Max Rufus Mosley (13 April 1940 – 23 May 2021) was a British businessman, lawyer and racing driver. He served as president of the Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile (FIA), the governing body for Formula One.
A barrister and amateur racing driver, Mosley was a founder and co-owner of March Engineering, a racing car constructor and Formula One racing team. He dealt with legal and commercial matters for the company between 1969 and 1977 and became its representative at the Formula One Constructors' Association (FOCA), the body that represents Formula One constructors. Together with Bernie Ecclestone, Mosley represented FOCA at the FIA and in its dealings with race organisers. In 1978, he became the official legal adviser to FOCA. In this role, Mosley and Marco Piccinini negotiated the first version of the Concorde Agreement, which settled a long-standing dispute between FOCA and the Fédération Internationale du Sport Automobile (FISA), a commission of the FIA and the then governing body of Formula One. Mosley was elected president of FISA in 1991 and became president of the FIA, FISA's parent body, in 1993. Mosley identified his major achievement as FIA President as the promotion of the European New Car Assessment Programme (Euro NCAP or Encap). He died at the age of 81 on 23 May 2021.
Family and early life
Max Mosley was born on 13 April 1940 in London, in the early years of the Second World War. His father was Sir Oswald Mosley, leader of the British Union of Fascists (BUF), and his mother was Diana Mitford, one of the Mitford sisters. In addition to his older full-brother Alexander, Mosley had five older half-siblings. On his father's side, they included the future novelist Nicholas Mosley, 3rd Baron Ravensdale (1923–2017). On his mother's side they were the merchant banker Jonathan Guinness, 3rd Baron Moyne (born 1930), and the Irish preservationist Desmond Guinness (1931–2020). He was a nephew of Deborah Cavendish, Duchess of Devonshire, and first cousin of Peregrine Cavendish, 12th Duke of Devonshire. He was also third cousin of Winston Churchill MP, the grandson of the British prime minister, and fifth cousin of Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother. Max and his brother Alexander were not included in their parents' internment and, as a result, were separated from them for the first few years of their lives. In December 1940, Winston Churchill asked the Home Secretary Herbert Morrison to ensure Lady Mosley was able to see Max regularly.
Sir Oswald and Lady Mosley were released from detention at HMP Holloway on 16 November 1943, provoking widespread public protests. The family moved to a succession of country houses in England. Mosley's older half-brother Nicholas described the family, including Sir Oswald's children from his first marriage, spending the summer of 1945 getting the harvest in and shooting at Crowood Farm, near Ramsbury, Wiltshire.<!--http://www.worldcat.org/title/proceedings-and-transactions-of-the-royal-society-of-canada-deliberations-et-memoires-de-la-societe-royale-du-canada/oclc/2247486 if location needs ref-->
At the age of 13, Mosley was sent to Stein an der Traun in Germany for two years, where he learned to speak fluent German. Rejecting an early ambition to work as a physicist after "establishing that there was no money in it", Mosley studied law at Gray's Inn in London and qualified as a barrister in 1964. After a pupillage with Maurice Drake, he specialised in patent and trademark law. His aunt Nancy Mitford, in letters to Evelyn Waugh, recalled Sir Oswald and his family cruising the Mediterranean Sea on the family yacht. On one such trip they visited Spain and were entertained by Sir Oswald's friend General Franco.
Mosley, like many Formula One drivers, lived in Monaco. On 9 June 1960, he was married at the Chelsea Register Office to Jean Taylor, the daughter of James Taylor, a policeman from Streatham. In 1970, their first son, Alexander, was born, and in 1972 their second son, Patrick. On 5 May 2009, Alexander, a restaurateur, was found dead at his Notting Hill home by his cleaner. He had died of drug abuse at the age of 39. An inquest was held on 10 June 2009, the Westminster coroner declaring that his death was due to non-dependent drug abuse.
Politics
From their teens to early twenties, Mosley and his brother were involved with their father's post-war party, the far-right Union Movement (UM), which advocated European nationalism. Trevor Grundy, a central figure in the UM's Youth Movement, writes of the 16-year-old Mosley painting the flash and circle symbol on walls in London on the night of the Soviet Union's invasion of Hungary (4 November 1956). The flash and circle was used by both the UM and the pre-war British Union of Fascists (BUF). He also says Mosley organised a couple of large parties as a way "to get in with lively, ordinary, normal young people, girls as well as boys, and attract them to the Movement by showing that we were like them and didn't go on about Hitler and Mussolini, Franco and British Fascism all the time". Mosley met his future wife Jean at such a party. Mosley and Alexander were photographed posing as Teddy Boys in Notting Hill during the 1958 race riots between Afro-Caribbeans and local white gangs. The following year, they canvassed for their father when he ran as a Union Movement candidate for the nearby Kensington North seat in the 1959 general election.
In a 1961 by-election, Mosley was an election agent for the Union Movement, supporting Walter Hesketh, the UM's parliamentary candidate for Manchester Moss Side. The motor racing journalist Alan Henry described him as one of his father's "right-hand men" at the time of a violent incident in 1962, in which Sir Oswald was knocked down by a mob in London and saved from serious injury by his son's intervention. As a result of his involvement in this fracas, Mosley was arrested and charged with threatening behaviour. He was later cleared at Old Street Magistrates' Court on the grounds that he was trying to protect his father. By 1964, when he began work as a barrister, Mosley was no longer involved in politics.
In the early 1980s, Mosley attempted a political career, working for the Conservative Party and hoping to become a parliamentary candidate. Bernie Ecclestone's biographer, Terry Lovell, wrote that he gave up this aspiration after being unimpressed by "the calibre of senior party officials".
Racing career
While Mosley was at university, his wife was given tickets to a motor race at the Silverstone Circuit. The circuit is not far from Oxford, and the couple went out of curiosity. Mosley was attracted by the sport, and once qualified as a barrister, began teaching law in the evenings to earn enough money to start racing cars himself. The sport's indifference to his background appealed to Mosley: