Jewish charities criticise Oxford for accepting Mosley ‘fascist cash’
‘We find it extraordinary you could readily accept contributions from a notorious fascist family’
A COALITION of Jewish charities has condemned Oxford’s “extraordinary” decision to accept “fascist” cash, as they urged the university to drop the Mosley name from a professorship.
In a letter to Oxford’s vice-chancellor and the master of St Peter’s College, they say they are “at a loss” to understand how a Jewish student would feel comfortable being taught by a professor bearing the Mosley family name.
The letter, signed by several charities including the Campaign Against Antisemitism, the Jewish Leadership Council and the Holocaust Education Trust, comes as the row over the Mosley donations deepens. The Daily Telegraph revealed last week that Oxford was given £6million from a charitable trust set up by Max Mosley to house the fortune he inherited from his father, Oswald Mosley, leader of the British Union of Fascists.
Meanwhile two of Oxford’s colleges – St Peter’s and Lady Margaret Hall (LMH) – have also accepted cash from the Mosley trust totalling about £6.3million.
“We find it extraordinary that, at a time when the university and its colleges are reviewing their legacies and making more efforts to be inclusive of minorities, your institutions could readily accept contributions from a notorious fascist family that has caused immense pain to the Jewish community within living memory and whose fortune derives from a man who strove to see the antisemitic policies of Adolf Hitler implemented in this country,” the letter said.
“We are at a loss to understand how you imagine a present or future Jewish student will react to being taught by a professor, or having to live in accommodation, that celebrates a family whose patriarch led violent marches through Jewish neighbourhoods.”
The donations have come from the Alexander Mosley Charitable Trust, which Max Mosley set up in the name of his son, an alumnus of St Peter’s College, who died of a heroin overdose in 2009.
The donation to Oxford will be used to set up the Alexander Mosley Professor of Biophysics Fund, while the £5million donation to St Peter’s College will be used to build a halls of residence. The charities have urged Prof Louise Richardson, Oxford’s vice-chancellor and Prof Judith Buchanan, the master of St Peter’s College, to confirm that neither the professorship nor the block of student flats will “honour” the Mosley family. They have also called on the university to spend a portion of the funds on anti-semitism education.
Meanwhile, Lord Grade, the former BBC chairman, said the decision by St Peter’s College to accept a donation from the Mosley family trust “disqualifies” them from removing any “tainted” names or statues linked to Britain’s colonial past. In a letter to The Telegraph, he said the college was displaying “venal hypocrisy” and deserves all the “ridicule coming their way”.
Earlier this week, Nadhim Zahawi, the Education Secretary, said Oxford should explain to Jewish students why it took money from the Mosley family.
Oxford University, St Peter’s College and LMH all said that the funds were cleared by an independent committee, which reviewed donations in a “robust” manner, taking “legal, ethical and reputational issues into consideration”.