Also see:

http://inlnews.com/Freemasonry__History.html

http://inlnews.com/BilderbergGroupHistory.html

http://inlnews.com/Give_Peace_a_Chance.html

http://www.inlnews.com/CIASellDrugs_MediaLiesP1.html

http://www.inlnews.com/INLNewsCIAKGBSpyPhotosP1.php

http://www.inlnews.com/WhyWasSeanHoareMurdered.html

http://www.inlnews.com/WhoMurderedThomasAllwood.html

http://www.inlnews.com/CIAMI6ControlDrugDealing.html

http://www.inlnews.com/ChippingAwayTheBullSh_t.html

http://www.inlnews.com/Assange_FearsMurderInUSA.html

http://www.inlnews.com/RothschildWorldControl1.html

http://www.inlnews.com/BilderbergGroupHistoryP3.html

http://www.inlnews.com/Leo_Zagami_Illuminati_P2.html

http://www.inlnews.com/MI6_GlobalDrugTradeLords.php

http://www.inlnews.com/HitlerWasABritishAgent.html

Stephen Knight the author of the Brotherhood who died aged 33 ......18 months after publishing his book

         A dramatic moment during Freemason third degree ceremony, After the ritual, the candidate is a fully fledged Freemason

Christopher added...' Masonic doctors can also be used..'

Christopher continue for about half an hour to list examples of the ways in which corrupt members of the Brotherhood could defeat opposition..'  ... those in power in Freemasons Hall knew something of what went on, but they felt defeated by it and preferred to look the other way rather than take steps to eradicate it...' ... Christopher said... if Christopher and his group failed for force the issue into the open, the organization would become so morally polluted that it would simply cease to exist...' Christopher also said ..we are not solely concerned with the Brotherhood .. it was the victims of those who used masonry as a source of personal power who has to be helped as well...

Christopher also said ..'..only the fighters have a hope of beating the system once it's at work against them' ..'Most people, fighters or not, are beaten in the end, though ,,It's..you see... you finish up not knowing who you can trust..you can get no help because your story sounds so paranoid that you are thought a crank, one of those nuts who think the whole world is a 'conspiracy' against 'them'. It is a strange phenomenon...Bt setting up a situation that most people will think of as fantasy, these people can poison every part of a person's life... if they give in they go under... if they don't give in... it is only putting off the day they go under...because if they fight, so much unhappiness will be brought to the people around them that there will likely come a time when even their own families and close friends turn against them out of desperation.... when that happens ..... and they are without friends where ever they look...they become easy meat... the newspaper will not touch them or their story...

'...There is not defense against an evil which only the victims and the perpetrators know exists..'

 
US founding father and president George Washington was a dedicated Freemason, and is shown here is his regalia as the Worshipful Master of his lodge


Beehives are an important Masonic symbol referring to industry, dedication, productivity, good works and the power of all pulling together....

Acknowledgements:

 I am free to name only a small number of the many hundreds of people who have helped me with advice and information for this book.. Most of those who helped did only on the understanding that I would say nothing that could lead to their identification. among there were Freemasons who feared recrimination from other members of the Brotherhood. . Others included government official, politicians, judges, policemen of all ranks, lawyers, churchmen, past and present officers of MI6 and MI6, and people from every sector of society touched on in this book...Without such people a book of this kind could not be contemplated.

  Two men must be singled out: Simon Scott, managing editor of New English Library whose idea this books was an who supported me with unflagging enthusiasm all through the research and writing only to have the project snatched from him at the last moment; and my friend and agent Andrew Hewson who has never, even at the busiest moments, been unavailable.

Thank you Simon and I thank everyone else...all names fully listed in the book..

Proloque;

Freemasonry. although its leaders strenuously deny it, is a secret society. And few of its members- judges, police, politicians and royalty among them - realize that every time they attend a meeting they break the law, and (at least technically) lay themselves open to minimum of two year's imprisonment. Under the Unlawful Societies Ac of 1799 - unlikely, of course, ever to be enforced - Freemasons are permitted to hold meetings if yearly returns providing names, addresses and descriptions of brethren are submitted to local Clerks of the Peace .his is rarely done, so most gatherings in `Masonic Lodges are held in breach of the law.

  In England and Wales alone Freemasonry has more than 600,000 initiates, with a further 100,000 in Scotland and between 50,000 and 70,000 in Ireland..(1984 estimated Figures... Paul Jeffries in his book Freemasons-Inside the World's Oldest Secret Society published in 2005 he states the following Freemason membership: Over 5.9 million Freemasons worldwide; consisting of: England and Wales- over 550,000. Scotland-over 400,000; Ireland over 47,000; Canada and USA- over 4.1 million; Europe-over 80,000; Australasia-over 375,000; `Latin America-over 50,000; Philippines-over 10,000 and other areas (India, Japan, Formosa, Africa, Israel etc)-over 288,000

All the members of this extraordinary Brotherhood are male. All except those who are second-, third-, or fourth-generation Freemasons, who may join at eighteen, are over the age of twenty-one. All have sworn on pain of death and ghastly mutilation No 5 to reveal Masonic secrets to outsiders, who are known

The Brotherhood

by Stephen Knight –published 1984

The Dissidents – Chapter 16 _ages 140 to  149

One of my major sources of information was a former Grand Inspector Inquisitor Commander of the Thirty-First degree of the Ancient and Accepted Rite who has withdrawn form masonry in 1968 for religious reasons.. her agreed to be interviewed by me through a third party concerning his conviction that no active Christian could in all conscience remain a Freemason…

When I met him I learned he was a judge, and a particularly quick-tempered one .. I asked him about the Ancient and Accepted Rite of the Thirty-Third degree, he answered quickly: ‘Nom I dare not go into that’, her said ….’we’d better stick to religion… I thought immediately afterwards how strange it was he had used the words ‘dare not’, Most people said, ‘I’d better not’, or ‘I’d rather not’… I remarked on his used of the world. He said, ‘Anyone in public life has to be cautious.’ ..’Cautious’.. I repeated. “That’s a Masonic word of recognition.”..

He then said, ‘You’ve obviously delved into the ritual, so you know…..’

… ‘Mr Knight, I don’t like this line of questioning. I agreed to speak to you in general terms about why my commitment to Jesus is incompatible with Masonic religion …. I do not wish to be drawn into discussion of matters covered by whatever undertakings I have … taken…

I went on to tell the judge ..’I have heard form quite a lot of contacts about organized action groups of Freemasons that have resulted in the financial or social ruin of certain people, ‘ I said..

The judge replied.. ‘So have I’…’ ..still looking me st5raight in the eye as if telling me this was an important issue and point of fact…’ So have I Mr Knight… No of such happenings which had the backing of official Freemasonry, but of actions which were unofficial, in other words, Masons abusing the Craft for their own ends..’…’You know the answer to that form what I have said.. ‘I have also heard about people who have .crossed’ certain masons and finished up in prison…’ He then stopped me in mid-sentence by placing a finger on his lips ... ’if I told you everything about Freemasonry, being betrayed by its members, it would surprise you… it would make your hair stand on end … I can’t tell you any more..’ he said…then he said.. Give me your phone number, you might hear from someone in a few days…’… His finger went back to his lips and he went to fetch my coat .. as he left he said, ‘God Bless’…

A few days later received as phone call from a man calling himself Christopher whom I ended up having along meeting at his private club and he showed me his papers to show him bona fide ID and Freemason membership… I asked him what a person might have to fear from a group of influential Freemason if circumstances made him, for instance, a threat to them in the business world; or if he discovered they were using masonry for corrupt purposes; or had fallen victim of their misuse of Freemasonry and would not heed warnings not to oppose them…

He replied..’.. It is not difficult to ruin a man,’ he said, ‘And I will tell you how it is done time and time again.. there are more than half a million Freemasonry Craft Brethren (In 1883) just in England and Wales and over 400,000 in Scotland (in 1983) under the jurisdiction of Grand Lodge.. Standards have been falling for twenty or thirty years, it is now too easy to enter the Craft, so many men of dubious moral have now joined the Craft… about 12-13% abuse the Craft for selfish and/or corrupt ends.. (that is about 60,000 in England and Wales and about 40,000 in Scotland)..

Note: Christopher was one of a small and unpopular group within Masonry who sometime in the early 1970’s had decided that either they had to get out of the Brotherhood or they had to do something ‘to stop the rot’, which the ‘blinkered officers of Great Queen Street refuse to admit was there..’

This group wanted pressure brought to bear on those in positions of responsibility within the Brotherhood to put Freemasonry’s house in order.. to instate proper policing, to close down Lodges used for shady dealings and to root out corrupt brethren and expel them, they also wanted the whole business of Masonic secrecy looked into by Grand Lodge, most of them believing that secrecy was more harmful than helpful to Masonry..

 Christopher explained that Masonry’s nationwide organization of men from all walks of life provided one of the most efficient private intelligence networks imaginable, private information on anybody in the country could be accessed very rapidly through endless permutations of Masonic contacts in the police, magistrates, solicitors, bank managers, Post Office staff (‘very useful is supplying copies of a man’s mail’), doctors, government employees, bosses of firms and nationalized industries etc. etc. …. A dossier of personal data could be built up on anybody very quickly.. when the major facts of an individual’s life were known, areas of vulnerability would become apparent…

I asked what action might be taken?..

“ Solicitors are very good at it…Get your name involved in something legal it need not be serious and you have him,, Solicitors are past masters a causing endless delays, generating useless paperwork, ignoring instructions, running up immense bills, misleading client into taking decisions damaging to themselves etc..

‘Masonic police can harass, arrest on false charges, and plant evidence.. ‘ A business man in a small community or a person in public office arrested for dealing in child pornography, for indent exposure, or for trafficking drugs is at the end of the line..’

‘Masons can bring about the situation where credit companies and band withdraw credit facilities form individual clients and tradesmen, said my informant..Banks can foreclose ...

People who rely on their telephone for work can have it cut off for long periods ... Masonic employees of councils can arrange for a person's drains to be inspected and extensive damage reported etc ..this burdening the person with huge repair bills; workmen carrying out the job can 'find' - very conveniently- further damage ..a fair legal hearing is lard to get when a man in ordinary circumstances is in financial difficulties .. legal aid applications can be delayed endlessly...Employers can be given private information about a man who had made himself an enemy of Masonry ... at worst he will be dismissed and/or consistently passed over for promotion....

