The shaming of Oxford: How the Guardian's ex-editor prostituted the university to solicit blood money from his friend, the orgy-loving Max Mosley – and proof the unrepentant racist's fortune came from Hitler, Europe's neo-Nazis and apartheid South Africa

At 4.42pm on July 4, 2019, Alan Rusbridger, Principal of Lady Margaret Hall at Oxford University and, formerly, the achingly liberal editor of The Guardian newspaper, sent a confidential email. Its tone could be described as gushing, sycophantic even.

'Dear Max, Firstly, thanks so much for a really lovely supper. Delicious food, fascinating talk,' he began.

The Max in question was Max Mosley, the multimillionaire motorsport tycoon, unrepentant former neo-fascist, indulger with prostitutes in prison-themed orgies and obsessive campaigner for state press regulation.

Mr Rusbridger wanted something from Mr Mosley: Money. Lots of money, to fund a project at 'not rich' (by the standards of other Oxford colleges) Lady Margaret Hall, known as LMH.

'If you wanted to help (and bearing in mind I have no idea of your available funds or intentions) £80k would complete the financing we need,' Mr Rusbridger explained to Mr Mosley. 'Something over £2m would endow the scheme in perpetuity for LMH.'

Clever Mr Rusbridger then offered Mr Mosley an inducement.

'We could name this programme after Alexander,' [Mosley's late son] he suggested. 'Of course, we can supply any more information you might want. Forgive me if this is not at all within the realm of possibility. Since arriving at Oxford I have learned the habits of boldness in seeking funds.'

The Principal signed off: 'Very best wishes, Alan.'

He thanked Mosley (pictured), son of fascist Oswald Mosley for a 'really lovely supper' and  a 'fascinating talk' 

Mr Rusbridger wanted money to fund a project at 'not rich' (by the standards of other Oxford colleges) Lady Margaret Hall, (Pictured: Oxford University)

This solicitation of Mosley funds and offer to glorify the Mosley name was undoubtedly 'bold' because, by then, Oxford University had a long and very troubled relationship with the Mosley family.

In the 1930s, Sir Oswald Mosley, leader of the British Union of Fascists, friend of Hitler and father of Max, attempted to recruit students to his anti-Semitic movement through the Oxford University Fascist Association.

In May 1936, a rally led by Mosley in Oxford ended in violence after his Blackshirt supporters played the Nazi anthem, Horst-Wessel-Lied.

Mosley had provoked the crowd by calling the Labour Party 'pink rabbits in the pay of the Jews'. One Oxford don, Frank Pakenham, who later became the anti-porn campaigner Lord Longford, was hit over the head with a steel chain.

But, surely, this is all ancient history? Not quite.

In 2018, only a year before Mr Rusbridger sent that simpering email, Max Mosley's own racist, neo-fascist past and subsequent lack of repentance was exposed by this newspaper.

A Daily Mail investigation uncovered a 1961 by-election pamphlet for Sir Oswald's fascist Union Movement. Max, who read physics at Christ Church, Oxford, was acting as agent for the candidate.

Racist throughout, the pamphlet stated: 'Coloured immigration threatens your children's health' with diseases such as 'tuberculosis, venereal disease and leprosy'.

Who was responsible for this incendiary tract? The answer lay at the bottom of the front page: 'Published by Max Mosley.'

Under oath at his 2008 privacy trial against the News of the World, which had exposed the F1 tycoon's predilection for sado-masochistic orgies, Max had appeared to deny the very existence of this pamphlet. Under cross-examination, Mosley was asked whether there was any truth in the suggestion that leaflets had alleged coloured immigrants brought 'leprosy, syphilis and TB', and he answered: 'That is absolute nonsense.'

In the same exchange when asked if he put out leaflets urging voters to 'send the blacks home', he said: 'I have no recollection of doing any such thing, and I would think with the research that has been done if there was such a leaflet you would be able to produce it. If there were such a leaflet you would produce it.'

In a subsequent car-crash interview with Channel 4 News after the Mail's exposé, Mosley tried to suggest the pamphlet was a hoax. It was not. Under pressure, he conceded the pamphlet was 'probably' racist.

