Malign Mosley shadow that still casts its evil over Britain
A British neo-Nazi group – which idolises Jo Cox’s killer – today draws its inspiration from the fascist Union Movement which Max Mosley championed . . . with his fists
Far from being merely the victim of an accident of birth into an ‘unusual family’ — his phrase — Max Mosley was a prominent figure in the final years of the far-right Union Movement (UM). It is a role that he has consistently underplayed in public. along the way he acted as its propagandist, street activist, public speaker, party agent, legal adviser and proposed parliamentary candidate.
He disrupted rival political meetings, fought Jewish anti-fascists, advocated apartheid across the whole continent of africa, opposed interracial marriage and, along with former officers of Germany’s Waffen-SS, was present in the inner sanctum of one of the largest conferences of European neo-fascists after World War II. Under cross-examination at his 2008 News of the World privacy trial about his role in his father’s party, Max Mosley called the matter ‘completely irrelevant’ to the case and said it was ‘a waste of time’ to bring it up.
Whether or not it would have made a difference to the case, many would argue that the activities of the UM have left a malign legacy, insidiously undermining many areas of life in modern Britain.
Where it is indisputably relevant to the public interest is in relation to Max Mosley’s substantial funding of Labour deputy leader Tom Watson and the regulation of the Press.
In his 2007 book about the revival of post-war British fascism entitled Very Deeply Dyed In Black, the academic Graham Macklin wrote ‘The Union Movement acted as the guardian of the “sacred flame” [of 1930s racist politics]’.
It was ‘an ideological conveyor belt transmitting its own particularly malignant set of political and cultural idioms...to a new generation of activists’.
after Sir Oswald Mosley retired from politics in 1966, that ‘sacred flame’ was passed first to the National Front — formed in 1967 — and then the British National Party.
THE BNP leader Nick Griffin was inspired as a boy by the writings of Sir Oswald and would later make the far-right’s biggest political breakthrough when elected as a member of the European parliament, a post he kept until as recently as 2014.
Last September, two serving British soldiers were charged with membership of a proscribed neonazi organisation called National action (Na). Sir Oswald Mosley is cited by Na’s founders as their inspiration and the group copied his Union Movement symbol for their own insignia.
When loner Thomas Mair shouted ‘death to traitors, freedom for Britain’ in court after being charged with the 2016 murder of Labour MP Jo Cox, Na adopted Mair’s slogan.
The group’s founder Benjamin raymond has posted pictures online of himself apparently holding up the signature of Sir Oswald Mosley.
another Na member, Sean Creighton, who idolised Hitler and had a Swastika tattoo, was jailed in February last year for having bomb-making instructions on his laptop. The soldiers’ arrests have a historical parallel. In late 1963, the War Office instigated an investigation into alleged right-wing extremism in the Chelsea-based 44 Independent Parachute Brigade of the Territorial army.
Max Mosley and several other colleagues in the UM — including convicted Holocaust-denier Keith Gibson — had joined the unit, albeit separately, as parttime soldiers.
Mosley did not breach any army regulations but as a result of the investigation, he was warned by his commanding officer not to engage in political activities while in uniform or training camps, while Gibson and another UM HQ official ‘resigned’.
Two months later Gibson, who described Max Mosley as ‘my friend’ (and even named his dog after him), was jailed for politically linked violence. a personification of the Mosleyite ‘ideological conveyor belt’ is one David ashton.
a teenage Mosley sympathiser, he says he was recruited by Max while they were both at Oxford, to help with Sir Oswald’s writings.
ashton did so for almost two decades.
He would contribute to the UM’s vehemently racist action newspaper and assist with the research and refinement of two of Sir Oswald’s books as well as a hagiographic biography of the fascist leader by Max’s Oxford friend, robert Skidelsky, published in 1975. Max had introduced David ashton to Skidelsky. Sir Oswald would later describe the pair as his own ‘young literary friends’. Now a retired teacher, ashton told the Mail he was approached by Max Mosley ‘out of the blue’.
He said: ‘Soon after my arrival at Oxford (in 1958), Max asked me if I would like to earn some vacation money by typing and editing “Dad’s proposed paperback”.
‘Mosley had told Max to ask if I would help with what became Mosley: right Or Wrong? and Max came across from Christ Church into Pembroke to find me with a financially tempting bonus.’
The undergraduate ashton went
to stay at Sir Oswald’s Paris home to complete the task. Why is this significant now? In the Action newspaper in September 1961, only weeks before such sentiments were echoed in Max Mosley’s racist Moss Side election pamphlet, Ashton wrote: ‘We should stop the introduction of contagious disease into Britain by immigrants.’
He also advocated that ‘coloured doctors’ should also be sent ‘home’. But he did not stop there. Today Ashton, now 77, is a regular presence on white supremacist and neo-fascist website forums.
In 2015, he cast ‘doubt’ on the widely accepted total number of Jews who died in the Holocaust, using the term ‘“six million” cliché’.
In May last year, he posted in an anti-Semitic discussion thread ‘Ordinary Jews . . . don’t make their money by burglary or mugging, nor do they get into drunken brawls; their anti-social activities are more “sophisticated”.’
In August, he was referring to the ‘JQ’ — shorthand among the far-Right for the ‘Jewish Question’: the alleged Jewish desire to have world domination.
Hitler decided that his ‘Final Solution’ to the Jewish question should be the genocide of the Holocaust. Ashton posted only a few months ago: ‘I still think there are effective and counterproductive ways of dealing with the JQ.’
Although he would not meet us, the Mail engaged in an email conversation with Ashton.
He remains unrepentant. He still reveres Sir Oswald, who used Max to draw him closer to the cause.
Max himself has had numerous opportunities, not least in his autobiography, but also in court and Parliament, to express his remorse at his own involvement in the UM and distance himself from his father’s racist creed.
Yet in his written evidence at his 2008 privacy trial he made his refusal to do so quite plain. ‘I supported his political activities, as a son would naturally support his father. Since his death I have neither rubbished his views nor defended them.’
Loyalty to one’s father is understandable and usually even to be applauded.
But Max Mosley was talking about a father who was the white supremacist, anti-Semitic confederate of Adolf Hitler and admirer of Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels.