Boyz in the Hood
The recent Home Office recommendation
that all members of the criminal justice system should declare masonic
affiliations opened a can of worms in public. Peter Panatone reviews the
evidence and the significant rift the issue has caused amongst the British
police force.
Weird isn't it? To think that
policemen, judges, MPs, council officers and a multitude of other public
servants go through such bizarre rituals.
Wearing a shoe on one foot and a
slipper on the other, they roll up their trouser leg, bear their chest, are
blindfolded and tied with a hangman's noose and, whilst standing on a marble
chess board with a dagger pressed to their heart, swear oaths of secrecy,
allegiance and mutual aid. And yet this ritual is performed by every one of the
350,000 masons in England and Wales, the 30,000 in Scotland and the estimated
six million world-wide.
Such occult practices would
normally be easy fodder for tabloid derision but one look at the kind of names
known to be Freemasons explains why public criticism has up until now remained
so scant. In Britain, aristocratic members of the 'brotherhood' - for they are
all men - include the Duke of Edinburgh; the Earl of Cadogan; the Marquess of
Northampton and the Duke of Kent. Among the political figures known to be 'on
the square' are Willie Whitelaw, Cecil Parkinson and the current head of the
Criminal Cases Review Commission, Sir Frederick Crawford.
Whilst a few high profile
'brethren' break cover to perform a public relations role and a few others are
'outed' by tenacious researchers, most Masons in public positions, including
those populating the two Masonic lodges thought to operate in the Houses of
Parliament, remain clandestine. When author and researcher Martin Short wrote to
Willie Whitelaw asking him if he was a Freemason, the ex-Home Secretary replied:
"I have never been an active Mason since I entered the House of Commons in
1955." However, the 1987 yearbook for the Grand Lodge of Antient Free and
Accepted Masons of Scotland - not publicly available but shown to Squall-
reveals that he is still an active Freemason and a Scottish representative of
Australia's Grand Lodge of New South Wales. The casual ease with which such an
influential political figure was prepared to lie about his Masonic affiliations
casts further doubt upon Masonic integrity. It is a doubt many see will only be
assuaged by enforced public declaration of Masonic membership by all public
officials.
According to Sir Maurice Drake,
a top ranking Royal Arch Mason and the High Courts' principal libel lawyer
before retiring in 1995, the public's concern is misplaced: "It involves
play-acting. An outsider might say it is a lot of grown men behaving like
children. I can understand that but it is fun. The secrecy was always silly and
I think the majority of people think that it is not very important." His fellow
judicial Mason, Lord Justice Millet, concords: "It involves a certain amount of
learning and performing which is quite fun. We claim to have secrets but they
are harmless. There is nothing in the slightest bit sinister."
However, the oaths of secrecy
sworn by Freemasons sound anything but innocuous. Upon entering the first level
of Masonry, an initiate promises to guard its secrets upon pain of "having my
throat cut out by the root and buried in the sand of the sea at low water
mark... or the more effective punishment of being branded as a wilfully perjured
individual, void of all moral worth." This so-called "harmless play-acting"
seems remarkably effective in ensuring secrecy. Even those who have ceased to be
Masons refuse to speak of its ceremonies and practices, whilst the very few
people with experience of Masonry who have dared to speak to researchers have
done so anonymously. There is little doubt that retribution for public
disclosure is a real threat in the minds of all those who have ever been
initiated.
Ex-police officers had made
allegations that Freemason officers in the West Midlands Serious Crime Squad had
operated a "firm within a firm". Serious allegations of malign Masonic
manipulation extended to police officers in the John Stalker affair and to both
journalists and police officers implicated in the Birmingham Six scandal. The
Home Affairs Select Committee, which had been considering the influence of
Freemasonry on the judiciary and police since 1995, wanted to know which of the
161 names under suspicion in these cases were Masons so that it could assess the
validity of these allegations. But now, Commander Higham - who once gave a
speech asserting "there is very little secret about Freemasonry" - was refusing
to comply with one of the most powerful select committees in parliament. "I hope
you will accept that is 'no', but not with contempt," he whimpered in his
impossible situation as public fall guy for the clandestine Masonic hierarchy.
For a while a constitutional
crisis looked on the cards. The Serjeant at Arms issued an order giving the
United Grand Lodge 14 days to comply with the request of the Committee or
else........ what? No one had ever defied parliament in this way before but now
the Freemasons thought themselves powerful enough to try. Both parliament and
the press held its breath. Finally, as the deadline approached, a deal was made.
