The Brotherhood (15 page)

12
Conclusion

An independent enquiry into Freemasonry in the police should be initiated at the earliest possible moment. Even though the majority of police, including masonic officers, are not corrupt, it is clear that corrupt police can and do use Freemasonry to effect and further their corruption. There are now so many allegations about masonic corruption within the service that even if ninety-nine per cent of them were wholly groundless - and no one who has investigated it could accept that for one moment - we are still left with a disturbing situation. Why successive Home Secretaries have ignored or refused calls for an enquiry is not known. Not all have been Freemasons, but all have had masonic advisers in the persons of their senior Civil Servants.

In September 1981 and again in April 1982 there were claims in court of criminal conduct on the part of Freemason police.
At
Knightsbridge Crown Court on Tuesday, 22 September 1981 an ex-Metropolitan Police Detective accused of trying to bribe a senior Drugs Squad officer said they were both members of the same masonic Lodge. The detective told the court that he had seconded the application of the Drugs Squad man - a Superintendent -to join the Lodge when they were both stationed at King's Cross Road. The Superintendent admitted that he was a member of the Brotherhood and that he had visited the Lodge when the detective was there, but denied he had ever been a member of the Lodge. And the detective denied, along with a co-defendant, paying the Superintendent £2,800 as an inducement to
return sixteen million diethyl
propion hydrochloride tablets. Prosecuting counsel told the court that when the attempted bribe had taken place, the conversation had been secretly recorded.

In the later case, a police informer named Michael Gervaise claimed at the Old Bailey that policemen in the same masonic Lodge as criminals involved in a multi-million-pound silver bullion robbery had warned them that they were about to be arrested. As a result of this masonic act, one of the men involved in the £3.5 million robbery fled and has never been traced. Gervaise, who had been involved in the robbery himself, told the court, 'certain officers were Freemasons. Certain criminals belonged to the same Lodge. There were eight or nine officers in the same Lodge as the people involved in the silver bullion robbery.'

Unrest about the undoubted misuse of Freemasonry by policemen is spreading and demands for an enquiry will continue to grow. The worst possible thing would be a masonic witch-hunt, and the surest way of avoiding that would be to institute a proper, sober enquiry before the issue becomes a tool in the hands of political extremists.

Many people want to see Masonry banned in the police. This would inflict damage to the personal happiness of many thousands of upright masonic policemen and to the principle of individual freedom that might outweigh any good effect. But a compulsory register on which police officers have to list their affiliation to secret societies, and their status within such societies, is the minimum requirement if a grave situation is to be improved.

PART THREE

Inside Information

13
The Rabbi's Tale

Despite the ban on speaking to outsiders, many Freemasons allowed me to interview them. Some were extraordinarily frank, some going so far, having secured my promise not to reveal their identities, as confiding the most secret workings of the Brotherhood. Some said very little at all. Most were prepared to give me candid answers to as many questions as they felt were not within the areas of secrecy. Only a few, however, had the courage to be quoted by name and, while remaining faithful to their masonic obligations of secrecy, spoke openly of the little-known aspects of Masonry which, properly speaking, are not covered by the oaths, however hysterical some grand officers might become in insisting that everything masonic is for Masons alone. Among these honourable men was an eminent Freemason of long standing and grand rank: the Rev Saul Amias, MBE, a London rabbi who was Assistant Grand Chaplain to the United Grand Lodge in 1973. I interviewed him at his home in Edgware in 1981.

'Before I joined Freemasonry there were members of my community in Edgware who were members, and we used to discuss it. A few of them were fighting to have the honour to introduce their minister to their own particular Lodge. I asked them to tell me about it. They said, "No, we can't tell you, but there's nothing bad about it. It's only good, it's only a movement to do good, and there are a lot of Jewish people in it as well as non-Jewish. There's nothing that you say a Jew shouldn't be." In fact, the late Chief Rabbi was a very foremost Mason, and it did not take away from his position as a Chief Rabbi.

'I'm not sorry that I came into the Work because apart from being a brother amongst Masons, if I have to see somebody - say in hospital - and he's a Freemason, I can talk to him and we talk about Freemasonry, take away his mind from his illness. But I don't ask. My first question isn't, "Are you a Freemason?", that would be silly. You're not supposed to do that.

'Anyhow, there's another thing that I want to say. People say Freemasons only help each other. If my brother, my blood brother, comes to me and asks me to advise him or help him, I drop everything, I go, because he's my brother. Or if there's a member of my congregation -
although I'm retired they still come to see me - who says, "Look, I need help", I don't say, "Look, I'm retired, go somewhere else." I give help because I
know
him. Mr Cohen. I know him, so why should he go to strangers when he knows Mr Amias? And the same thing, if a man is a Mason, and another Mason comes to him, why shouldn't he help? It doesn't mean to say that I do not help non-Masons, or non-brothers of my family or non-members of my Synagogue.'

'There is, however, a widespread belief that Masons are helped to the detriment of non-Masons,' I said.

