Oxford University has been accused of a “moral failure” after it accepted millions of pounds from a charitable trust set up by the Mosley family.
The university was said to have received £6 million from a trust set up by Max Mosley which used some of the fortune he inherited from his father, Oswald, leader of the British Union of Fascists.
Two Oxford colleges, St Peter’s and Lady Margaret Hall, also received more than £6.3 million from the trust, according to The Daily Telegraph.
Max Mosley signed off the donations shortly before his death in May.
Professor Lawrence Goldman, a former vice-master of St Peter’s, accused the university of “vast hypocrisy”, saying that the donations emerged after it had “gone off the scale in wokery”, a reference to moves to decolonise the curriculum and having a plaque installed next to the Cecil Rhodes statue calling him a “committed British colonialist”.
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Goldman, who lost relatives in the Holocaust and spent five months trying to persuade St Peter’s to refuse its donation, said: “There has been a total moral failure.”
Lord Mann, the government’s independent adviser on antisemitism, said: “If Oxford is trying to rehabilitate the Mosley family name in any way, they can expect a very hostile response.”
Mosley took up his father’s cause during the late Fifties and Sixties by supporting the activities of the Union Movement, the successor to the BUF.
The donations came 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 will be used to set up the Alexander Mosley Professor of Biophysics Fund. St Peter’s also plans to build new student accommodation.
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Robert Halfon, chairman of the Commons education select committee, said: “I find it distressing that Oxford University is so keen to go on about diversity and inclusion but is prepared to take the shilling from such sources.”
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”.
The university said: “We can confirm that donations to the Department of Physics from the Alexander Mosley Charitable Trust, including endowment of a chair in Biophysics named after Alexander Mosley, a graduate of the University, were all considered and approved by the University’s committee to review donations and research funding.”
St Peter’s said: “The Alexander Mosley Charitable Trust, a regulated charity, has generously donated to St Peter’s and to a range of educational, scholarly, and social justice projects in the UK and internationally. The donation to St Peter’s was given to provide new student accommodation on site, which will make a transformative difference to the lives of students for generations to come.”