The United Grand Lodge agreed to provide Chris Mullin, the Chairman of the
Select Committee, with the requested names on condition that only he and the
clerk to the committee would see them. Not even the other members of the
Committee would be allowed to see them and many argued that the necessity to
strike a deal at all provided further evidence of the extant political power
still wielded by Masons. The hapless Commander Michael Higham, who many view as
a relatively harmless Mason occupying a public relations role, informed the
Committee that the United Grand Lodge was to retire him early for reasons that
he did not know.
In a pamphlet entitled "The
Principles of Policing and Guidance for Professional Behaviour" published in
April 1985, the then Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, Sir Kenneth Newman
concluded: "The discerning officer will probably consider it wise to forego the
prospect of pleasure and social advantage in Freemasonry so as to enjoy the
unreserved regard of all those around him. It follows from this that one who is
already a Freemason would also be wise to ponder, from time to time, whether he
should continue as a Freemason; that it would probably be prudent in the light
of the way that our force is striving in these critical days, to present to the
public a more open and wholehearted image of itself, to show a greater readiness
to be invigilated and to be free of any unnecessary concealment or secrecy."
Despite this call, the Manor of St James Lodge No9179 was set up exclusively for
Metropolitan Police officers in 1989. At least two Deputy Assistant
Commissioners and 12 commanders, including the heads of the Anti-Terrorist Squad
and the head of Scotland Yard's intelligence service, are known to have joined
this lodge. The present Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, Sir Paul
Condon, reiterated Sir Kenneth Newman's call with a similar degree of unsuccess:
"Because of the public's concern surrounding this issue I would advise my
colleagues that it is better that they are not involved in Freemasonry."
Condon is presently being sued
by a former metropolitan police officer for several malicious prosecutions
brought after a Masonic dispute. Graham Peacock, a police constable for 26 years
and a member of Masonic lodges in both London and Surrey, claims to have been
victimised after a "bitter dispute" with a fellow Masonic police officer in
1992. Since that time he is alleged to have been maliciously prosecuted on three
separate occasions for cannabis cultivation, murder and the illegal possession
of firearms. He was acquitted of all these charges but spent time in prison on
remand. He also claims that his wife has been phoned up and threatened, and that
his cat went missing only to be found dead later with "horrific injuries",
thrown in the neighbour's garden. If such exchanges go on between fellow Masonic
police officers, what happens to others who have run-ins with Freemasonic
officers? Two Leicester businessmen found out when they decided to have a late
night drink at the Goat Moat House Hotel in Blackburn where they were staying in
April 1988. Sidney and Shaun Callis (father and son) were unaware they had
walked into the 'Ladies night' organised by the Victory Lodge of Blackburn. Two
Masonic Lancashire police officers approached the pair and ordered them out of
the hotel bar. After refusing to leave, the couple were beaten up and then
charged with assault by other Masonic police officers also present. When the two
men were released on bail the following morning, they found that the hotel
management had seized the Callis' belongings demanding compensation for damage
to the bar. The Hotel manager was later found to be a Mason and a member of the
Victory Lodge. The Callis' also found that the tyres of their car had been
drained of air and the hub caps removed.
When their assault charge
reached court the following year, the jury rejected police evidence and
acquitted the pair. The Callis' subsequently sued Lancashire Police for
malicious prosecution and won £85,000 in compensation. The total pay out,
including court costs, came to £170,000. However, the retribution did not stop
there. Since 1989, unknown police officers put phoney criminal records for
Sidney and Shaun Callis on the police national computer. Another unnamed person
wrote to police suggesting that Sidney Callis was responsible for murdering two
people, shot dead on the Pembrokeshire Coast in 1989. He was arrested for murder
and interrogated at Hinckley Police Station before being released.
Leicestershire Police also made efforts to revoke Sidney Callis's 12-bore
shotgun licence. As Callis told Private Eye magazine in April: "I've never had
so much as a parking fine."
The Home Affairs Select
Committee was told that the Victory Lodge in Blackburn, whose members triggered
this catalogue of retribution, is a lodge set up for police Masons.
According to Martin Short,
author of 'Inside the Brotherhood' and a major testifier before the Home Affairs
Select Committee, an estimated 25 per cent of Metropolitan Police officers and
20 per cent of national police officers still belong to Masonic lodges. The
United Grand Lodge of England estimate that membership of freemasonry has
declined by an estimated 200,000 over the last 30 years. Partly as a result of
this diminution of power, more non-masonic public service officials have felt
braver about publicly criticising the masonic network's influence on promotion
prospects within their profession.