'This excites us very much! It's absolutely not a fact -
not
to the detriment. Look, I was looking only this morning - I got a letter from the Royal Benevolent Organization of the Freemasonry. There are about eighteen homes for old people, retired people, for Masons or their relatives, their dependants, their wives, or their widows. Right? Should we not help them? But I help other homes,
non-Jewish and Jewish, for old people too. There's no saying I'll only help the masonic ones. No, not at all. But if people come to me through an organization which in this case is the organization of the Brotherhood of Freemasonry, why should I not help him? Or his widow, or whomever? There's a hospital of which I am chaplain, the Royal Masonic Hospital at Hammersmith. I go there very religiously each week. Now all those patients are Freemasons or dependent relatives, that is to say a wife or a son under twenty-one, or an unmarried daughter. So why should I not go? But it doesn't mean that I am not going this afternoon to the Edgware Hospital because I heard the wife of one of my people is there. Or tomorrow I will go to St Albans Hospital where I am a chaplain and to Napsbury Hospital where I'm a chaplain and to Hill End Mental Hospital. It's
absolutely false to
say otherwise.'

'Yes,' I said, 'it's absolutely false to say that Freemasonry
sets out
to help its members to the detriment of non-members, or that any Freemason swears in his oath to help any other Mason to the detriment of a non-Mason, but it does happen. Only this week a man senior in local government admitted to me that he doesn't see anything wrong with showing favour to his fellow Masons. He thinks this is what Freemasonry is about. If he is on a panel interviewing people for posts in the council, assuming there wasn't a great deal of difference in the ability of two applicants, he would choose the Mason every time.'

'Well, I think that's wrong,' replied Amias. 'I know it does happen. All things being equal, you are saying. But if he's not the best candidate and he chooses him as a Freemason then it's. . . un-moral, and it is against all the precepts of Freemasonry where we've got to help
people,
and we keep on stressing that we must practise outside the Lodge, not only with Freemasons, those things which we say and we do inside the Lodge. There is no question.

'It is
true
that people help their brother Masons. Let me put it this way: Freemasonry for some people, who are quiet, who don't take part in local affairs, don't go to church, don't go to
Rotary, who don't belong to Toc
H, or all the usual - or the tennis club, you know, people who are quiet, who perhaps haven't the opportunity - they work long hours and they haven't got the opportunity of any social work, and so on. For
them
Freemasonry is an avenue through which they walk to the path of helping
...
of unselfish deeds - that means charity, that means helping, that means lending the car to somebody, taking them into hospital, or . . . helping it might be with money, it might be with a job, as you say. It might
he.
But people don't go and say, "I'm a Mason, can you help me?"

'I cannot
...
I will
not
accept that Freemasons help
only
Freemasons to the detriment of others.'

14
Five Masters and a Lewis

'A Freemason is not supposed to use Masonry for selfish reasons. But there is no doubt that a percentage of people do try. Accepting that, do you think they can succeed?'

I was speaking to a Master Mason, a retired barrister, at his home on the top floor of a Middle Temple chambers. He looked into his sherry and said, 'Oh, I should think to a very limited degree. If you join any club there are always some people who hope to gain something by their membership apart from the normal things in the club. Yes, I'm sure some people do, but it's very indirect, you know?

'You might say, "That's a nice doctor in our Lodge. Perhaps I'll go and see him when I'm ill; that chap's a nice estate agent - yes, well, who should I put my property in to sell with? Oh, well, there's Joe in our Lodge, I'll give it to him to do." That sort of thing. That does crop up. It applies to some more than others, probably solicitors more than barristers. Estate agents, doctors, tradesmen, people like that.

'This doesn't happen so much in London. It's more likely to apply in a smaller, more integrated local place -but then they know each other anyway, so I expect Freemasonry doesn't mean anything one way or the other.

'I think if someone's really hard up, then Freemasonry comes into its own. "Joe's very hard up, can't you put a bit of business his way?", or something like that.

'I'm not a very enthusiastic Freemason. In fact I suppose I'm a very
unenthusiastic
one, because I like having the dinner with my friends but I get rather bored with the little ceremonies they go through before. I can't be bothered to learn it, anyway.'

'What happens if you don't learn it?'

'Oh, well, you just sit back and don't take an active part in it. They don't like you to write it down. Well, quite frankly, I can't be bothered to memorize it. I wouldn't mind doing it if I could have a sheet, a sort of brief in front of me. That's my attitude to it, so you can see I'm not a very good Freemason.'

A former Worshipful Master of several Lodges of the Hampshire and Isle of Wight Province, a master builder, told me how after a lifetime of devotion to Masonry, he no longer took any part in it because he had become so despondent about its deteriorating standards.

'There was a time,' he said, 'up to about twenty years ago, when it was a proud thing to be a Freemason. They didn't let just anybody into it in those days like they do now. There was a real feeling of comradeship. And we had real power then, as well.

'All the top-notch people in the community or parish or whatever would be in it - the police chief, the magistrates, the coroner, the doctors, tradesmen, solicitors, architects, builders, dentists and the like. And a lot of good men of lower station. It didn't matter what you earned, it was your
character
which mattered. That meant that if anything ever happened in the community, we would have the authority to do something about it.

'Like when, years ago in the fifties, there were some
attacks by a pervert on some young girls. I phoned up the senior policeman in the district (he was in the Lodge), and a deputation of us Masons went to see him to find out what we could do. All the Lodges in the area formed into vigilante groups and we did house-to-house searches. We found him all right and by the time we'd finished with him he was in no state to interfere with anyone again.