Sir Oswald retired from politics in 1966 but his racist ideology lives on in Britain.
Young Max was a leading figure in his dad’s far right Union Movement as a propagandist, public speaker, agent, proposed parliamentary candidate and legal adviser.
He claims any former links are no longer relevant as his views and society have changed in the half a century since.
But the legacy remains after the torch was carried by the far-Right fanatics of the National Front and National Action.
The same hate and bigotry filled the heart of Thomas Mair who shouted “death to traitors, freedom for Britain” after being charged with the gun and knife murder of MP Jo Cox, 41, in 2016.
MOST READ IN NEWS
National Action adopted Mair’s slogan and its founder cited Sir Oswald as their inspiration.
The group copied his Union Movement symbol for their insignia.
In his book on the revival of post-war UK fascism, Very Deeply Dyed in Black, Graham Macklin said the Union Movement transmitted “malignant . . . political and cultural idioms . . . to a new generation of activists”.