AS YARD IS CALLED IN, MOSLEY’S FROZEN OUT BY LABOUR
POLICE are examining whether Max Mosley committed perjury after a Mail investigation exposed his racist past. A detailed dossier including a bigoted election pamphlet
published by the tycoon is being assessed by scotland Yard.
The leaflet raises the question of whether he lied at his orgy privacy trial. The ex-Formula one chief, who is refusing to apologise for the document, was yesterday dumped as a Labour Party donor.
It was a humiliation for deputy leader Tom watson, who is now under pressure to return £540,000 the tycoon has paid toward the running of his commons office.
The pamphlet, which carried Mr
Mosley’s name, was circulated during a Manchester Moss Side by-election in 1961. It said ‘coloured immigrants’ spread ‘terrible diseases like leprosy’ and should be sent ‘home’.
Under oath during his successful High Court trial in 2008 against the News of the World Mr Mosley categorically denied it existed. However the Mail found it in two archives. In other developments: Mr Mosley faced a whirlwind of criticism from all sides including community leaders for his racist past;
Theresa May hailed freedom of the Press and said people would be surprised by Mr Mosley’s ‘links with some leading politicians’;
Press regulator Impress – funded almost entirely by Mr Mosley’s millions – refused to either condemn him or stop taking his money;
News Group Newspapers, owner of the now- defunct News of the World, instructed lawyers to consider ‘all our legal options’ in relation to the landmark privacy trial it lost against Mr Mosley;
The Mail today reveals that Mr Mosley visited the former Nazi concentration camp at Dachau near Munich with a convicted Holocaust denier just weeks before brawling in a Jewish district of London;
We also disclose how he consorted with Waffen-SS at a farRight conference and that his fists flew at a ‘Jew-baiting’ rally at which far-Right supporters gave Nazi salutes.
Last night Mr Mosley appeared unrepentant as he issued a statement saying he still did not recognise the 1961 pamphlet, which was unearthed following a painstaking investigation by the Mail.
He conceded it was ‘offensive and divisive’ and ‘ not something I would have ever wished to be associated with’. But he failed to apologise for the document, which was published in his name when he was a byelection agent for his father Oswald Mosley, who led the pre-war British Union of Fascists and founded the Union Movement party after the war.
Yesterday the Mail handed a dossier to the Crown Prosecution Service. It included a transcript of Mr Mosley’s evidence to the High Court in which he denied the existence of the racist leaflet, and a legally certified copy of the leaflet – which Mr Mosley had tried to suggest might be a fake.
The CPS immediately referred the case to police, and last night Scotland Yard said: ‘This afternoon the CPS forwarded information from the Daily Mail to the Met Police. An assessment will be carried out.’
Detectives will decide on launching a full- scale investigation into whether offences were committed. Should such a probe be instigated, then it is likely that Mr Mosley would be interviewed by police. On Tuesday, in a heated showdown on Channel 4 News, Mr Mosley was asked if he had perjured himself in court. He said it was a ‘stupid and offensive’ question.
At the trial in 2008, he said he did not recall the leaflet before going on to insist it was ‘absolute nonsense’ to suggest it existed. The News of the World lost the case and paid damages to Mr Mosley for calling his sadomasochistic orgy with five prostitutes ‘Nazi themed’.
The victory set Mr Mosley off on his ten-year campaign to demand greater regulation of the Press.
Yesterday residents in Moss Side demanded Mr Mosley say sorry. Nasrullah Khan Moghal, of the Manchester Council for Community Relations, said the tycoon would be ‘held in contempt’ everywhere if he failed to apologise for the vile racist slurs on the 1961 pamphlet. Mr Moghal, a former city councillor, said: ‘I lived in Moss Side in the 1960s as a student. There was real tension because black people couldn’t get housing, people were living in multiple occupancy, in very bad conditions and the far right played on white people’s insecurities.
‘If he won’t apologise, we need to name and shame people like that. There is no place for such racist views in our society.’
In Mr Watson’s constituency West Bromwich East – where three in ten voters are from ethnic minorities – there were calls for him to return Mr Mosley’s cash.
Colin Rankine, who stood against Mr Watson at the last election as an independent, said the Mail’s revelations ‘do not make good reading for the MP of a multi- cultural constituency’.
The teacher added: ‘If donations have come from a source who could be deemed to be subversive it seems appropriate to ask Labour – which is supposed to be an inclusive party – to look again at what kind of message accepting this money sends to the community.’
Yesterday Mr Mosley was seen outside his £ 3million Knightsbridge mews house at 7.20am with a sheaf of newspapers.
In a statement to Press Gazette he said: ‘The Daily Mail claim to have unearthed a leaflet said to have been published in 1961 during Walter Hesketh’s campaign in Moss Side. I was asked about this in the News of the World case. I had absolutely no recollection of it.
‘My political activities in the 1950s and early 1960s were completely irrelevant to the question of whether the News of the World had illegally invaded my privacy, as it clear from the judgement.
‘Nevertheless, I knew that if the News of the World thought the leaflet relevant, they would have disclosed it because the courts don’t like ambushes.
‘The fact that they didn’t reinforced my view that no such leaflet existed. The suggestion that I lied in court is obviously nonsense.
‘Now that I’ve seen copies of this leaflet, I still do not recognise it. It is not something I would have ever wished to be associated with. It is offensive and divisive.
‘By contrast, I campaigned to stamp out racism in motor sport. The Daily Mail’s attack over my work for my father’s party, which ended in 1963, is plainly in response to my recent letter of claim.
‘Like many people, my views have changed over the last half century. Meanwhile, the Mail’s reporting on immigration and health in far more recent times has been hugely offensive to the UK immigrant communities.
‘The Mail do this without fear of sanction from a proper regulator. It’s easy to see why they are against reform.’
‘No place for such views’