Worse followed. In an interview with The Guardian, Max refused to apologise or condemn his father and defended both his father's and his own past support of apartheid – more of which later.

As a result of the Mail's exposé, the Labour Party announced that it would no longer accept money from Mr Mosley, who had given some £500,000 to the office of its then deputy leader, the Murdoch press-hating Tom Watson.

The Guardian's media commentator and a professor of journalism, Roy Greenslade, wrote a condemnation under the headline: 'I once sympathised with Max Mosley, but he's really lost me now.' He thought other academics would feel the same. But not, it seemed, the Guardian's editor, Mr Rusbridger. And he was not alone among Oxford college nabobs to seek out Mosley and his largesse.

Using Freedom of Information (FOI) requests and other sources, the Mail can today reveal, for the first time, the inside story of how Britain's oldest university solicited the tycoon for more than £12million in donations, despite outrage from academics, students, alumni and pressure groups.

A cache of never-before-seen emails reveal the university's PR strategy for when 'the brown stuff hits the fan' – as one Oxford official put it in another confidential internal message on how the university would cope with the adverse publicity Mosley's involvement would provoke.

Central to this strategy was the self-serving and utterly misleading assertion that the money was somehow not tainted by association with either Sir Oswald Mosley or Max Mosley's fascist beliefs.

For the Mail can also reveal today how that money was inextricably linked to the murder of millions of Jews.

During our investigation, we gained access to previously classified documents about the Mosleys from MI5, MI6, Special Branch, the CIA and archives in Belgium, France, Switzerland, Ireland and South Africa.

Those previously secret documents provide chilling proof of how Oswald received significant sums of money from Mussolini and Hitler (courtesy of Goebbels) and how, after the war, he increased his fortune through lucrative dealings – often involving Max – with Hitler's henchmen and other notorious anti-Semites.

This money Oswald and Max then invested heavily in South Africa where both were ardent supporters of the loathsome apartheid regime that enforced separation between the white minority and the black majority.

Max Mosley, let it be stressed, is himself on record as admitting that his fascist father's fortune came to him.

Little wonder then that the Mail's FOI requests for current documents concerning the university's dealings with Mosley encountered stiff resistance from Oxford. The documents we did receive were often heavily redacted. Names of officials who took part in negotiations with Max were excised.

Shortly before his death in May 2021, Max was told by Oxford that the Mosley name was to be carved in stone on the Clarendon Arch on a panel recording the 'Benefactors of the University'.

The panel – next to the Bodleian Library – dates back to the Middle Ages and lists just 242 names, including that of the late Queen and other monarchs.

So it was that Max Mosley and his blood money, with the complicity of Oxford University, had the last laugh over those who opposed his family's poisonous views.

Max Mosley had a son called Alexander who read engineering and maths at St Peter's College, Oxford. In 2009 Alexander died of a drugs overdose, aged 39. His father later said the News of the World's exposé of those S&M orgies had 'added greatly' to his depressed son's 'burden'.

In 2011 the Alexander Mosley Charitable Trust (AMCT) was established. The sole source of the trust's income was its chairman, one Max Mosley. The trust would become a vehicle for his ambitions in several areas of public life.

Mark Damazer, a former head of BBC Radio 4, was then the Master of St Peter's College. In 2013, according to university documents released to the Mail under FOI, Damazer decided to accept substantial donations from the AMCT.

The first tranche saw the trust give St Peter's £100,000 a year over three years. In 2016, the trust gave the college a further £1,102,250 to endow the Alexander Mosley Fellowship in Engineering. An even greater gift was to finance a new student accommodation block.

Aside from one misleading round-robin email to students, not one internal document explaining these decisions has been released despite a number of FOI requests.

But architectural drawings from 2018, obtained by us, show that the building was originally to be called Alexander Mosley House. The Mosley name would be emblazoned on a plinth. The building would cost £5million – a sum the college would receive from the AMCT.

On May 1, 2019 – according to a 'strictly confidential contact report' released after our FOI request – a 'solicitation meeting' took place in Knightsbridge. Solicitation, that is, for a large amount of money.

