Mosley legal bid to scrub his orgy from history
... and ban reports on his funding of state backed regulator rejected by all Press
MAX Mosley has launched a chilling new attack on Press freedom, with an extraordinary legal bid to scrub records of his notorious German-themed orgy from history.
The former Formula One boss also wants to restrict reporting on the £3.8million his family trust spends bankrolling the controversial Press regulator Impress.
He has taken legal action against a range of newspapers – the Daily Mail, The Times, The Sun and at least one other national newspaper – demanding they delete any references to his sadomasochistic sex party and never mention it again.
The orgy, which involved Mr Mosley and five prostitutes, was exposed by the News of the World in 2008 and became the subject of one of the biggest privacy trials in history.
However, in a move that could have devastating consequences both for Press freedom and for historical records, Mr Mosley is now using data protection laws to try to force newspapers to erase any mention of it.
And it is not the only extraordinary demand Mr Mosley – the son of wartime fascist leader Oswald Mosley – is making.
He has also insisted that the newspapers stop making references to the fact he bankrolls Impress – the highly controversial, stateapproved Press regulator.
Yesterday, MPs warned against data protection laws being used to trample Press freedoms. The laws were drawn up to tackle misuse of personal information by mail order and credit card companies, but are increasingly being used against the Press.
Conservative MP Bill Cash said: ‘The free- dom of the Press is paramount and it would be perverse to allow historical records to be removed on the basis of data protection.
‘If data protection can be used to wipe out historical records, then the consequences would be dramatic.’
John Whittingdale, a Tory former Culture Secretary, said: ‘Data protection is an important principle for the protection of citizens. However, it must not be used to restrict the freedom of the Press.’
Mr Mosley’s legal bid uses a combination of previous rulings and data protection laws to try to argue that he should be able to scrub uncomfortable information from the annals of history – and suppress public debate about his relationship with Impress.
If he won, it would set a far-reaching precedent – potentially allowing people to wipe controversial events in their past from the historical record, and even prohibiting references to public judgments of the courts.
It comes as MPs prepare to debate a highly controversial amendment to the new Data Protection Bill, under which any newspaper which is not a member of a state-approved regulator would face paying the costs of any action like Mr Mosley’s – even if they won their case.
The only newspaper regulator which has official approval under the Government’s royal charter is Impress, which is almost entirely funded by a charity financed by Mr Mosley. The Daily Mail and the vast majority of other newspapers are regulated by the independent regulator IPSO.
In his action, the multimillionaire racing tycoon claimed that the Daily Mail’s owner, Associated Newspapers, had breached data protection ‘ principles’ in 34 articles published since 2013 – including many opinion pieces defending the freedom of the Press. These principles are designed to stop companies from ‘excessive processing’ of people’s sensitive personal data or from holding on to people’s details for longer than necessary, and come with exemptions for journalism that is in the public interest.
However, Mr Mosley argued that the data protection exemptions do not apply to mentions of his orgy, because the judge presiding over his privacy case against the News of the World ruled that the exposé was not in the public interest. Mr Mosley famously won £60,000 in damages from the now defunct tabloid. The judge ruled that the orgy was private because it was not ‘Nazi’ themed – as the News of the World had claimed.
In his legal action this week, the racing tycoon’s lawyers used another branch of data protection law to prevent future reporting of his funding agreement with Impress and to erase it from previous articles.
Mr Mosley has provided £3.8million toward the regulator’s running costs, funnelling the money via two charities. However, his lawyers have demanded that the Mail removes references to the regulator being ‘ financed’, ‘ funded’, ‘bankrolled’ by, ‘financially reliant’ on or ‘in the pocket’ of Mr Mosley.
They claim that it is inaccurate to make such claims, because a judicial review ruled that the elaborate set-up he uses to funnel money to Impress means the regulator can still be independent.
Mr Mosley’s legal bid is the latest in a string of attempts he has made to muzzle the Press since the News of the World exposé. He has donated £500,000 to Tom Watson, the deputy Labour leader and culture spokesman. Mr Watson is such a fierce critic of newspapers he has even coauthored a damning book – Dial M For Murdoch – about Rupert Murdoch, the News of the World’s former owner.
Mr Mosley has fought an unsuccessful legal campaign to force newspapers to warn people before publishing details about their lives, in order that they can seek an injunction to stop it.
‘Consequences would be dramatic’
THIS is a dark story about how one very wealthy man is trying to undermine the freedoms enjoyed by the Press. His name is Max Mosley.
Mosley’s notoriety chiefly stems from his role as the instigator of an orgy in his private flat in 2008. Until that moment the multi-millionaire son of fascist Oswald Mosley (with whose far-Right politics he seems once to have sympathised) had taken no interest in Press regulation.
He took great exception to his orgy — in which blood was shed, and violence inflicted — being described as ‘Nazi’ by the now defunct News of the World. Mr Justice Eady found no evidence that it was, and the newspaper was made to pay Mosley £60,000.
Threat
Still, there was no doubt a sado - masochistic orgy involving several prostitutes had taken place. A wiser man would have gone away and devoted himself to good works, or at any rate kept his peace. Not Max Mosley.
