The former motorsport head and privacy campaigner Max Mosley has died at the age of 81.
Mosley, who began his career in motor racing as an amateur driver, was an outspoken president of the International Automobile Federation (FIA), the governing body of Formula One, from 1993 to 2009.
His life changed in 2008 when stories about his sex life appeared on the front page of the News of the World, along with baseless suggestions that he held orgies with a Nazi theme.
Photo: AFP
This provided him with a new focus and he became a campaigner for stricter media controls.
Bernie Ecclestone, a former head of Formula One, confirmed the death to BBC Sport.
“It’s like losing family, like losing a brother, Max and I,” he said. “He did a lot of good things not just for motorsport, also the [auto] industry. He was very good in making sure people built cars that were safe.”
Mosley was the youngest son of Oswald Mosley, former leader of the British Union of Fascists, and Diana Mitford. His association with his father’s fascist political movement included a job as an election agent running a 1961 by-election campaign featuring racist leaflets warning about immigrants bringing disease and poverty to the UK.
After qualifying as a barrister, Max Mosley became increasingly involved in the world of motorsport, giving up his attempts to make it as a driver and instead focusing on the behind-the-scenes organizations involved in Formula One.
His tenure in charge of the FIA was known for its focus on safety in the aftermath of the deaths of drivers Ayrton Senna and Roland Ratzenberger at the 1994 San Marino Grand Prix.
This continued to be a focus of his activities even after he cut ties with Formula One in 2009, and he often traveled the world promoting driver safety.
Despite Max Mosley’s family history in fascist movements — his parents were married in the presence of Adolf Hitler — he later joined the Labour Party and formed unlikely alliances with left-wing politicians pushing for restrictions on the activities of British newspapers.
He provided millions of pounds of funding toward media reform groups, including underwriting the substantial costs of the officially recognized media regulator Impress.
His political views came under further scrutiny in 2018 when he told the Guardian that he had supported the principle of apartheid in South Africa during the 1960s and had felt it “perfectly legitimate to offer immigrants financial inducements to go home.”
After Rupert Murdoch’s News of the World published its infamous front page detailing his sex life, Max Mosley decided to bring a privacy action against the newspaper.
He talked openly about his desire for consensual S&M sex and insisted that the outlet had no right to put his private life on its front page.
His legal victory helped change attitudes toward privacy in the British media, with the judge saying that “there was no public interest or other justification” for the newspaper to publish video of him with a number of sex workers.
Max Mosley is survived by his wife Jean and son Patrick. His other son, Alexander, died at 39 from a drug overdose, shortly after the first legal victory against the News of the World.
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