At the meeting were Mosley and Professor Ian Shipsey, head of Oxford's Department of Physics.

Although heavily redacted, the report referred to Mosley as 'Max' who, according to the report's author (whose name was also redacted), 'confirmed his intention to support a new Professorial Chair in Biological Physics, with a gift of £6m… He will introduce me to his solicitor in mid-May, and is in a financial position to make the donation immediately. He expressed a preference for the post to be associated with St Peter's College, and will shortly be meeting with Mark Damazer (Head of House).'

Two months later, Mr Rusbridger sent his email to Mosley thanking him for the 'really lovely supper'. He complained that 'like most of the former women's colleges, LMH is not rich … Our endowment is around £42million … For 100 years LMH only had women (students), and not many of them went out and made money, so we have a relatively small pool of potential donors'.

By then, Alan and Max were behaving like best buddies

Their connection dated back to 2010, at least. In that year, over dinner at an 'expensive' restaurant in South Kensington attended by a group of lawyers and Nick Davies, the Guardian's investigative reporter, Mosley declared he was prepared to devote the rest of his life to fighting the Press.

'He would also spend money,' wrote Davies in his 2014 book Hack Attack, 'although at first I did not quite understand how much he had in the bank. Very quickly that evening, we agreed to work together.

Oswald Mosley and his son Max Mosley being taken away from the precincts of a court in September 1962

Mr Rusbridger told the Mail he was unaware that the Guardian's investigative reporter Nick Davies had encouraged Mosley to coax Mulcaire

Mosley employed former News of the World convicted phone hacker Glenn Mulcaire to dig up dirt on Murdoch's red tops – information which was then fed back to The Guardian. Nick Davies said in his book Hack Attack that Mosley was the Guardian's 'secret weapon' and that he 'encouraged' Mosley to coax Mulcaire under the pretext of hiring him for security. (In a statement to the Daily Mail, Mr Rusbridger denied he was aware that Davies had encouraged Mosley to employ Mulcaire.)

Mosley also agreed to underwrite legal actions against the News of the World owner Rupert Murdoch. In 2011, The Guardian revealed that murdered schoolgirl Milly Dowler's phone had been hacked by the News of the World. And although The Guardian's claim that the hacking had deleted Milly's last messages was unsubstantiated, the NotW was subsequently closed.

In August 2019, Mosley signed a Deed of Gift 'pledging £6million to endow the Alexander Mosley Professorship of Biophysics' through the AMCT.

On September 2, Mosley emailed Mr Rusbridger. The first paragraph is completely redacted but the second sets out his proposal to fund the Lady Margaret Hall Foundation.

'Another point is that we only give to registered charities,' the donor states. 'This is to avoid challenges to our gifts.'

On November 8, members of the college's Development Committee were informed about the proposed donation. There was no formal vote but nine members were in favour. One, however, was not, according to an internal memo released through FOI requests.

On November 22, in another internal memo, the college's Development Director noted that donations over £100,000 would normally be scrutinised by the Committee to Review Donations.

But because the Mosley trust had recently been admitted to the Oxford University Vice-Chancellor's circle of approved donors – after 'further checks' – the university's Head of Prospect Research 'confirmed there was no need for the LMH's gift to be scrutinised'. So the Mosley cash was waved through. Indeed, this high-level approval of Mosley money was sanctified on December 6, when Oxford University's Chancellor – Lord (Chris) Patten, the former Tory minister and last Governor of Hong Kong – sent a letter to Max Mosley.

'It gives me great pleasure,' he wrote, 'to invite the Alexander Mosley Charitable Trust to become a member of the Chancellor's Court of Benefactors, with you as the representative.'

Lord Patten invited Mosley to attend the next meeting of benefactors, which would end with a gala dinner, and concluded: 'It would be a great pleasure for me personally, and for members of the University, to have a regular opportunity to meet you and hear your views.'

But not, one imagines, the views on race that Mosley expressed in that 1961 election pamphlet, nor in his support for apartheid South Africa.

