Oxford called out for taking donation

LONDON• Oxford University has been accused of a “moral failure” after accepting a donation from the Mosley family, infamous for leading Britain's fascist movement.

The university was given 6 million pounds from a charitable trust set up by Max Mosley from the fortune he inherited from his father, Oswald Mosley, the leader of the British Union of Fascists who was on friendly terms with Mussolini and Hitler.

Two colleges — St Peter's and Lady Margaret Hall — have also accepted cash from the Mosley family trust totalling over 6.3 million pounds. Max Mosley, who set up the trust a decade ago, signed off on the donations shortly before his death in May.

Friday, a senior Oxford don accused the university of “vast hypocrisy.”

Prof. Lawrence Goldman, emeritus fellow in history and a former vice-master of St Peter's, said he was “shocked” the donations were accepted as “the university has gone off the scale in wokery,” referring to moves to decolonize the curriculum and the Rhodes statue row.

Goldman, who lost relatives in the Holocaust, added: “Its moral compass is just not working anymore. There has been a total moral failure.”

John Mann, the government's anti-Semitism tsar, said: “If Oxford is trying to rehabilitate the Mosley family name in any way, they can expect a very hostile response. I don't imagine people would be very happy to have a Mussolini building, or a Hitler scholarship. People in this country will feel the same way in relation to the Mosley name.”

Max Mosley took up his father's cause during the late 1950s and '60s by supporting the activities of the Union Movement, the successor to the BUF.

Goldman said he had spent the past five months trying to persuade St. Peter's to refuse the donation. In June he wrote to all the fellows on the college's governing body, warning that taking funds from the “most infamous fascist dynasty in the English-speaking world” would be a “disaster.”

Goldman told The Daily Telegraph: “Max Mosley has been going round terrorizing people and has never apologized. We shouldn't be dealing with him. This is an open and shut case.”

The donations have been made from the Alexander Mosley Charitable Trust, which Max Mosley set up in the name of his son, an alumnus of St. Peter's, who died of a heroin overdose in 2009.

The 6 million pounds donation to the university will be used to set up the Alexander Mosley Professor of Biophysics Fund, while the 5 million pounds donation to St. Peter's will be used to build a student residence.

The university, St. Peter's and Lady Margaret Hall all said the funds were cleared by an independent committee, taking “legal, ethical and reputational issues into consideration.”