Christopher added...' Masonic doctors can also be used..'

Christopher continue for about half an hour to list examples of the ways in which corrupt members of the Brotherhood could defeat opposition..'  ... those in power in Freemasons Hall knew something of what went on, but they felt defeated by it and preferred to look the other way rather than take steps to eradicate it...' ... Christopher said... if Christopher and his group failed for force the issue into the open, the organization would become so morally polluted that it would simply cease to exist...'  Christopher also said ..we are not solely concerned with the Brotherhood .. it was the victims of those who used masonry as a source of personal power who has to be helped as well...

Christopher also said ..'..only the fighters have a hope of beating the system once it's at work against them' ..'Most people, fighters or not, are beaten in the end, though ,,It's..you see... you finish up not knowing who you can trust..you can get no help because your story sounds so paranoid that you are thought a crank, one of those nuts who think the whole world is a 'conspiracy' against 'them'. It is a strange phenomenon...Bt setting up a situation that most people will think of as fantasy, these people can poison every part of a person's life... if they give in they go under... if they don't give in... it is only putting off the day they go under...because if they fight, so much unhappiness will be brought to the people around them that there will likely come a time when even their own families and close friends turn against them out of desperation.... when that happens ..... and they are without friends where ever they look...they become easy meat... the newspaper will not touch them or their story...

'...There is not defense against an evil which only the victims and the perpetrators know exists..'

Chapter 28

The Threat To Britain P 297 to 303

  The "Chinaman Report" goes further than drawing attention t the KBG's almost certain use of Freemasonry for placing operatives in positions of authority, most damagingly achieved, so far as we know, such as in the case of Sir Roger Hollis, who was the director-general of the M!% service in the critical years 1956 to 1965 (as convincingly demonstrated by Chapman Pincher in his controversial study of Russia's infiltration of the West's secret services and defenses in his book 'Their Trade is Treachery)'. few people in MI5 now doubt that Hollis was a Russian spy for nearly 30 years and a respected Freemason having joined when he was in Shanghai, China in the 1930's working an international tobacco company along with then spending time in Russia..

(From Chap 27)..Of the many mysteries surrounding Sire Roger Hollis, one of the most baffling is how Hollis  was ever accepted into M!% in the first place, Hollis was quite the opposite of what was required. In MI5, as opposed to MI6, which operates abroad, there is a great reluctance to accept candidates who have travelled widely out of the U,K. In the 1930’s when Hollis was recruited this stipulation was more easily met than it is today. For this reason and other reasons. Hollis was most unlikely candidate to be allowed to join the MI5 organization...Hollis did badly at university, having thrown in the towel in 1926 after only two years, then worked in London for a while and set off for China, Hollis then became stranded with only $10 in his pocket in Malaya, where he got a job with an international tobacco company in Penang and was later transferred to the company's offices in Shanghai. Hollis moved around China for the next nine years, working at Peking, Hangchow and Dairen. After this, Hollis contracted tuberculosis, and travelled to a Swiss sanatorium by way of the Trans-Siberian Railway from Vladivostok. spending some time in Russia All this, especially his time in Russia, should have been an insuperable obstacle to any hopes he had of joining MI5... So it proved.. at first ....Even after Hollis's treatment that his health was not strong enough for Hollis to continue working the tobacco company, so early in 1936 Hollis went back to England....''Even Hollis's friend agreed that Hollis was not particularly talented', wrote Chapman Pincher, who describes Hollis at the time of his return to England as 'basically a broken man': 'Though surprisingly athletic, Hollis was to retain the look of someone who had had contracted tuberculosis and Hollis became progressively round-shouldered that he looked almost hunched...he had no degree, his health was suspect and his experience in China was not likely to be helpful in securing a post in England...the only work Hollis could find at the time was as a clerk-typist. .... However, through an army major Hollis met, Hollis secured an interview with MI5.. Hollis was turned down and told that his experience abroad might be useful to MI6, so Hollis then applied to join MI6, but Hollis was turned down for health reasons from the MI6 service. Then when Hollis applied to join MI5 for the second time later that year nothing had changed as far as Hollis' ability, background and health ,,except the mind of MI5... miraculously....completely against any sort of normality given Hollis had already been turned down by MI5 and MI6 on previous occasions.. Hollis was hired by MI%... it is noted that the director-general of MI5 at the time was Major General Sir Vernon Kell, who happened to be a Freemason ..almost everything against him, Hollis had got into MI5... What is even more remarkable? was the rate in which Hollis was promoted within the MI5 service once Hollis got in... this astonished his colleagues them and still cannot be explained by any of the MI5 officers, current and retired, with whom I (Stephen Knight) have had contact either directly or through intermediaries. this is one of the great mysteries of Sir Roger Hollis.. Even though it was against regulations for any MI5 or MI6 officer to be a Freemason - and this, incidentally, must presumably indicate that membership of Freemasonry was regarded as a threat to security- several MI5 officers were in the Freemasonry Brotherhood - Among them was man called Potter, who was in charge of the huge MI5 card index, which is now computerized... such a man would be good to have as a friend... But is was Freemasonry that got Hollis against all odds into the MI5 service and took Hollis, the unlikeliest of all its officers, to the very top of MI5 .. the likeliest key to the mystery of Hollis is Shanghai and the time Hollis spent there for the British American Tobacco Company in the 1930's... the European community in Shanghai was small.. the English-speaking community was of course smaller and very tight-knit; virtually every Englishman arriving in Shanghai gravitated to the Masonic Hall at 1623, Avenue Road, Shanghai .. Freemasonry had flourished among the British expatriates here and at the previous Masonic Hall at 30 The Bund, Shanghai, since the mid-1800's .. In the 1930's, when Hollis was in Shanghai, the tradition of Freemasonry there was at its zenith.. A man who was not a Mason was at a grave disadvantage in achieving whatever social or professional ambitions he had...Almost everyone I have contacted who knew Hollis, including MI5 officers past and present, has reacted similarly to the suggestion that the former director-general Sir Roger Hollis was a member of the Freemason Brotherhood. - that was just the kind of man, extremely secretive by nature, with few friendships and with small prospect of advancement - who would join Masonry in order to exploit its covert advantages ...Freemasonry, said the contacts, offered the first explanation to the Hollis mystery, his otherwise inexplicable acceptance and his phenomenal rate of promotion.....it is understood that Hollis's immediate predecessor as director-general of the MI5 security service, Sir Dick Goldsmith White, was also a Freemason, who was the only man to have ever been both the head of MI5 and MI6, having moved from MI^ to MI5 in 1956 to take over the MI5 secret service from Sir John 'Sinbad' Sinclair...  Despite his impressive record and qualifications, the unprecedented transfer was viewed by many within MI6 as dangerous and as something which, once again breaking all the traditional rules governing the secure operation of the two services, should never have been allowed. It was Sir Dick Goldsmith White. who on his appointment as MI5 Secret Service Chief, recommended Hollis as his successor to premier Anthony Eden....Hollis' treachery should have come to light in the late 1940's when Sir Percy Sillitoe was director-general of MI5..As A.W. Cockerill, Sillitoe's biographer, points out, 'practically the entire effort of the MI5 Service form 1946 on, and until long after Sillitoe's retirement, was directed at identifying and weeding out Communists from positions in which they posed a threat to national security'. Cockerill states that one of Sillitoe's first actions after getting settled into the job as MI5 chief was to carry out a purge, for which he had something of a reputation in his former career in the police..

'" In the case of MI5m he was primarily interested in the political reliability of his staff, and a number of employees were forced to leave for one reason or another.... Beginning with those whose credentials were 'impeccable', he carried out a systematic security check of the entire establishment, This was a programme in which the internal security officers combed through each personal file as though the person concerned was a newcomer; the individual's history was checked and rechecked, membership in clubs, societies and social organizations was investigated anew to ensure that the service itself was 'clean'..."

  But Sillitoe, without knowing it, was fighting an impossible battle,,, with the man in charge of all the personal records being a member of the Freemasonry Brotherhood, Sillitoe would never be allowed to learn that Hollis's mans of entry to the MI5 Service had been by way of a Masonic Lodge in China and a Masonic Director-General of MI5.. In is an interesting fact that the Freemason Lodge membership lists of the Shanghair Lodges between the wards are among the lost closely guarded secrets of the United Grand Lodge.. Several attempts by concerned Freemason members of the Brotherhood to get try and hold of these files through the ordinary channels have been always blocked ... it is evident that those lists of names contain something so explosive, so potentially damaging to the Brotherhood, that it will not permit them to be examined even by senior Masons,,

Whose name is being concealed???

 If not...Sir Roger Hollis????

Chapter 28: The Threat To Britain continued

The Chinaman Report also expresses concern that British Freemasonry as a whole is, quite unknown to its members, a major target for so-called 'Special Political action' for the KGB, The Chinaman Report states among other things"

" ...sheer prudence demands that the lessons of the P2 affair receive the attention of all who have the interests of the UK and the West at heart, masons and no-masons alike... The affair has so far been to the considerable advantage of the Soviet Union and the Communists, which alone of the political parties ( conveniently) has no known members among the listed names published by order of the Prime Minister,, Has P2 continued its secret growth and unacceptable activities, the inevitable scandal could have brought down with it non-Communist government in Italy ... Yet Italian Freemasonry has been estimated as of the order of under 100,000 - a mere tenth of the supposed UK total for roughly similar population,..."

In the UK he Brotherhood enjoys the inestimable advantage of royal patronage... The Chinaman Report suggested that 'the Italian affair is a serious warning form which important lessons can be drawn ..The UK could well prove very much more vulnerable to exposure of improper activities by a group of Freemasons than is Italy...'

According to the Chinaman Report There are two reasons for this:

",,,First, Masonry so permeates so many revered British institutions form the Crown downwards, that a grave Masonic scandal could in modern circumstances involved popular revulsion against the whole established order ...Government and Business ...

Second, the proportion of Masons to non-Masons in some professions and other walks of life, including areas of Government, appears to have reached a critical point: the point at which people believe themselves obliged to join Freemasonry, no longer voluntarily, but from a feeling of compulsion...."

..This statement is certainly accurate, as my own enquiries have revealed..

