Labour won’t return ‘tainted’ Mosley cash
LABOUR’S deputy leader has refused to give back donations from Max Mosley, instead praising the former Formula One boss for supporting “the weak against the strong”.
Tom Watson, who has received £540,000 from his fellow privacy campaigner, insisted that he would not have given Mr Mosley the “time of day” if he thought he held the racist views expressed in a leaflet that Mr Mosley published in 1961.
Mr Mosley, son of Sir Oswald Mosley, leader of the British Union of Fascists, faces the possibility of a perjury investigation over the document after dismissing its existence during his 2008 privacy case in the High Court.
The leaflet, backing Walter Hesketh as parliamentary candidate for Sir Oswald’s Union Movement in Manchester, has been unearthed in local archives by the Daily Mail.
Prosecutors yesterday handed Scotland Yard a dossier that included the material and a transcript of the High Court evidence after it was supplied by the newspaper. It is being “assessed” by officers.
A year after the leaflet was published, Mr Mosley was arrested at one of his father’s rallies in a Jewish area of east London.
Since the document emerged, Mr Watson has faced pressure to give back Mr Mosley’s donations. Labour has said that it will not take any more money from Mr Mosley, but a spokesman for Mr Watson said there were “no plans” to return any of the cash.
Mr Watson told MPS: “If I thought for one moment he held those views contained in that leaflet of 57 years ago, I would not have given him the time of day.
“He is a man, though, who in the face of great family tragedy and overwhelming media intimidation, chose to use his limited resources to support the weak against the strong.” Matt Hancock, the Culture Secretary, suggested Mr Watson would be “thinking very hard” about returning the money after Simon Hoare, a Tory colleague, asked whether “in order to ensure a free and open democracy, the responsible thing to do for honourable members is to hand back racially tainted money”.
Mr Mosley has said he does not “recognise” the leaflet and it is “not something I would have ever wished to be associated with”.
He said that any suggestion that he had lied under oath was “obviously nonsense”.
♦ken Livingstone has been suspended indefinitely by Labour, ahead of an inquiry into his remarks about Adolf Hitler and Zionism last year. He had been due to have his membership reinstated in April, but campaigners said his comments should be scrutinised first.