Meanwhile, on June 7, 2020, Mr Rusbridger, never one to hide his liberal lights under a bushel, tweeted his support for efforts to remove an Oriel College statue of the imperialist, Cecil Rhodes. 'I do think this is the right decision (speaking personally),' he wrote. (Mr Rusbridger told the Daily Mail: 'I can't see any equivalence between a) a statue honouring a highly controversial figure (even in his own lifetime); and b) accepting a donation from a controversial figure which immeasurably improved the lives of young people in need.')

In the first week of 2021, Mosley sent a lengthy email to Mr Rusbridger, much of which has been redacted, in which he reminisced about his own time at Oxford. His penultimate paragraph begins 'In the meantime…' But the remaining five lines of text are excised. Mosley signed off: 'I hope you had an excellent Christmas! All the best, Max.'

Mr Rusbridger, who this week defended the Mosley donations on the grounds the money helped needy students, responded the same day: 'It sounds as though your experience with physics was not untypical of many undergraduates who are expected to sink or swim.'

He suggested Mosley might want to make a further gift that would 'help build our way to the £4m target'. Four more lines of text are redacted before Mr Rusbridger signed off: 'Very best wishes, as ever, Alan.'

On January 25, 2021, according to the FOI releases, Lord Patten again wrote to Mosley, offering to have his family trust's name engraved on the university's historic Clarendon Arch – and for him to be made a distinguished fellow of the Chancellor's Court of Benefactors.

'The University,' wrote his lordship, 'has a long tradition of recognising its most significant donors, sometimes in very enduring ways. In the Clarendon Arch, at the heart of the University, there are inscribed the names of some of the University's most generous benefactors dating back to the 14th century.'

Patten then invited Mosley to see the inscription in person and be presented with his gold-tasselled bonnet, as a member of the fellowship of the court. How much more decorous those tassels would have been compared to the brutal symbols of his father's black-shirted Fascist Union Movement with whom Max himself had marched.

The following month, Mosley agreed to a new donation for Mr Rusbridger. In an email released under FOI, he confirmed a £50,000 sum towards the Lady Margaret Hall study skills centre. 'If you let me know where to send it, we will arrange a transfer,' he wrote. 'All the best, Max.'

On May 23, 2021, suffering from incurable cancer, Max Mosley shot himself at his London home. He was 81.

The next day Rusbridger tweeted: 'Saddened to hear of the death of Max Mosley. I didn't agree with the all the things he campaigned for, but nor (in my experience) was he the cartoon villain he was painted as. Nuance counts…'

The tweet prompted an angry response from Peter Hillmore, a former columnist on the Guardian's sister paper, the Observer. Mr Hillmore, who was related to Mosley through marriage, wrote: 'A few examples of his 'good things' might help'.

Mr Rusbridger asked: 'Peter, why come on to Twitter to be so rude to strangers. Hope all is well, Alan.'

Mr Hillmore replied: 'Partly because I knew Max… and he was racist to the end.'

Almost immediately, the publicity surrounding the death of the highly litigious Mosley seems to have been the catalyst for the internal backlash against Oxford's partnership with him.

Professor Lawrence Goldman, emeritus fellow in history and a former vice-master of St Peter's College, wrote to his colleagues imploring them to vote against accepting Mosley money. While phrased ambiguously as a vote against 'accepting' the funds, this vote was about whether to keep or return past donations. The subsequent note to alumni stated the college 'has not acquiesced to the demand to return the funds'.

He warned that taking funds from the 'most infamous fascist dynasty in the English-speaking world' will be a 'disaster' for the college.

In a letter to the college's Master, he explained that many of his Jewish relatives were murdered in the Holocaust and his father and uncle had fought against the Nazis. Professor Goldman also wrote to the new Master of St Peter's College, Professor Judith Buchanan (Damazer had stepped down in 2019), and the Vice-Chancellor of the university, Professor Louise Richardson.

In 2011 the Alexander Mosley Charitable Trust (AMCT) was established. Pictured here is Alexander Mosley, who died aged 39 of a suspected overdose in 2009

He read engineering and maths at St Peter's College, Oxford (Pictured: It is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford, located on New Inn Hall Street

This appears to have had an immediate impact.