.."Masons and non-Masons alike seem increasingly to fear the potential of the fraternity (Freemason) to ruin them (if they in any way upset the Freemason Fraternity or try to take them on in any way)...At such a point it becomes hard to find in certain areas vital to the state an adequate numbers of competent persons who are non-masons to prevent such a vacuum as now threaten Italy were al the officers of the armed forces of General rank named in the P2 documents to be required to retire (because of being exposed and named as members of the P2..

Third, there is much circumstantial evidence that more ruthless elements have joined Freemasonry and are using up the find of respectability that Royal patronage confers to indulge in activities which reputable members would find quite unacceptable were they aware of the extent of the abuse (of Freemasonry)..This of course, is a danger inherent in all secretive societies for their cellular from devised by the founders for the security of the movement, can as readily be used to 'hoodwink" the leadership, who thus become unwitting 'front men' for activities they would never countenance,..."

..The Chinaman Report alludes to the argument that there has not been a Masonic scandal of major proportions in modern times and the contention that should one occur, it could readily be contained by the Brotherhood by mean of both public expulsions and cover-ups. the Chinaman Report continues:

"...This may possibly be so... But British society as a whole is changing rapidly..The established order of things developed over the past thousand years in no longer so widely and so automatically accepted as in even recent past ....Many, of all political hues, consider some of our institutions archaic and in need of reform.. this view is fueled by the loss of national self-confidence and national pride following from the loss of Empire and our very poor showing in the list of advanced industrial societies,, Disrespect for those in authority is already considerable and is increasing at an accelerating rate: such rife dissatisfaction soon comes to seek a scapegoat, such as 'the Establishment' provides... But out institutions - both public and private - seem incapable of reforming themselves and performing the 'aggiornamento' the thoughtful of all moderate persuasions are increasingly coming to expect...

...Against this worsening background it would be rash to suppose that the methods of the pas to contain scandals and irregularities in Masonry ( or indeed in anything else) will still be adequate by, say, the end of the decade. And this is to count without the intentions of the KBG...

The possibility that the KGB has along-term interest in British Freemasonry must be taken seriously..For to any trained intelligence officer, Freemasonry offers an ideal vehicle for the destabilization of the United Kingdom. to make two points:

(1) there has for some time been practically no mention of Freemasonry in the media: for widespread and important a movement this almost amounts to a taboo- any serious, well documented exposure of substantial malpractices could be expected to have a disproportionate shock effect. We are not yet so cynical and so inured to scandal as the Italians.

(2) Second, the KBG - itself growing out of a clandestine movement's seizure of state power, well understands the organization, motivation and other problems of secret societies (particularly of Communication records, and the use of a reputable ''front'') and is thus ideally qualified to exploit Freemasonry for its own ends,,"

  ..here the Chinaman Report constructs, form its thirty-year knowledge of the KGB's political methods and of the inner workings of British Freemasonry -with the P2 conspiracy forming a bridge between the two - a scenario which to my certain knowledge senior official of both MI5 and MI6 regard with utmost gravity. ..the man code-names Chinaman suggest that the most likely method of attack would follow the pattern of P2 - in other words, the KGB, doubtless through Czech intelligence, would attempt to hive off a promising area of Freemasonry and encourage its growth...

"....The more prominent those unwittingly involved, the greater the ultimate effect - provided the top echelon (of Freemasonry) were carefully preserved untainted.. Another phase would be deliberately to encourage and exacerbate existing abuses for personal advancement at the expense of non-Masons.. Arrogance would be inflated to a point where the Masons concerned would become over-confident and incautious ..... the KGB would then obtain and collate documentary and circumstantial evidence in as many spheres of activity as possible ...

...Once sufficient material has been gathered, the KGB would be prepared to wait years if required until directed to mount an exposure at a politically appropriate juncture.. Then the 'fuse' would be lit for example by arranging for a blackmail operation to fail, or a 'Soviet 'defector' to arrive perhaps in the US, and point conclusively to KBG involvement in Masonry ..Media and Government enquiries could then be fed with supplementary evidence garnered for the purpose over the years... Names would be called....Confusion would be sown by including the righteous (chosen for their effectiveness in opposition to Soviet designs) with the guilty (chosen for their publicity value) : in such circumstances lies mixed with incontrovertible truths would be hard to winnow.

  If the right moment for 'ignition' were chosen the disaster could be very great. ...One only need only to remember the effect on each occasion of the news of Fuchs's espionage (Klaus Emil Julian Fuchs, was convicted in 1950 of passing British American atomic research secrets tot eh Soviet Union), the Maclean and Burgess defections, the Philby case, the Blunt exposure and the recent public allegations regarding the late Sir Roger Hollis, to appreciate the effect of well documented exposures at one time of even fifty prominent persons - let alone nearly a thousand as in the Italian P2 case.."

  Chinaman makes it plain that short of information from some formerly well-placed genuine defector, there is no certain means of knowing whether the Soviet Union is operating such a plan..

"..I simply suggest that it is self-evident that the possibility should be taken seriously and appropriate defensive action taken if this has not already been done adequately.."

..I can reveal that no such defensive action has yet been taken because prior to the submission of the Chinaman Report, no one had considered the possible exploitation of Freemasonry. No one knew enough about the Brotherhood for it to present itself as a possibility. Chinaman suggests measures to minimize the effects of any KGB-promoted exposure in two main ways:

 "..(1) First, by ensuring that we are not 'caught' with persons holding certain key delicate positions being Masons ... From my own experience (as well as reports of the P2 case) I would hope for example that the heads of both the MI5 Secret Intelligence Service and the MI6 Security Service are not (again) permitted to be Freemasons, and that  the regulations of these two services now provide for any Masons to declare their adherence to the head of the service concerned personally (as already stated, MI5 officers are banned from joining the Brotherhood, but this has not prevented several MI5 officer from being members of the Freemasonry Brotherhood).. I believe that the same should apply o MI6 Special Branch. Masons who are already members of MI5 and/or MI6 branches of Government could provide a valuable link to Freemasonry in the MI5 and MI6 services, in the service of the State, if they are not so acting already.. In other Government Departments, arrangements could ensure that heads of personnel sections be non-Masons, and that they have a right of access to the Director-General of the Security Service, ..The legal professions- presently the object of increasing public disquiet because of its alleged tendency to protect its own - is a particular problem given the large number of Freemasons (in the legal profession in the United Kingdom)

(2) The Second direction I would concentrate upon would be legislation. It seems to me, for instance, far less likely that any deliberate organized exposure would cause serious and lasting damage to the benefit of the pro-Communist left and the Soviet Union, if all citizens had the legal right, if the elected, to a written assurance that any professional person they consulted is not a member of any secret society, including Freemason and similar or related groupings:  an untrue denial rendering the professional person liable to criminal proceedings.. I appreciate the very great difficulties, but possibly in the not too far distant future in the wake if the P2 affair, some measure along these lines might be passed ... In the Government service Masons in delicate areas would come to know that for security reasons a few positions were closed to the: this too would help shift the balance of advantage..

...Such measures could, I believe, also incidentally lead to a significant improvement in Britain's performance in many places, lessening the possibility that the more dynamic, more forward-looking and better qualified may be passed over to the detriment of government and industrial efficiency ... I repeat, though, that I am well aware that I have not the qualifications for suggesting counter-measures, that I have for setting out the dangers,,,'

..I have discussed the Chinaman Report in general terms and off the record with several high; placed officials and with three former Cabinet Ministers, all of whom told me that if such a report came into their hands when they were in office hey would have initiated an enquiry, IN March 1982, having contacted Foreign ~Secretary Lord Carrington and been assured by him that he was not a Freemason Brotherhood, I was on the point of raising it with him.. The Argentina invaded the Falkland Islands and Britain lost on of its most able ministers.

  And here another link is forged between Licio Gelli (P2 founder and controller), his Overt Masters, and the important task P2 had been created to perform in the continuing programme to destabilize the West, After Licio Gelli's flight from Italy. Licio Gelli did not go hiding beyond the Iron Curtain as suggested by the perspicacious Peter Hebblethwaithe...Most informed sources believed Licio Gelli was in Argentina, where he had exercised so much influence in the past and where, I suggest. Geberal Galtieri was Licio Gelli's new Peron, It cannot be a coincidence that Admiral Emilo Massera, the commander of the Argentine Navy and one of the three-man junta that launched the Falkland invasion, and the commander of the Argentine Fits Army, General Calos Suarez Mason, we`re both secret members of Lodge P2.

Chapter One: Origins

Some Freemasons claim great antiquity for Freemasonry. This is reflected in the Masonic calendar which is based on Archbishop Ussher's seventh-century calculation that the Creation must have taken place in the year 4004 BC/ For convenience, the off four years are ignored and Anno Lucis (in the Year of Light, when Freemasonry is deemed to have begun) is four thousand years ahead of Anno Domini - so a Masonic certificate of initiation bearing the date A.L. 5983 was issued in A.D. 1983. The implication is that Freemasonry is as old as Adam. \ Throughout the eighteen and nineteenth centuries, Masonic writers produced vast numbers of books seeking to show that their movement has a continuous history of many hundreds, even thousands of years. Some claimed that the ancestors of the Brotherhood were the Druid or Culdees; some claimed they were the pre-Christian Jewish Monks, the Essenes, Others insisted that Freemasonry had its origins in the religion of ancient Egypt - an amalgam of the briefly held momotheism of Ikhnaton (c.1375 B.C.) and the Isis-Osiris cult.

 Modern Masonic historians are fare more cautious. It is now accepted that Freemasonry as practiced today goes back no more than three centuries. What is true, though, is that the philosophic, religious and ritualistic concoction that makes up the speculative element of Freemasonry is drawn from many sources - some of them, like the Isis-Osiris myth, dating back to the dawn of history. Rosicrucianism, Gnosticism, the Kabbala, Hinduism, Theosophy and traditional notions of the occult all play a part; but despite the exhaustive literature - one scholar estimates that some 50,000 items of Masonry had been published by the 1950's - it is impossible to determine what comes from where and when, if only because Freemasonry on its lower and more accessible levels is opposed to dogma. There is therefore no alternative statement of what Masons believe or what the Brotherhood stands for in the first, second and third degrees, to which the vast majority of members restrict themselves. Even a 33 degree Mason who has persevered to attain all the enlightenment that Freemasonry claims to offer could not - even if he were freed from his oath of secrecy - provide more than a purely personal view of the Masonic message and the meaning to be attached to Masonic symbolism, since thus remains essentially subjective.

  The comparatively short documented history of Freemasonry as an institution is nevertheless quite extraordinary. It is the story of how a Roman Catholic trade guild for a few thousand building workers in Britain came to be taken over by the aristocracy, the gentry and members of mainly non-productive professions, and how it was turned into a non-Christian secret society enjoying association with offshoot fraternal societies with millions of adherents throughout most of the non-Communist world.

  In many cultures and at many times humankind has been drawn to the esoteric - the conception that the great truths about life and how to control social and natural phenomena are secrets and can only be known to initiates, who pass on their privileged knowledge to the elect from generation to generation. Ad one highly placed Mason told me: ' Truth, to the initiate, is not for everyone, pearls must not be thrown before swine.'

Equally. throughout history men have joined together in secret groups to further purely worldly ambitions. All such groups also involve initiation - the initiation ceremony involving fearful oaths of secrecy. For secrets to remain secrets there must be certain and effective sanctions. Secret societies formed for essentially practical ends have commonly had religious and moral elements. The religious element creates awe and so adds to the effectiveness of the oath of secrecy. The moral element determines the fraternal way that the organization's members threat each other, which might bear small resemblance to the way they treat outsiders.

 Freemasonry is both speculative, philosophic - even religious and mystical -system, and a fraternity of those organized to help each other in material matters. For some Masons it is entirely the former, for other the latter. but for most it is a mixture of the two.

  Masonic historians seem as uncertain as non-Masons about who first saw in the obsolescent mediaeval Christian Masonic guild as organization that could be taken over and converted into a quasi-religious, quasi-secular secret society. What evidence there is indicates that this evolution began very slowly and almost by chance, and that it was only later that the potential of the Masonic guild as a clandestine power base was perceived. In other words, it appears that the original interest of the gentry in the Masonic lodges stemmed from curiosity, antiquarian interest, and a kind of fashionable search for an unconventional, exclusive social milieu - rather like a jet-set fad for frequenting working men's pubs.

..There are a number of reasons why the Masonic guild should have attracted this general interest....

...First, the working (or 'operative') mason's craft guild was ripe for takeover: structured in the heyday of Gothic architecture in the thirteenth century, the craft was dying.. King's College Chapel at Cambridge, perhaps the last truly great English Gothic building, had been completed about 1512...

 ... Secondly, the highly skilled stonemasons of the Gothic age were peculiar in that many were itinerant workers, moving from church site to cathedral site as work was to be found. They had no regular headquarters like other trades, gathering in temporary lodges on site to discuss affairs ...and, as they often did not know each other as did permanent residents of mediaeval towns, they needed some method of recognition, some way of maintaining a closed shop to protect their demanding and highly esteemed profession against interlopers who had not undergone the rigorous apprenticeship necessary to acquire the mason's skills. These, as Professor Jacob Bronowski termed them, were the 'industrial aristocrats'.....

.... There was thus cosmopolitan romance, exclusivity and an organized secretiveness about the mason's guild, which became increasingly moribound as baroque replaced Gothic architecture ... all of this had potential fascination for men of education.......

 Modern Freemasonry probably originated in Scotland... The earliest known instance of a non-stonemason, a gentleman, joining a mason's lodge is John Boswell. Laid of Auchinlech, who was a member of the Lodge in Edinburgh in 1600. Apparently the first English gentleman to join an English Lodge was Elian Ashmore, founder of Oxford' Ashmlean Museum. An antiquarian deeply interested in Rosicrucinism, he joined in 1646, Masonry became so fashionable that as the seventeenth century progressed the 'acceptance' (the collective term for non-stonemasons) became the majority in the Masonic Lodges.

For example, in 1670 the Aberdeen Lodge had thirty-none 'accepted' members while only ten remained 'operative' masons. But it was not long before the novelty in participating in the Quaint and venerable doings of artisans wore thin. Men of fashion saw no reason to prolong association with working men, and they began to form their own gentlemen' Lodges.... Freemasonry was launched...

... The 'speculative' Masons inherited seven main fundamental points from their 'operative' predecessors:

(1) an organization with the three grades of membership: (a) Apprentice, (b) Fellow or Journeyman, and (c) Master Mason;

(2) A unit termed a Lodge;

(3) Legendary histories of the origins of the Masonic craft set out in the 100-odd manuscripts containing the so-called 'Old Charges', the oldest being the Regius manuscripts of 1390, which was in verse;

(4) A tradition o fraternal and benevolent relations between members;

(5) A rule of secrecy about Lodge doings, although the Old Charges themselves were simply lists of quite ordinary rules for the guild, which members were enjoined to keep 'so help you God'. as befitted a Christian grouping there were no blood-curdling oaths;

(6) A method of recognition, notably the Scottish 'mason word' traced back to 1550: unwritten but variously remembered as Mahabyn, Mahabone, or even Matchpin;

(7) A thoroughly Christian foundation - the Old Charges are permeated with mediaeval Roman Catholicism;

With the demise of the original 'trade union' purpose of organization and the eclipse not only of Roman Catholicism due to the Reformation, but also the waning of Christianity with the rise of science, what was left towards the end of the seventeenth century was the framework of a secretive association, likened by authority to a peasant's cottage ripe for extensive development as a luxury weekend home for the well-to-do.

... Serious Masonic historians themselves deplore the lack of documentation about the three or four critical decades before the foundation of the Grand Lodge of England in 1717 ,,but is was during these years that the course of Freemasonry was to follow set.. it was evidently then that feww men among the small number (possibly only a few hundred in all) of 'accepted' masons must have come to see the potential of a secret society cutting across class divisions to embrace aristocrats, gentry, professional men and elements of the expanding middle class... It was to be a 'brotherhood' which would put a string to pull into the hand of every members, and strings enough in the hands of its shadowy controllers to manipulate events - like puppet masters behind the scenes ..But who these people were and just how consciously they planned or, as some have said, even plotted, is shrouded in mystery ,,, One thing united a majority of politically conscious people at this time: the need to preserve the gain of the Civil War of 1642-1651 - the limitation of the power of the King.. The 'accepted'  Masons of the last quarter of the seventeenth century would appear to have been largely drawn from the type of people most anxious to preserve and to increase the steadily growing influence in society and government if men of quite moderate wealth and standing...

.... William of Orange and his consort Mary in 1688 were invited to become joint sovereigns..

.... When Grand Lodge was founded, George I had been on the throne only three years ..the prominent in Masonry were poised to have a hand in the manipulation of the new Hanoverian dynasty...

...Before the foundation of Grand Lodge in 1717, moves to transform the old guild into a true secret society were well on the way. As the normal trade union business of operative Masonic Lodges dwindled and eventually ceased, so the element of ritual based on the readings of the Old Charges - their legendary stories about the origins of the 'Mason's Craft; and their injunctions to members to obey the traditional rules - was transformed. Lodge ritual, initiations and speculative dissertations became the mail business of actual lodge meetings ... at the same time fraternal conviviality  - which in the old days of operative masonry had probably been confined to a tankard or two after meetings in a local ale house - soon became a major feature of Masonic society... much was eaten, much was drunk, and much was discussed in the privacy of Masonic meeting places (usually taverns) after the rather dry formal doings in Lodge were over... the 'better' the `lodge - in the sense of social class - the 'better' the conversation and the more lavish and expensive the entertainment ,,,Masonry was already on its way to mirroring and reinforcing the class system and the emerging social order based on strictly constitutional monarchy... whatever it was to become overseas, where no Civil War, no Glorious Revolution had yet taken place, Masonry in England was already headed towards a conservative future...The sights of its prime movers were already set on a movement underpinning a type of society admirably suited to its purposes: a stable society with limited social mobility in which a secret inner 'Old Boy' association could provide an environment where considerable benefit could be gained by members who knew how to 'play the Masonic organ'.

,, Formal oaths of secrecy to be sworn by individual initiates appear in a number of Old charges containing 'new orders', but as these were published five years after the establishment of Grand Lodge they are possibly spurious. ,,,either way, no horrific sanctions are mentioned.. even so, the inclusion of an oath in the initiation rituals can be regarded as a crucial step in the creation of a secret society from the old guild...

The headquarters of the Brotherhood ( as Freemasonry is generally called) in England and Wales is in London, where the massive bulk of Freemasons Hall squats at the corner of Great Queen Street and Wild Street, like a gigantic elephant's footstool... This is the seat of the United Grand Lodge of England, the governing body of the 8,000 plus lodges in England and Wales, These Lodges, of which there are another 1,200 odd under the jurisdiction of the Grand Lodge of Scotland and about 750 under the Grand Lodge of Ireland, carry out their secret business and ritual in a deliberately cultivated atmosphere of mystery in Masonic Temples. Masonic Temples might be purpose built, or might be rooms in hotels or private buildings temporarily converted for Masonic use. Many town halls up and down Britain have private function room, used for Masonic rituals, as does New Scotland Yard, the headquarters of the Metropolitan Police...

.... The Grand Lodges control what is known as ''Craft" Freemasonry, and brethren often refer to the Brotherhood as "the Craft". Craft Freemasonry covers the three degrees of Entered Apprentice, Fellow Craft and Master Mason..The vast majority of Masons rise no higher than Master Mason, and most are under the impression that there are no higher degrees... Even many masons who go on to become Royal Arch Masons, governed by Grand Chapter, have no idea that the Masonic ladder extends a further thirty rungs above those on the third who believe they had already reached the top of Freemasonry....( it is note that other researchers such as Glen Kealy believe that the ladder goes even higher to a 90 degree mason..however a 33 degree mason can not request to become and/or would not know about the 90 degree mason levels unless selected and told about them......