The pace of this dissent in the
police force picked up considerably when the powerful Home Affairs Select
Committee instigated its inquiry into the influence of Freemasonry on the police
and the judiciary in 1995, an event which immediately split the police force in
two. Whilst the Police Complaints Authority and the Association of Chief Police
Officers called for public declaration, the Police Federation and the Police
Superintendents' Association were vehemently against. The rift reached public
airing after the 1995 Police Complaints Authority (PCA) annual report called for
compulsory public declaration of Masonic membership by all police officers. Its
chairman, Sir Leonard Peach, told the Home Affairs Select Committee that the PCA
wanted to allay public fears that Masonry was being used to influence the
outcome of its investigations.
The Police Superintendents'
Association's backlash was remarkable. They told the committee: "Over the past
two years our confidence in the impartiality of the PCA has been shaken. Many of
our members no longer see the PCA as being truly independent."
Indeed, public confidence in the
PCA, whose investigations are predominantly staffed by members of the police
force, has never been that strong. As the body responsible for investigating
malpractice in the police force, many have pointed out the questionable validity
of having the police investigate the police. However, for the Police
Superintendent's Association to criticise the PCA's impartiality was unheard of,
and provided further indication of the tenacity with which Masonry would fight
to avoid public exposure.
The Association of Chief Police
Officers (ACPO), which acknowledged to the Committee that between five and ten
Chief Constables (out of 43) are Masons, were nevertheless in favour of a
declaration of membership in order to restore public confidence. This caused an
internal rift within ACPO itself. Paul Whitehouse, ACPO's vice chairman and
Chief Constable of Sussex, asserted that "It's the secrecy that is cause for
concern", whilst David Wilmott, Chief Constable of Manchester and presumably one
of the five to ten Masons in ACPO, called it "an infringement of personal
liberty".
The Police Federation, which
represents the rank and file of the police service, acknowledged to the
committee that "there may well be a significant number" of their members who
were Masons and were critical of ACPO's pro-declaration stance: "It is for those
who allege that Freemasonry does have such harmful consequences to establish a
case, and so far such persons or bodies that take this view, have totally failed
to furnish such evidence. Rumour and innuendo are not enough to make the case."
The paradox of the Federation's position was there for all to see. Which
policeman, for instance, could hope to firmly establish any case if the identity
of all potential suspects was kept secret from them?
Indeed, the Home Affairs Select
Committee received a number of submissions from individual police officers who
remained anonymous in the Committee's subsequent report. Whilst six of these
submissions were from Masonic policemen insisting their membership had no
adverse affect on their professional conduct, ten submissions were from
policemen who claimed malign Masonic influence at work. The allegations they
cited included suppression of serious criminal and disciplinary allegations,
promotion preferment for Freemasons; cheating in promotion exams facilitated by
Masonic connections and falsifying blood test results for Freemasons charged
with drink driving. A constituent of Chris Mullin's (the current chairman of the
Home Affairs Select Committee) wrote to the MP saying: "I am a retired Chief
Superintendent who commanded the Commercial Fraud Squad and Complaints and
Discipline Department in a big metropolitan force and, as such, I conducted many
enquiries in various parts of this country and abroad. I have frequently
experienced interference from Masonic sources calculated to impede the progress
of an enquiry and do not doubt that improper decisions have been made along the
way." Mullin was charged with not revealing any details of his case in order to
protect the ex-police officer. From what?
More fearless was PC Kitit
Gordhandas, from West Yorkshire Police, who wrote to the Police Review saying:
"I feel that Freemasonry stands for white, male, middle-class members working
for the advancement of themselves and their fellow Masons."
After a two year enquiry, the
Home Affairs Select Committee published their report in 1997: "We believe that
nothing so much undermines public confidence in public institutions as the
knowledge that some public servants are members of a secret society one of whose
aims is mutual self-advancement." The report recommended that "police officers,
magistrates, judges and crown prosecutors should be required to register
membership of any secret society and that the record should be available
publicly."
Home Secretary Jack Straw has
acknowledged this recommendation and looks set to insist it covers the entire
criminal justice system. Earlier this year, Straw told the House of Commons:
"The Freemasons have said they are not a secret society but a society with
secrets. I think it is widely accepted that one secret they should not be
keeping is who their members are in the criminal justice system."
Exactly how this is to be
implemented is not yet known or indeed whether such public declaration might be
extended to public servants both national and local. Certainly the clandestine
leviathan of Freemasonry still has a multitude of friends in high places and has
had to be dragged kicking and screaming to this point. The battle against the
malignant opportunities for political and social manipulation offered by the
extensive and secret network of Masonic influence is far from over.
UK Freemasonry in the News, have the 'Brethren' finally met their Waterloo?
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