Mosley row won’t change freedom of press vows May
THERESA May vowed yesterday that press freedom “will never change” while she is PM after privacy campaigner Max Mosley was engulfed in a race-hate row.
Mrs May made the pledge to the Commons after concern was raised about the multi-millionaire’s links to senior politicians and new media regulator Impress.
Former Formula One boss Mr Mosley, 77, is on the back foot over a by-election campaign leaflet from six decades ago which linked non-white immigrants with sexually transmitted diseases, tuberculosis and leprosy.
Tory backbencher Anne Main asked Mrs May about Mr Mosley’s links with Impress and “some of our leading politicians” as it emerged he has donated £500,000 to the office of Labour’s deputy leader Tom Watson.
Speaking at Prime Minister’s Questions, Mrs May said: “Some people will have been surprised to learn of those links with some leading politicians. But can I also say to her that I absolutely agree with her that a free press is very important. It underpins our democracy and whatever they say about us, whatever they write about us, actually it’s important that they are able to hold politicians, the powerful, to account and they are able to shine a light in some of the darkest corners of our society. As far as I’m concerned while I’m Prime Minister that will never change.”
Mr Mosley, the son of fascist Sir Oswald Mosley, was embroiled in a row over an election leaflet unearthed in archives in Manchester.
The pamphlet, supporting candidate Walter Hesketh for his father’s Union Movement in 1961, states “published by Max Mosley”. It says: “Protect your health. Tuberculosis, VD and other terrible diseases like leprosy are on the increase. Coloured immigration threatens your children’s health.”
It also promises to send immigrants home to Jamaica “instead of bringing more in”. There are claims its discovery raises questions over evidence he gave in a High Court trial when he successfully sued the News of the World in 2008 over a sex party allegation.
In a TV interview he said he believed at that time, and still believes, that his answers under oath in court were true. He insisted: “I have never been a racist, I am not a racist, never will be a racist.”
But asked about the line about immigration threatening children’s health, he said: “I think that probably is racist, I will concede that completely.”
But he said he had “no reason to apologise to anyone” adding: “This was a statement in a leaflet which I am not even sure is genuine, which would never reflect my view, it would not reflect my view then or now because I simply wouldn’t dream of insulting people.”
He told Channel 4 News that “if that leaflet is genuine I am responsible for it and it shouldn’t have been issued”.
Mr Mosley, whose parents’ wedding was attended by Adolf Hitler, later insisted: “I do not recall the leaflet referred to. I said so in court and challenged lawyers for the News of the World to produce it, which they failed to do.
“I obviously would not have done that if I knew of its existence.”
The Crown Prosecution Service last night received a dossier on Mr Mosley and passed it to Scotland Yard.
‘A free press shines a light in the darkest corners of our society’
IT IS absolutely incredible that Max Mosley has been taken as seriously as he has. His attempt to stifle a free press seems to stem purely and simply from revenge at the exposure of his private life and now we learn that he appears to have published a document expressing racist views.
Details of the document, which have only just come to light, have been passed on to the police. We can only hope that from now on he is treated by all decent people with the disregard he deserves.
But how deeply worrying to learn of his close links with the Labour Party and in particular its deputy leader Tom Watson.
Labour has said it will accept no more donations from Mosley as well it might. If it had a shred of decency it would repay the half-million pounds it has already taken from this man.
People such as Mosley have no role to play in our national debate – it is to the great shame of those involved that he was given any credence at all.