On July 6, 2021, in an email to a colleague released to us under FOI, Oxford's communications director James Colman revealed a sudden policy change by the AMCT.

'With the death of Max Mosley, the remaining [AMCT] trustees have decided that they want to change the naming conventions attached to all the gifts from the trust,' Mr Colman wrote.

'In short – they want to remove the Mosley name from all gifts. This includes: St Peter's College new accommodation block, the Clarendon Arch, the Professorship… The potential for bad press is something they are horrified by.'

Meanwhile, the university's executive was on a war footing.

Two days later, Mr Colman warned the Vice-Chancellor in an email released under FOI: 'I know St Peter's is braced for possible incoming (fire) over Max Mosley, and so are we… Just checking there is a joined-up response in case the brown stuff does hit the fan.'

Despite this, Professor Richardson replied: 'I've confirmed we wont [sic] be returning any money…'

In the email from July 8, 2021, which was a brief response to a colleague, Professor Richardson did not give a reason. In a subsequent internal email sent on November 11, 2021, she said she felt the Mosley family should be allowed to memorialise their son, that the money in the trust 'has nothing to do with Oswald Mosley' and that the outrage 'is being whipped up by [redacted] et al'.

In October that year, our FOI documents show, the university began to lay the PR groundwork to head off any undergraduate revolt against Mosley money. Students were encouraged to 'read widely' to reach 'their own informed opinion'.

On October 15, the Governing Body at St Peter's College issued a 'background note' for students, setting out its justification for retaining the Mosley donations. It was headed: 'Introductory context for a story that may shortly be in the public domain.'

But the note contained at least two statements that, at best, were utterly misleading.

The first was that St Peter's College would 'choose the name of the new building from scratch in close consultation with students'. There was no admission that the building was originally to have borne the Mosley name.

The second more significant distortion was about Max himself.

According to the college, he had 'separated himself from his father's politics and projects' after the early 1960s aged 22 and had endowed the Mosley trust 'with money made through motorsport'.

As we shall reveal later, this was not true.

As we know, Max Mosley's defence of his father and his own racist views continued until his death.

In a 2015 interview with GQ magazine, he stated of his personal wealth: 'When my father left England [in 1951] all the [family] money was in Lichtenstein and for various reasons it all came to me.'

In the same interview he set out his cynical approach to using that money to his advantage: 'If I want to be friends with the Prime Minister and I give a million pounds I will get access and invitations,' he said. 'It may be wrong but it is not illegal.'

On October 15, 2021, the St Peter's Master, Professor Judith Buchanan, sent an email – released under FOI – that appeared to be an attempt to silence her non-academic staff.

It warned them that the 'college might be in the news in the next few days' and that if approached by journalists they should refuse to comment. St Peter's Governing Body had decided, she said, not to return the money and the college had the support of the Vice-Chancellor and the senior management of the University of Oxford.

Sir Oswald Mosley, leader of the British Union of Fascists in the 1930s, performs a Nazi salute

Max Mosley was a businessman, lawyer and racing driver. He had also served as president of the Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile, Formula One's governing body 

On November 5, the controversy finally leaked. Professor Goldman had spoken to the Daily Telegraph, accusing St Peter's College of 'vast hypocrisy'.

'The university has gone off the scale in wokery,' he said. 'But they go ahead and take money from a fund established by proven and known fascists… There has been a total moral failure.

'Max Mosley has been going round terrorising people and has never apologised. We shouldn't be dealing with him. This is an open-and-shut case.' The university's PR machine went into frantic damage limitation mode. But on November 8, the Vice-Chancellor and the Master of St Peter's received an ominous email – released to us under FOI but with the name of the sender redacted.

It read: 'You still have a choice. You can try to tough this out, defending the indefensible. But the costs will be great in reputations overturned, donors withdrawing, applicants never applying, and future supporters finding better places for their money and friendship.

'To yoke together the names of Oxford and Mosley will have far-reaching consequences, not least for all the good work done to attract Afro-Caribbean students and other minorities.