.... There is an important distinction to be made between 'Freemasonry', which is the Freemason movement as a whole, and 'Freemasons', which describes any number of individual masons .... it has been claimed that Captain William Morgan in American in 1826,Mozart and the Jack the Ripper murders were committed by Freemasons and/or the Brotherhood.. some people today look upon Freemasonry as an underground movement devoted to murder, terrorism and revolution ... and is a worldwide conspiracy and watch.... however... Freemasonry is not a worldwide secret society ..however is a secret society that, originating in Britain, now has independent offshoots  in most of the non-Communist world ...while the British Grand Lodge recognize more than a hundred Grand Lodges ( forty-nine in the USA), they have no control over them, and most reflect the political complexion of the country in which they operate. Far from being revolutionary, there is no organization more reactionary, more Establishment-based, that British Freemasonry. Its members derive benefit from the Brotherhood only so long as the status quo is maintained ... nevertheless, Freemasonry has a potent influence on life in Britain - for both good and ill... the Brotherhood's publicly stated aims are: morality, fraternity and charity ... the average member of the Brotherhood will be eloquent on the generous donations made by United Grand Lodge to charity ...which are quite substantial ... on the other hand, there can be no doubt that many others have suffered because of Freemasonry entering into areas of life where, according to all its publicly proclaimed principles, it should never intrude .... the abuse of Freemasonry caused alarming miscarriages of justice.. it is one of the aims of this book to look at some of the effects of this abuse .... I am free to name only a small number of the many hundreds of people who have helped me with advice and information ...  (for the writing of this book) .... most of those who helped did so only on the understanding that I would say nothing that could lead to their identification... among these were Freemasons, who feared recrimination from members of the Brotherhood ... other included government officials, politicians, judges, policemen of all ranks, lawyers, churchmen, past and present officers of MI5 and MI6, and people from every sector of society touched by this book.....

Edited from: The Element Encyclopedia of Secret Societies Intro: Elias Ashmore:

Elias Ashmore was an English historian, astrologer, alchemist, in 1644, where he became a member of Brasenose

College and studied astrology and mathematics, His studies were interrupted by the final phase of the English Civil War , and he served with distinction in the Royalist cause, helping defend Oxford and Worcester against Parliamentary armies. After the final collapse of the Royalty cause in 1646, Ashmore went to live with relatives in Cheshire, While there in October 16th, 1646, he was initiated into Freemasonry, becoming one of the first two "accepted (speculative) Masons (Masons not employed in the building trades) in England, the other, initiated on the same evening, was his brother-in-law Henry Mainwaring. He remained active in Masonry for the rest of his life and appears to have placed a significant role in its spread in seventeenth-century England...

The Brotherhood

by Stephen Knight –published 1984

The Dissidents – Chapter 16 _ages 140 to  149

One of my major sources of information was a former Grand Inspector Inquisitor Commander of the Thirty-First degree of the Ancient and Accepted Rite who has withdrawn form masonry in 1968 for religious reasons.. her agreed to be interviewed by me  through a third party concerning his conviction that no active Christian could in all conscience remain a Freemason…

When I met him I learned he was a judge, and a particularly quick-tempered one .. I asked him about the Ancient and Accepted Rite of the Thirty-Third degree, he answered quickly: ‘Nom I dare not go into that’, her said ….’we’d better stick to religion… I thought immediately afterwards how strange it was he had used the words ‘dare not’, Most people said, ‘I’d better not’, or ‘I’d rather not’… I remarked on his used of the world. He said, ‘Anyone in public life has to be cautious.’ ..’Cautious’.. I repeated. “That’s a Masonic word of recognition.”..

He then said, ‘You’ve obviously delved into the ritual, so you know…..’

… ‘Mr Knight, I don’t like this line of questioning. I agreed to speak to you in general terms about why my commitment to Jesus is incompatible with Masonic religion …. I do not wish to be drawn into discussion of matters covered by whatever undertakings I have … taken…

I went on to tell the judge ..’I have heard form quite a lot of contacts about organized action groups of Freemasons that have resulted in the financial or social ruin of certain people, ‘ I said..

The judge replied.. ‘So have I’…’ ..still looking me st5raight in the eye as if telling me this was an important issue and point of fact…’ So have I Mr Knight… No of such happenings which had the backing of official Freemasonry, but of actions which were unofficial, in other words, Masons abusing the Craft for their own ends..’…’You know the answer to that form what I have said.. ‘I have also heard about people who have .crossed’ certain masons and finished up in prison…’ He then stopped me in mid-sentence by placing a finger on his lips ... ’if I told you everything about Freemasonry, being betrayed by its members, it would surprise you… it would make your hair stand on end … I can’t tell you any more..’ he said…then he said.. Give me your phone number,, you might hear from someone in a few days…’… His finger went back to his lips and he went to fetch my coat .. as he left he said, ‘God Bless’…

A few days later received as phone call from a man calling himself Christopher whom I ended up having along meeting at his private club and he showed me his papers to show him bona fide ID and Freemason membership… I asked him what a person might have to fear from a group of influential Freemason if circumstances made him, for instance, a threat to them in the business world; or if he discovered they were using masonry for corrupt purposes; or had fallen victim of their misuse of Freemasonry and would not heed warnings not to oppose them…

He replied..’.. It is not difficult to s=ruin a man,’ he said, ‘And I will tell you how it is done time and time again.. there are more than half a million Freemasonry Craft Brethren (In 1883) just in England and Wales and over 400,000 in Scotland ( in 1983) under the jurisdiction of Grand Lodge.. Standards have been falling for twenty or thirty years , it is now too easy to enter the Craft, so many men of dubious moral have now joined the Craft… about 12-13% abuse the Craft for selfish and/or corrupt ends.. (that is about 60,000 in England and Wales and about 40,000 in Scotland)..

Note: Christopher was one of a small and unpopular group within Masonry who sometime in the early 1970’s had decided that either they had to get out of the Brotherhood or they had to do something ‘to stop the rot’, which the ‘blinkered officers of Great Queen Street refuse to admit was there..’

This group wanted pressure brought to bear on those in positions of responsibility  within the Brotherhood to put Freemasonry’s house in order.. to instate proper policing, to close down Lodges used for shady dealings and to root out corrupt brethren and expel them, they also wanted the whole business of Masonic secrecy looked into by Grand Lodge, most of them believing that secrecy was more harmful than helpful to Masonry..

 Christopher explained that Masonry’s nationwide organization of men from all walks of life provided one of the most efficient private intelligence networks imaginable, private information on anybody in the country could be accessed very rapidly through endless permutations of Masonic contacts in the police, magistrates, solicitors, bank managers, Post Office staff (‘very useful is supplying copies of a man’s mail’), doctors, government employees, bosses of firms and nationalized industries etc. etc. …. A dossier of personal data could be built up on anybody very quickly.. when the major facts of an individual’s life were known, areas of vulnerability would become apparent…

I asked what action might be taken?..

“ Solicitors are very good at it…Get your name involved in something legal it need not be serious and you have him,, Solicitors are past masters a causing endless delays, generating useless paperwork, ignoring instructions, running up immense bills, misleading client into taking decisions damaging to themselves etc etc..

‘ Masonic police can harass, arrest on false charges, and plant evidence.. ‘ A business man in a small community or a person in public office arrested for dealing in child pornography, for indent exposure, or for trafficking drugs is at the end of the line..’

‘ Masons can bring about the situation where credit companies and band withdraw credit facilities form individual clients and tradesmen, said my informant..

People who rely on their telephone for work can have it cut off for long periods, Masonic employees of councils can arrange for a persons drains to be inspected and extensive damage reported etc etc..

Chapter 3- Schism and  Reunion

 .... In 1717 Freemasonry enters properly into history,, Four London Lodges alone formed Grand Lodge and owed allegiance to it. What is interesting is that a none too well-off gentleman, Anthony Sayer, was installed as Grand Master, In the beginning the upper classed kept a low profile.. they backed the creation of a central organization welding individual lodges together, but eventually wanted this done before they assumed official public control... Of the four original London Lodges, the first three contained not one 'Esquire' between them, where as Lodge Original No.4 was made up of seventy-one members of whom, in 1724, ten were nobles, three were honourable, four were baronets or knights, and two were generals. .. in 1718, Sayer was replaced after barely a year by George Payne, a 'man of more substance', being a member of Original No 4. But he too had only one year in office  another interim while the upper-class moved in on the small gentry just as the small gentry moved in on the 'operative' artisans a century earlier...

... The third Grand Master was the Reverend John Theophilus Desaguliers, a Doctor of Law, a Fellow of the Royal society and chaplain to Frederick, Prince of Wales, whom he admitted to the Brotherhood in 1737. He was of French extraction. ,, A head hunter for Freemasonry.... he not only visited Edinburgh to encourage the Scots along the organizational path the London Masons were following , but visited The Hague in 1731, where he admitted the Duke of Lorraine to the Brotherhood. The Duke married Mara Theresa in 1736 and become co-Regent when she acceded to the Austrian throne in 1738... under Joseph II Mozart, Haydn and a host of other notables became Freemasons ...Dr Desaguliers, certainly appears to have sparked the missionary zeal of British Freemasonry which eventually carried the Freemasonry movement to almost every country in the world....Desaguliers too only held office a short time, In 1721 he gave way to the long awaited first noble Grand master, the Duke of Montague, But, unlike his predecessors, Desaguliers was not usurped: the evidence suggests that he was the prototype of the long line of powerful Masonic figures who preferred the shade to the limelight, the reality of power to mere appearances.

Chapter: 4 Across The Seas and Down the Centuries

The Irish Grand Lodge was formed in 1725 and the Scottish Grand Lodge was formed the following year in 1726. the Scots proved at least as fervent missionaries as the English, As already mentioned. the movement had spread to the Continent at least by the third decade of the eighteenth century, often in very high society. Frederick the Great of Prussia is claimed to have been initiated in 1738, although one must be careful of accepting Masonic claims of membership by the illustrious. There is no proof, for example Christopher Wren, often hailed as one of the brethren, was ever a member. Masonry, its undefined Deism so close to that of Voltairean rationalism, was soon the rage among the pre-revolutionary freethinkers in France: ironically, it may have been planted there by Jacobite exiles around 1725.

  Freemasonry remains a power t be reckoned with in many European countries, France and Germany in particular. The French Grand Master today is Air Force general Jacques Mitterand, the President's brother, and Freemasonry's influence in politics is profound. Francois Mitterand owes much of his success in the 1981 election to influential Freemasons. Masonry has been closely identified with the Socialists for most of the last seventy years. According to Fred Zeller, Grand master of the Grand Orient of France in 1971 and 1973, the 1974 presidential election would have been won by the Socialists had Valery Giscard d'Estang not  become a Freemason and colluded with sympathetic forces in the Brotherhood, which eventually persuaded French Freemasons that it  was  in their best interests to vote for Giscard. He was initiated into the Franklin Rossevelt Lodge in paris the year of the election.

 Italian Freemasonry, later to pay significant role in the unification of the country ( Garibaldi was a Freemason). was established in Rome by Jacobite exiles in 1735 and was already a force by 1750. Masonry among Roman Catholics relates was one reason for the repeated papal condemnations.

