Imperial and UCL caught up in Mosley row

THE row over “fascist” donations deepened last night as it emerged more of the country’s leading universities have received money from the Mosley family trust.

Imperial College London has been handed almost £2.5 million from the Alexander Mosley Charitable Trust over the past five years while University College London (UCL) received £500,000.

Both universities have scrambled in recent years to analyse the bequests of past benefactors and have made a series of pledges to rename buildings and address “abhorrent” racist legacies.

But The Sunday Telegraph can reveal that at the same time, they have accepted donations from a charitable trust set up by Max Mosley to house the fortune he inherited from his father, Sir Oswald Mosley, leader of the British Union of Fascists.

Last summer, at the height of the Black Lives Matter protests, UCL renamed lecture theatres and a building named after the prominent eugenicists Francis Galton and Karl Pearson.

The renaming of buildings was part of a package of measures to tackle the association UCL deems unsavoury, including funding new scholarships to study race and racism.

Imperial commissioned an independent group of historians to recommend ways in which it could confront “uncomfortable and awkward aspects of our past”. Last month the group advised the university to remove a bust of Thomas Henry Huxley, the slavery abolitionist, because he “might now be called racist”.

The group also recommended that a bust of the 19th century biologist, dubbed “Darwin’s bulldog”, be taken down and the Huxley Building on campus renamed. UCL and Imperial both received donations from the Alexander Mosley Charitable Trust, which Max Mosley set up in the name of his son who died of a heroin overdose in 2009.

UCL was handed £500,000 to set up a forensic evidence interpretation laboratory, the trust’s 2019 accounts show. Imperial has received £2,445,000 from the trust over the past five years.

Of this £1,150,000 has been used to fund research by Prof David Nutt, an expert in neuropsychopharmacology, and Dr Ben Sassa, a consultant psychiatrist and research fellow at Imperial.

Another £1,095,000 was given to Imperial to set up a new Centre for Psychedelic Research.

Kingston and Westminster universities have each received smaller sums of £137,445 and £84,965 respectively, an analysis of the trust’s accounts reveal. Kingston said the money was used to develop an online archive of the

Leveson Inquiry into press culture and Westminster said their donation funded an analysis of the “origins and shortcomings of the press regulator IPSO” and another project on the provision of local news.

Sir Oswald Mosley led the British Union of Fascists and its successor, the Union Movement, both of which spread anti-Semitic and racist propaganda.

The party’s supporters, known as the blackshirts, wore Nazi-style uniforms and were notorious for their violence against Jews and Left-wing groups.

Max Mosley took up his father’s fascist cause by supporting the Union Movement’s activities in London during the late 1950s and 1960s. He went on to become a motor racing tycoon and later led a crusade against the press, bankrolling Impress, the alternative regulator.

Mosley had been caught up in a News of the World sting operation, which exposed his participation in a sex orgy.

This week, The Daily Telegraph revealed that Oxford University and its colleges were handed more than £12million from the Alexander Mosley Charitable Trust. The university came under fire from its own dons as well as senior political figures, who accused the institution of “vast hypocrisy”.

In a joint statement, Oxford’s Jewish Society and the Union of Jewish students said the fact that they had not been consulted about the donations was “inconsiderate and inappropriate” and called on the university and colleges involved to consider their positions.

“The Mosley family name is synonymous with fascism and anti-Semitism in Britain,” the groups said. “The university’s decision to dedicate a professorship to this name serves to commemorate and revere the Mosley legacy.”

An Imperial College London spokesman said: “These charitable donations support medical research into new therapies for treatment-resistant depression and other serious mental health conditions. Like all gifts, they are subject to Imperial’s thorough due diligence processes.”

Kingston University confirmed the donation, adding: “The Discover Leveson website is a searchable digital resource, providing the public with access to evidence from the landmark inquiry.” Westminster University said: “As an organisation we are committed to ensuring an actively anti-racist, inclusive and safe environment for all.”

UCL declined to comment.