'Or you could do the right thing. You could apologise in public for taking this money, and you could atone for the insult not only to the black and Jewish communities but also to the millions of British people whose ancestors fought against fascism and wanted the Mosleys to rot and never be heard from again.'

This was only the start. November 10, 2021, must have been an uncomfortable day for the university, our FOI documents suggest. A joint protest letter from ten Jewish organisations including the Holocaust Educational Trust, the Oxford Jewish Society and the Union of Jewish Students was sent to Professors Richardson and Buchanan.

The letter stated: 'We find it extraordinary that … 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 anti-Semitic policies of Adolf Hitler implemented in this country.

'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, and who was married at Joseph Goebbels' house in Berlin in the presence of Adolf Hitler.

'Sir Oswald's son, Max, who made the donations before his recent death, continued his father's legacy, both in public and, if reports are to be believed, in private, without remorse or retraction.'

That same day, the pressure group Black Lives Matter sent an email to St Peter's College, again released to the Mail under FOI.

It read in part: 'Mosley thugs targeted and violently beat up Afro-Caribbeans in Notting Hill and we strongly believe Oxford should not take Mosley money. The Mosley money should be returned.'

In response, the college quoted from a statement issued by the Mosley trust on November 11, 2021, via its website: 'The trust abhors racism in all its forms including the thuggery and violence of Oswald Mosley's fascist movement. None of the funds received or distributed by the trust were the proceeds of fascism.'

Again, this was demonstrably wrong.

First, because it was impossible to separate Max Mosley's own money from the fortune he inherited from his father, nor from his own business dealings with apartheid South Africa.

Second, at no point in his time as chair of the family trust did Max denounce his father or the fascist movement. It was only now, after his death, that his fellow trustees – presumably to avoid bad publicity – dared to do so. This was revisionism at its most cynical.

But Vice-Chancellor Professor Richardson was standing firm by still accepting the AMCT position. The following day she sent an email – released to us under FOI – to a colleague saying she was thinking of asking the 'Mosely' [sic] family if they would object to changing the name of the Alexander Mosley Chair to the Alexander Chair.

In a second, partly redacted, email she wrote: 'The family has been marvellous and should be allowed to memorialize their son. This is being whipped up by [redacted name] et al. The money in the trust has nothing to do with Oswald Mosley.'

That Max received the bulk of his father's fortune has never been disputed. But it suited the university not to study this question too closely.

Alexander's father, Max, is seen in June 2009 in the paddock during the practice session at Silverstone racecourse

On November 18, St Peter's College reached out to its alumni to reassure them that everything was above board. Again, there was at least one claim contained within the alumni letter – released to us through FOI – that is misleading.

It stated: 'In an arrangement confirmed before [their italics] there was any press on the subject, the [Mosley trust] generously invited the College to choose the name of the [£5million accommodation building] in consultation with our students.'

But other FOI documents demonstrate that the college backtracked only after [our italics] an internal outcry, and discussions with the AMCT, when it became clear that the 'brown stuff' was about to hit the fan.

The furore grew, but the university remained resolute. They were keeping the Mosley millions.

On January 26, 2022, according to a confidential 'contact report' released to us under FOI, Oxford's Pro-Vice Chancellor David Gann had a telephone conversation with a complainant who was 'very unhappy about the … University accepting gifts linked with the Mosley family'.

The complainant's name has been redacted, but Gann's seniority suggests it was a significant figure, perhaps a major donor. He told the complainant that the due diligence had found no connection between the AMCT money and Oswald Mosley. Last night, Oxford University continued to insist its due diligence was 'robust'.

During the discussion, Gann suggested this issue was in the news 'because certain people wanted to inflame communities'. It was not the university's fault. Plus ca change.

And today?

The new accommodation block at St Peter's College, located next to Oxford's Castle Mound, is open and occupied by students apparently oblivious to its troubled provenance. Certainly, the building bears no clue to its benefactor.

That is not the case elsewhere. In 2021, without fanfare or ceremony, a tangible legacy of the Mosley name was literally carved in stone alongside the late Queen's on the Clarendon Arch – the intellectual heart of this hallowed academic institution, to which the family had brought only shame.

Blood money talks, even, or especially, among the dreaming spires.