 No country was too small for attention: Holland, Switzerland and Sweden all had keen and influential memberships in the eighteen century.  Continental Masonry reached as far as Russia: Tolstoy in War and Peace describes the different motivations of upper-class masons during the Napolionic Wars.

Freemasonry crossed the Atlantic to the colonies of the old empire very early on: George Washington's initiation was in 1752, Today, the dollar bill bears not only Washington's likeness, but also the all-seeing-eye symbol of Freemasonry.  washington refused to become head of masonry for the whole of the newly formed United States, and US Freemasonry came to be organized on a state-by-state basis. Today, each US state has its own Grand Lodge, Royal Arch Chapters come under state Grand Chapters, the first mention of Royal Arch appearing in Virginia records of 1753. A few states followed the British lead and spread the Brotherhood abroad, For example, before the Second World War there were Lodges in China under Massachusetts jurisdiction, and it was Massachusetts that warranted the first Canadian Lodge in 1749, The oldest Masonic Lodge room in the USA dates from 1760 and is at Prentiss House, Marblehead, Massachusetts. No fewer than none Canadian Grand Lodges were eventually formed. The United States proved a home form home for the Brotherhood. Eight signatories to the Declaration of Independence- Benjamin Franklin, John Hancock, Joseph Hewes, William Hooper, Robert Treat Payne, Richard Stockton, George Walton and william Whipple - were proven Masons, while twenty-four others, on less that certain evidence, have been claimed by the Brotherhood. Seventeen presidents have been Masons: Washington, Madison, Monroe, Jackson, Polk, Buchanan, Andrew Johnson, Garfield. McKinley, both Roosevelts, Taft, Harding, Truman, Lyndon Johnson, Gerald Ford and Ronald Regan, Seventeen Vice-Presidents including Hubert Humphrey and Adlai Stevenson have also been brethren,

 But the British - the founders of masonry - remained throughout the nineteenth and twentieth-centuries the chief propagandists for the movement. Undaunted by the loss of the first empire and with it direct control over American Masonry, the British took masonry with the flag as they created their second empire- the one on which the sun never set.

 For some years membership of the Lodges set up in the empire (grouped in 'Provinces' under English, Scottish or Irish jurisdiction) as confined to Europeans, apart from a handful of Indian princely exceptions. But after 1860. a first Parsees, then other Indians were brought into the Brotherhood. In British West Africa and the West Indies there were 'black' lodges (likely to be where Barrack Obama's relations came from as a long term plan to raise a Mason family dark president of the USA) as well as 'white' Lodges (as in the US), and eventually mixed Lodges were formed.

  Associating the native upper and middle classes on a peculiar, profitable and clandestine basis with their while rulers, some historians believe, did much to defuse resentment of imperial domination. Despite his colour, any man rather better off than the mass of people - who were not sought as members - could, by being a Freemason, feel that he belonged in however humble a way to the Establishment. Just how far masonry reached is shown by the fact that on the small island of Jamaca there were no fewer than twelve Lodges, some in townships of little more than a couple of streets.

 Freemasonry of itself is simply a secret environment tended by its various Grand Lodges, as exclusive society within society, there to be used by its members largely as they wish. Hence its influence, political and social, can be quite different at times and places, In the eighteen masons were thin on the ground, but enough aristocrats, men of fashion and influence, were Masons to give the top masons influence disproportionate to their numbers. And of course royal involvement ensured, as it does today, the impression of total reputability. because of this, Freemasonry has been able to ignore all legislation dating form 1797 concerning secret societies and illegal oaths. Although regarded as subversive in some countries where the environment was less amenable, in eighteenth-century Britain the Brotherhood had the effect already alluded to - of reinforcing the development of constitutional monarchy under which its own establishment could thrive....

The advantages of `masonry, in terms of cult, diversified friendships and straight worldly interest, had become evident to many. with the Union of 1813 the movement began to snowball for the more Masons there are in any area or profession the more important it is to be a Mason f one is not to risk losing out, as a non-member of the 'club', in one's business, one's profession and one's preferment.

 another factor was important: with the Industrial Revolution, social mobility began to increase. And masonry, providing a ladder extending from the lower middle class to the Royal Family itself, offered great advantages to those who could learn how to climb it. There was also the loneliness of the new urban way of life: Freemasonry provided an enormous circle of instant acquaintances in most walks of life.  Then too, the English public schoolboy could continue to be public schoolboy in the intimacy of the Craft.

  At the end of the eighteen century only about 320 English Lodges had been warranted. About twice as many more were formed in the next half of the century, No 1000 in 1864. This number was doubled in the next twenty year, No 2000 being warranted in 1883. The next twenty years maintained tis rate of growth with Lodge no 3000 opening in 1903, in which year Winton Leonard Spencer Churchill, the MP for Oldham, was initiated to a Masonic career that was to last more than sixty years. All this nineteenth explosions resulted essentially from recruitment form the middle and professional classes.

  With the First World War, which led to so many of quite humble background seeking better status, the rate of growth speeded dramatically. Lodge No 4000 was formed in 1919, and No 5000 only seven years later in 1926. The Second World War, for similar reasons, led to another such period of extraordinary rapid growth - Lodge No 6000  being formed in 1944 and Lodge No 7000 in 1950.

  In 1981, Lodge No 9003 was warranted. Even allowing for Lodges that have been discontinued, taking average Lodge membership at around sixty men, a membership of at least half a million can reasonably reliably be estimated for England alone. Official Masonic estimates, as already stated put the total for England and Wales at around 600,000. ( plus according to H. Paul Jeffers around 400,000 in Scotland as well taking the total to over one million Freemasons in England, Wales and Scotland).

    As the recruiting ground for ~Freemasons is primarily the not directly productive middle and professional classes, it is clear that a very high proportion of these people, occupying managers and so on - are Freemasons. In many fields nowadays the disadvantages of being left out of the 'club' are perceived as being too serious for a great many people to contemplate, whatever hey may feel personally about the morality of joining a secret society, or about the misty tenets of speculative Freemasonry.

Chapter 5

The Thirty-Third Degree

There is an elite group of Freemasons in England over whom the United Grand Lodge has no jurisdiction. These are the brethren of the so-called Higher Degrees, and even the majority of Freemasons have no idea of their existence.

  Most Freemasons who have been raised to the 3rd Degree to become Master Masons believe they are the top of the Masonic Ladder. As novices they were Entered Apprentices. They were the '[assed' as Fellow Craft Masons and finally 'raised' as Masters. The very name Master has connotations of supremity. It Master Masons have ambition it will usually be to achieve office within their Lodge - eventually, with good fortune and the passing of yeas, to become Worshipful master of their mother Lodge ( the Lodge to which they were first initiated into Masonry). Those who have their eyes fixed on higher office will aim for rank in their Provincial Grand Lodge or in the United Grand Lodge itself. But even the Grand Master of all England is only a Freemasons of the 3rd Degree. The three Craft:

3rd Degree -Master Mason

2nd Degree - Fellow Craft

1st Degree - Entered Apprentice

degrees form the entire picture of masonry for most of the 600,000 ' uninitiated initiates' of the Brotherhood in England and Wales.

   The 'Masters', who form the largest proportion of Freemasons, are inmost cases quite unaware of the thirty superior degrees to which they will never be admitted, nor even be mentioned. This is the real picture, with the three lowly degrees governed by a Supreme Council.

 These thirty degrees, beginning with the 4th (that of Secret Master) and culminating in the 33rd (Grand Inspector General), are controlled by a Supreme Council whose headquarters are at 10 Duke Street, St James's London SW1. Nobody walking down Duke Street form Piccadilly is likely to suspect the true nature of what goes on inside the building, even if he or she happens to notice the small plate to the right of the entrance which says,

            ' The Supreme Council..... Ring once'

 Built in 1910-11, this imposing Edwardian mansion with fine neo-classical features might easily be taken for a consulate of the headquarters of some private institute.

Nor do people thumbing through the S-Z section of the London `telephone Directory get any clue form the entry sandwiched between Supreme Cleaners and Supreme Die Cutters: 'Supreme Council 33rd Degree ...01 930 1606'

  Nobody looking at that fine but anonymous house from outside could suspect that behind its pleasing facade, beyond the two sets of study double doors and up the stairs, there is a Black Room, a Red Room and a Chamber of Death. To high masons, the house is Duke Street is known as the Grand East.

  members of Craft Freemasonry - that is, all but a few thousand of England's Masons - often argue that Freemasonry is not a secret society but ' a society with secrets'. Although argument is is the end unconvincing, it has its merits. But no such case can be made out for the wealthy society-within-a society based at 10 Duke Street, London.

The Thirty-Three Degrees of Freemaosonry

1st   Degree -      Entered Apprentice

2nd  Degree -     Fellow Craft

3rd   Degree -     Master Mason

4th   Degree -     Secret Master

5th   Degree -     Perfect Master

6th   Degree -     Intimate Secretary

7th   Degree -      Provost and Judge

8th   Degree -      Intendant of the Building

9th   Degree -      Elect of Nine

10th Degree-     Elect of Fifteen

11th Degree-     Sublime Elect

12th Degree-    Grand Master Architect

13th Degree-     Royal Arch of (Enoch)

14th Degree-     Scottish Knight of Perfection

15th Degree-     Knight of the Sword, or of the East

16th Degree-     Prince of Jerusalem

17th Degree-      Knight of the East and West

18th Degree-     

         Knight of the Pelican and Eagle & Sovereign Prince Roe Croix of Heredom

19th Degree-      Grand Pontiff

20th Degree-       Venerable Grand Master

21st Degree-        Patriarch Noachite

22nd Degree-       Prince of Libanus

23rd Degree-             Chief of the Tabernacle

24th Degree-              Prince of the Tabernacle

25th Degree-             Knight of the Brazen Serpent

26th Degree-              Prince of Mercy

27th Degree-              Commander of the Temple

28th Degree-               Knight of the Sun

29th Degree-              Knight of St Andrew

30th Degree-             

                       Grand Elected Knight Kadosh, Knight of the Black and White Eagle

31st Degree-                Grand Inspector inquisitor Commander

32nd Degree               Sublime Prince of the Royal Secret

33rd Degree                Grand Inspector General

One of the regulations of ordinary Craft masonry is that no Mason may invite an outsider to join.  Anyone wishing to become a Freemason must take the initiative and seek two sponsors from within the Brotherhood

(This at least is the theory - and United Grand Lodge staunchly maintains that it is the practice. In reality entered apprentices are recruited by existing Masons they know personally- we know this to be a fact).                                                    The position is reversed to the Higher Degrees. Initiation into Scottish Rite Freemasonry is open only to those Master Masons who are 'selected' by the Supreme Council. If a representative of the Supreme Council establishes contact with a Master Mason and concluded that he is suitable, the Candidate will be offered the chance of being 'perfected' and setting the first foot on the ladder to the 33rd Degree. But only a very small proportion, even of the limited  number of Freemasons who take the first step. progress beyond the 18th Degree, that of Knight of the Pelican and Eagle and Sovereign Prince Rose Croix of Heredom. With each Degree the number of initiates diminishes. the 31st Degree (Grand Inspector Inquisitor Commander) is restricted to 400 members; the 32nd Degree ( Sublime Prince of the Royal Secret) to 180; and the 33rd Degree - the re-eminent Grand Inspectors General - to only 75 members.

