Hand your dirty Mosley money back, says ex-Mayor who lived through race leaflet by-election
MAX Mosley must apologise for his vile racist election leaflet, one of Labour’s most respected black politicians declared last night.
Councillor Whit Stennett vividly recalls the anger and revulsion the Mosley ‘leprosy’ pamphlet caused in Moss Side, Manchester, in 1961.
The former mayor demanded Labour’s deputy leader Tom Watson hand back Mr Mosley’s ‘dirty money’.
Mr Stennett, 83, who arrived in Manchester’s Moss Side from Jamaica in August 1959, said: ‘Max Mosley should be man enough to say: “What I did was racist”, and apologise. We have come a long way from then, but an apology is due.
‘The Labour Party should not be accepting money from Max Mosley – it’s dirty money, as far as I’m concerned, and they should send it back to him.
‘What this man (Mosley) has done, giving money to the Labour Party, it stinks. Tom Watson is on very slippery ground. I would be saying to Jeremy Corbyn: “Make sure you give it back.” ’
Mr Stennett, who left his mother behind in Jamaica when he came to Britain alone aged 23, has been a Labour councillor for 25 years and was Trafford’s first black Lord Mayor in 2003. He was given an MBE by the Queen in 1998.
Mr Stennett said in 1961 – when Mr Mosley published the bigoted pamphlet – that: ‘I lived at 174 Moss Lane East and there was a tailor’s shop at 172. Somebody there got
hold of this pamphlet and I vividly remember people talking about it.’
He added: ‘I remember Caribbean and Jamaican people being very upset by that racist and vile pamphlet.
‘People were very, very upset, particularly with the notion that black people could spread disease.
‘Black people were very, very angry, but there were also Caucasian people with us. They joined with us in saying enough is enough and that we needed to get rid of the fascists from our community.’
Mr Stennett, considered one of the founding fathers of the African-Caribbean community in Manchester, said he remembered a group of black men meeting at the famous Reno nightclub and deciding to drive Mosley’s fascists out of Moss Side.
‘I don’t remember any of us being attacked, but I do remember a time when some guys decided to chase the fascists out of Moss Side, we came together and decided we had to defend ourselves,’ he added.
‘One of the biggest problems we had in Moss Side was housing, I remember coming and looking for a room for rent and the infamous “No Irish, no blacks, no dogs” signs.
‘Mosley’s far-Right played on people’s fears about housing and we were blamed.’