Having publicly declared a lifelong devotion to sado-masochism, which he described as ‘ perfectly harmless’, he launched a crusade against the Press, or those parts of it he didn’t like. He took himself to France — not a country famous for the robustness of its media — and persuaded judges to force Google to stop providing links to images of his sadomasochistic private life.
And when, after the Leveson Inquiry, Impress was set up as the state-approved regulator of the Press — though no major newspaper has joined it — Mosley provided the great bulk of its funding. It spends nearly £1 million a year.
But this vengeful, bitter man has not stopped there. His latest threat is so utterly preposterous that readers may think I am pulling their leg. I wish I were.
Mosley wants the Mail and other major newspaper groups never again to refer to his role in the orgy, or ‘ party’ as he euphemistically calls it. He also stipulates that 34 articles published by the Mail since 2013 which mention his orgy should be permanently deleted. These include many opinion pieces, one or two of which were written by me.
In other words, an historical fact — the orgy — must be erased from history, if Max Mosley and his lawyers get their way, and we must never allude to it again. This very article, and the views I express in it, will have to be destroyed. I’m not joking.
His reasoning (if that’s not too elevated a word to describe this bully-boy demand) is that the orgy was deemed by the judge to be a private affair. It is therefore not the business of the Press to write about it in any shape or form, even though it was the subject of a widely reported court case
That’s not all. Mosley also objects to this and other newspapers suggesting that the state-approved regulator Impress is funded or bankrolled by him. Articles which have stated that this is the case should be deleted, and the charge never repeated.
And yet, as I’ve said, Mosley provides nearly all the running costs of Impress, which is expected to run short next autumn. It’s true the cash is funnelled through the socalled Independent Press Regulation Trust. But who funds this body? Max Mosley’s family trust. And to whom will they turn when Impress needs re-financing? Max Mosley.
Bizarrely, his assault on newspapers is being mounted under the cloak of the Data Protection Act. This was a well- intended measure designed, in the digital age, to stop banks, insurance companies and other commercial concerns misusing people’s private data. It was never intended to be applied to newspapers. This is a novel and terrifying development.
In a relatively long life as a journalist, I doubt I have come across such a brutish attempt to corral and censor a free Press as Max Mosley’s. What is true, and happened, can’t be written about because it offends a vindictive multi-millionaire.
He’s absolutely wrong, of course, to insist that his orgy is a purely private matter. For whether he likes it or not, as the benefactor of the sole state-approved regulator of the Press, he is an influential public figure.
People have a justifiable interest in knowing about his former extraordinary shenanigans. Some may regard them as irrelevant. Others (I suggest the majority) may think it noteworthy that a man driven by hatred for parts of the Press should be keeping alive the highly controversial state-approved regulator.
Let’s imagine the potential effects of his prohibitions if the seemingly lawful but morally questionable activities of institutions and individuals were censored as Mosley proposes.
Would the media be free to write about the repugnant activities of senior Oxfam employees? Very possibly not. For the miscreants could argue that what they did took place in their free time with consensual prostitutes. Unless the women involved were under age, no law was broken.
Shocked
And yet most people are rightly shocked that prostitutes were taken advantage of by older and richer men who should have known better. The same might be said of the rich and powerful Max Mosley, whose exploitation of consensual prostitutes will not seem ‘harmless’ to most people.
I wonder whether, under Mosley’s law, the film mogul Harvey Weinstein would argue that the gross sexual advances he is alleged to have made in private are his own affair since (so he claims) he was behaving entirely legally.
Looking back 50 years, it seems likely that the affair of John Profumo, Minister of War, with the prostitute Christine Keeler wouldn’t have come to light in the kind of world promoted by Mosley in which privacy rights trump most other considerations.
Were he to follow Mosley’s example, John Major could demand that his four-year affair with former Tory MP Edwina Currie (which took place before he became prime minister) be deleted from newspaper websites, while history books which referred to it would have to be pulped.
Of course, the affair took place a long time ago. It scarcely matters now. Yet it once threw some light on the most powerful man in the country. The past can’t be undone, nor history re-cast.
Adversary
Except in Mosley’s sinister world — or, one might add, in former Soviet bloc countries. There, the discreditable records of public figures could be obliterated and reassembled in a more favourable light.
Dodgy politicians, crooked policemen, doctors who have affairs with their patients, dishonest businessman — all of them would breathe a sigh of relief if they believed their private malefactions might never come to light.
I give Max Mosley one thing. He is a formidable adversary of a free Press. Nor is he the only one. Last November, the Lords voted by 211 to 200 to introduce a draconian law that would force newspapers to pay all legal costs if they are sued under data protection legislation, even if they win. Unless, that is, they join the Mosley-funded Impress.
The Tory Government has said it will overturn the Lords’ amendment, and we must hope it has the courage of its convictions.
But no one should underestimate the determination of Mosley and his allies. Even ten years ago, who would have dreamt that there would be a state-approved regulator of the Press, or that its benefactor would insist his deviant practices be written out of history? In the year 2018, in what is supposed to be modern liberal Britain, freedom of expression is under threat as never before.