    While Armed Forces are strongly represented in ordinary Freemasonry, the 'Antient and Accepted Rite of the Thirty-Third Degree' is particularly attractive to military men, Grand Inspectors General (I.e. members of the Supreme Council) have included Commander-in-Chief in the Middle east and allied supreme Commander in the Mediterranean in the Second World War; Major-General Sir Leonard Henry Atkinson; Brigadier E,W,C. Flavell; Lieutenant-General Sir Harold Williams; Brigadier General Edward Charles Walthall Delves Walthall; scores more in the last two decades. Before his retirement in 1982 the Most Puissant Sovereign Grand Commander (the most senior Freemason of the 33rd Degree in England and Wales and head of the Supreme Council) was Major-General sir (Herbert) Ralph Hone, KCMG, KBE, MC, TD, and so on. There is no mention of Freemasonry in his entry in Who's -Who, which lists every other decoration, award and distinction he has earned in his eighty-seven years, although becoming Britain's highest Freemason can have been of no little consequence to him. In Masonic matter he would dispense with all the other abbreviations and simply sign himself, Ralph Hone, 33 Degree. Born in 1896, he is also a Bailiff Grand Cross of the Order of St John of Jerusalem.

Major-General sir (Herbert) Ralph Hone, was wounded during the First World War while serving with the British Expeditionary Force, went on to practice as a barrister-at-law in Uganda and Zanzibar in the 1920's becoming Resident Magistrate in Zanzibar in 1928 and Crown Counsel of Tanganyika Territory two years later. In the thirties he was Attorney-General  and Acting  Chief Justice of Gibraltar, and Attorney-General of Uganda between 1937 and 1943. after serving as Chief Legal adviser, Political Branch, and then Chief Political officer, GHQ Middle East, he was appointed to the General staff of the War Office in 1943. After the war he was Chief Civil Affairs Officer in Malaya for a year before becoming Secretary-General to the Governor-General of Malaya and then Deputy Commissioner-General in South-East Asia. In 1949 he was appointed Governor and Commander-in-chief of North Borneo. At the end of five years there he spent seven years as Head of the Legal Division of the Commonwealth Relations Office. This took him into 1961 when he returned to the Bar. Among other posts at home and abroad in the next fourteen years he was a constitutional advisor to R.A, Butler's Advisers on Central Africa,to the South Arabian Government and the Bermuda Government. He was standing Counsel

 to the Grand Bahama Port Authority until hi retirement on 1975 at the age of seventy-five, He succeeded Most Puissant Brother Sir Eric Studd, Bt, OBE, 33 Degree, as sovereign Grand Commander.

 This, then was the man who - at the time 'The Brotherhood' was completed for New English Library - was truly Britain's highest Freemason. whatever might be said of the Duke of Kent, the current Grand Master of Craft Masonry. Page 39 shows the hierarchy over which the Most Puissant Sovereign Grant Commander presides, with the Duke of Kent's sub-hierachy way down low.

Although in 1936, 1947 and 1967 Major-General Sir Ralph Hone held grand rank in the United Grand Lodge, and has achieved distinction in many fields, he is one of that brand of men who attain power without the notoriety or fame. Few of the many hundreds of Freemasons I have interviewed had ever heard of Sir Ralph Hone, and of those few only five knew of him in his secret role as the Highest  Mason of the Highest Degree. These five were all initiates of the Ancient and Accepted Rite: Two Sovereign Princes Rose Croix of Heredom (18th Degree); one of the 180 Sublime Princess of the Royal secret (32nd degree); a 33rd Degree Grand Inspector General; and a former Grand Inspector Inquisitor of the 31st Degree who had renounced Freemasonry in order, he said, to become 'a true and living Christian', But beyond the fact that Major-General Sir Ralph Hone was the preminent member of the Supreme Council, none of them would say any more either about the man himself or about the rituals, the degrees or the administration of the Rite.

 Sir Ralph's successor is Harold Devereux Still, former Grand Treasurer and Junior Grand warden of the United Grand Lodge of England, and Grand Treasurer and Grand Scribe Nehemiah of the Supreme Grand Chapter of Royal arch Masons of England. He also attained the rank of Grand Master of the United Religious, Military and Masonic Orders of the Temple of St John of Jerusalem, Palestine, Rhodes and Malta.

   The Brotherhood attracts men of distinction in the judiciary and legal profession, as will be seen later. One such man is His Honour Judge Alan Stewart Trapnell, who was appointed to the Circuit Bench in 1972. he is a Craft Freemason of grand rank, having been Assistant Grand Registrar in 1963. n 1969 he became Assistant Grand Sojourner of the Supreme Grand Chapter of Royal Arch Freemasons. All these details are listed in the 'Masons Year Book', which is now very difficult for non-Masons to come by, What is not mentioned is that he is a Freemason of the 33rd degree and Grand Inspector General for Middlesex.

   Although Craft Freemasonry is worldwide in the sense that it exists in most parts of the non-Communist world, and even underground in parts of the eastern bloc, it has no international organization. The  Ancient and Accepted Rite of the `thirty-Third Degree is the only cohesive Masonic group run on truly international lines. The Supreme Council in London is one of many Supreme Councils in various parts of the globe, of which the senior is the Supreme Council of Charleston, USA, which effectively operated a worldwide network of Freemasonry in the most powerful positions in the executive, legislature, judiciary and armed forces as well as the industry, commerce and professions of many nations.

  The English working of the Rite - sometimes known by the code name Rose Croix from the title of the initiate to the 18th Degree - differs from the American in one basic respect. In England and Wales only a few of the 33 Degrees are conferred by special ritual, while in the USA each Degree has its own initiation ceremony, In this country, the 4th to §7th Degrees are conferred at once and in name only during initiation of the selected Freemason to the 18th Degree. To the few who rise higher than the 18th Degree, the 19th to 29th Degrees are conferred nominally during the ritual of initiation to the 30th Degree - that of Grand Elected Knight Kadosh or Knight of the Black and White Eagle. Degrees above the 30th Degree are conferred singly, No initiate can rise higher than the 18th Degree without the unanimous agreement of the entire Supreme Council.

Chapter 6

The Great Debate

'The insidious effect of Freemansonry among the police has to be experienced to be believed'

With these words, David Thomas, a former head of Monmouthshire CID, created a storm of protest in 1969 and re-opend a debate that had started nearly a century before, when a conspiracy involving 'Masonic Police' and 'Masonic Criminals' brought the destruction of the original Detective Department of Scotland Yard,,, Since then allegations of 'Masonic Corruption' (within the UK Police Force) have been rife, the Jack the Ripper murders in the East End of London in 1988 were perpetrated according on 'Masonic Ritual' and a subsequent police cover-up was led by the Commissioner and Assistant Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, both Freemasons... There have been allegations of charges being dropped against criminal Masons by police Masons; of unfair promotions; of on-masons being hounded out of the police service; of livelihoods ruined; of blackmail and violence; of discipline eroded by a system in which a Chief Superintendent, Commanded or even on occasion as Assistant Chief Constable or Chief Constable can be made to Kneel in submissions before one of his own constables; and, in recent times, of robery and murder planned between police and criminals at Lodge Meetings'

Chapter 7

Men at the Top

There are fifty-two police forced in England and Wales, Scotland and Northern Island....The consensus among my most reliable, highly-ranking informants is that of the fifty Chief Constables and London Commissioners..no fewer that thirty-three are of the Freemasonry Brotherhood ..

Chapter 8

Worshipful masters of Conspiracy

Corruption among Scotland Yard detectives, always a problem, grew enormously during the 1960's. One cause of the trouble was the conventional methods of detection were being less and less effective in the face of the burgeoning crime rate......between 1969 and the setting-up of the famous Operation Countryman in 1978 there were three big investigations into corruption in the Metropolitan Police These were:

(1) An enquiry into allegations of corruption and extortion by police, first published by the Times newspaper. This resulted in the arrest and imprisonment of two London detectives in 1972

(2) An enquiry by Lancashire Police into members of the Metropolitan Police Drug Squad. this led to the trial of six detectives, and the imprisonment in 1973 of three of them.

(3) An enquiry into allegations of corruption among CID officers responsible for coping with vice and pornography in London's West End. Over twenty detectives were sacked from the police force during the three-year investigation in the early 1970's, which led eventually to the notorious Porn Squad trials ...

There were corrupt Masonic Police involved in all these cases....

Chapter 9

Operation Countryman

Operation Countryman, the biggest investigation ever conducted into police corruption in Britain, would never have come about if the Commissioner of the City of London Police between 1971 and 1877 had not been corrupted and unduly influenced by Freemasonry...Indeed there seems little doubt that if James Page had refused to join the Brotherhood, he would not have been appointed Commissioner in the first place...

Chapter 11

Birmingham City Police

What I really needed at the outset of my investigation into Masonry in the police was a 'Masonic mole' who was a policeman of rank and integrity..Eventually, as has been shown, I built up a large network of such men, None was so earnest or more scathing than those contacts, masons and otherwise, who spoke to me about Birmingham City Police... One informant spoke of his experiences in Birmingham dating back many years, he was on the point of entering the first of the three chairs of his Holy Royal Arch Chaptwer. he had, he told me, been considering a Knights Templar, the branch of Freemaosnry which admits only Christians, but was becoming increasingly disillusioned to realize that he had to resign from one or the other...he said...'Chief |Constable. Sir Derrick Capper, was an officer of the Warickshire Provincial Grand Lodge, and he saw to it as far as possible that non-Masons were kept to the lower and middle ranks...it was impossible to be a civilian employee at higher level unless you were Mason..'

Chapter 12

Conclusion (Regarding the Debate about Masons and the effect of  Masons in the Police Force)

An independent enquiry into Freemasonry in the police should be initiated at the earliest possible moment,, Even thought 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 corruption.....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, 22nd 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 Superintendant - to join the Lodge when they were both stationed at King's Cross Road -The Superintendant admitted that he was a  member of the Brotherhood and that he had visited the Lodge when the detective was there....In the later case, a police informer named Michael Gervaise claimed as 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 officer were Freemasons, and certain criminals belonged to the same Lodge .. there were eight or none 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...Many people want to see masonry banned in the police... a compulsory register on which police officer 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

Chapter 13: The Rabbi's Tale

Despite the ban on speaking to outsiders, many Freemasons allowed me to interview them...Some were extraordinary frank, some going so far ... as confiding the most secret workings of the Brotherhood...among these honourable men was an eminent Freemason of long standing and grad 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..

Chapter 14

Five Masters and a Lewis

Chapter 15: Jobs For the Brethren?

Although a new initiate to Freemasonry declares on his honour that he offers himself as a candidate 'uninfluenced by mercenary or other unworthy motives'... there can be no doubt that the majority of businessmen who become Masons do so because they believe it will assist them in business... - as it frequently does...

On the local level, there is much cross-fertilization between masonry and other groups of business people such as Round Table, Lions Clubs, and Rotary Clubs as well as Chambers of Commerce - Men in business on their own account - for example, accountant, architects, builders, estate agents, restaurateurs, taxi firm proprietors, travel agents, commercial travelers, Insurance agents and shop keepers of all kinds - are strongly represented in Lodges up and down the country (UK)

... if you are applying for a job it can make a big difference whether you get the job or not id you give the employer a Freemason sign and the employer is also a Freemason...

One sign by which a masons may secretly make himself known to other in the room involves a particular arrangement of the feet .. the arrangement is outlined in the ceremony of initiation to the First Degree....'..you are expected to stand perfectly erect your feet formed in a square, your body being thus considered an emblem of your mind, and your feet of the rectitude of your actions..' if he is in a position to shake hands with the person to whom he wished to identify himself, recognition becomes much easier...the Entered Apprentice applies distinct pressure with his right thumb on the knuckle of the other man's forefinger.. the Fellow Craft does the same thing with the second knuckle ... The Master Mason applied distinct pressure with his right thumb between the knuckles of the other man's middle and third finger...

Ron, an Insurance Agent price explained... '.. I have got business from two people as a result of being a Mason ...'

A Past Master of Eden Park Lodge No 5379 in Croydon told me... ' I was a consultant for Taylor Woodrow. ...quite a few times I know I got contracts because I gave the Masonic Grip...the whole of the board of directors of Taylor Woodrow were Freemasons at the time...

'..You'll find none out of ten architects are Masons ... went I put in a tender I'd shake the architect by the hand...oh, he'd say, .."You're a Mason.. The contract is yours..."...that is how masonry works ... if there is a contract going from an architect,, the chances are he is a mason..so the chances are a Mason will get it...'

John Poulson, the notoriously corrupt architect whose activities in bribing local government officer, councilors, Civil Servants, officials of nationalized industries and other created a scandal which was described by more than one commentator as the 'British Watergate', was an avid Freemason... read 'The Web of Corruption.. the definitive story of Poulson and his infamous PT man T. Dan Smith ...

I have been told by several informants how details of their bank accounts have been obtained by parties with no right to the information by 'Masonic Contacts'.. the high proportion of bank managers and bank staff who are Freemasons can make the acquisition of this kind of confidential information relatively easy for a Mason,, having as he does the right access to every Lodge in the country ...

In industry, Masonry is far stronger among while collar workers and management up to the higher echelons... the medical profession has a high proportion of Freemasons...most main hospitals, including all the London teaching hospitals have their own Lodges. ... According to Sir Edward Tuckwell, former Serjeant-Surgeon to the Queen, and Lord Porritt, Chairman of the African Medical and Research Foundation, both Freemasons and bother consultants to the Royal Masonic Hospital, the Lodges of the teaching hospitals draw their members from hospital staff and GP's connected with the hospital in question.. Most senior members of the profession are Freemasons, especially those involved with the Royal College of Physicians and the Royal College of Surgeons....Masonry dopes seem to have an influence over certain appointments..

Freemasonry plays a significant role in the field of education...

|The ambulance and fire serviced are strongly represented in Masonry..

Epiloque of The Brotherhood

by Stephen Knight –published 1984 Pages 304 to 308:

On the 18th June 1982 the dead body of a middle-aged man was found hanging by the neck from a rope suspended from Scaffolding beneath Blackfriars Bridge, London. The pockets of his black suit contained nearly £23,000 in various currencies and were weighted with 12 pounds of builder's blocks. He was Rpberto Clvi, president of Italy's Banco Ambrosiano. who in 1981 had been named a member of Licio Gelli's illegal Freemasonic Lodge Propaganda Due (P2). Calvi was later found guilty by an Italian court of illegally exporting $26.4 million to Switzerland and received a four year suspended prison sentence and ordered to pay a fine of equivalent to £7.3 million, A week later he was confirmed as chairman of Banco Ambrosiano. In April 1982 Calvi's deputy at the bank was wounded by a would-be assassin. Known as 'God's banker', Calvi had been closely linked with Instituto per le Opere di Religione (IOP), the Vatican Bank, for years. A number of highly questionable transactions involving the Vatican Bank, Calvi and Banco Ambrosiano subsidiaries in Latin America and elsewhere led the Bank of Italy to launch an investigation. On the last day of May 1982 the Bank of Italy demanded an explanation for loans of $1,400 million ( $1.4 billion) made by Banco Ambrosiano subsidiaries to several companies registered in Panama owned directly or indirectly by the Vatican Bank. This precipitated a run on Ambrosiano's shares, and eleven days later Calvis disappeared in Rome. Using a false passport. Calvi fled to Austria and then to England. arriving at Gatwick on the 15th June. 1982 and travelled straight to London where he remained for several days in an apartment in Chelsea Cloisters. On the 17th June, 1982 the Bank of Italy seized control of Banco Ambrosiano and trading in its shares was suspended after they had dropped twenty percent in value in one day. Ambrosiano's directors resigned and Calvi's secretary- Graziela Corrocher - who kept the books of Lodge P2 - jumped, or was pushed, to her death from, a fourth-floor window at the bank, Graziela Corrocher left behind her what was obviously intended to be taken as a suicide note, although there is more tan a small doubt that this was genuine.. The note said: 'May Calvi be double cursed for the damage he has caused to the bank and its employees,'

The following night Calvi's body was found hanging from the scaffolding beneath Blackfriars Bridge, four miles from the apartment in Chelsea Cloisters. Even as the Daily Express postal clerk who found the body was hastening to call the police, Italian police were busy chartering a plane ..and a party of high officials arrived at Gatwick a few hours later..

 There were many rumours: The Mafia, with whom Calvi had connections, had murdered him; frightened and despairing, he had committed suicide; he had been ritually done the death by Freemasons. a Masonic 'cable-tow' around his neck and his pockets filled symbolically with chunks of masonry, the location of the murder being chosen for its name - i Italy, the logo of the Brotherhood is the figure of a Blackfriar.

....But a City of London inquest later decided that Calvi had committed suicide, a verdict the banker's family immediately announced its intention to challenge... Italian police, and a number of City of London police associated with the case, are convinced it was murder...a further inquest in 1983, the jury returned an open verdict....as for the reason for the death of Calvi

  The mystery of Calvi's death deepens rather than clarifies with time. It is inextricably bound up with the riddle of P2, the KGB penetration of Freemasonry, and Freemasonry's penetration not only of the Roman Catholic Church, but also of the Vatican itself... At the time this book goes to press, investigations are continuing into Banco Ambrosianos link with the enigmatic president of the Vatican bank, Archbishop Paul Marcinkus, and into the continuing international reverberations of the P2 lodge conspiracy.

 Meanwhile, Licio Gelli has since been arrested in Switzerland where he was attempting to withdraw nearly $100 million from several numbered accounts at Genva's Union Bank - money belonging to Banco Ambrosiano.. Gelli awaits the outcome of extradition proceedings,,,

Meanwhile, too, Andropov, had of the KGB when the P2 plot was hatched, now sits at the pinnacle of Soviet power and diverts ever more funds towards the KGB's activities in the West, the exploitation of Freemasonry included

Plague Helped Bring Down Roman Empire, Graveyard Suggests

The pillars on this Scottish Rite Masonic Apron are meant to represent the two mighty pillars that were alledged to have stood at the entrance to Solomon’s temple.

         A dramatic moment during Freemason third degree ceremony, After the ritual, the candidate is a fully fledged Freemason

US founding father and president George Washington was a dedicated Freemason, and is shown here is his regalia as the Worshipful Master of his lodge


Beehives are an important Masonic symbol referring to industry, dedication, productivity, good works and the power of all pulling together....

In this highly allegotical and symbol-laden painting,the spirit of Freemasonry is shown dispensing wisdom and informnation to the people

The pillars on this Scottish Rite Masonic Apron are meant to represent the two mighty pillars that were alledged to have stood at the entrance to Solomon’s temple.

The left- and right-hand " pillars" on the Tree of Life corresponded closely to the pillars that stood outside Solomon's temple

A German lodge carpet, c.1760, called an “Arbeitsteppich”, shows the magnificant symbolism of the Crafy. Freemasonry’s rich mysteries need defending and re-expressing in the modern world

This painting is claiming to show stonemasons of all grades hard at work buiding Solomon’s temple, while Solomon himself consults with Hiram Abiff.

This highly allegorical and symbolic illustration is meant to depict the interior of the perfect lodge room, as constructed within the soul of each true Freemason

Freemason Michael Richardson: Chairman of the Board of Management of The  Royal Masonic Hospital (RMH) in Hammersmith and also managing director of merchant bankers N. M. Rothschild..who represents and personifies everything about Grand Lodge which many Freemasons resent: wealth, power, connections and the City of London and is also seen as the front man to the aristocrats who had given him the job ...who dominate Grand Lodge's committees and are still held responsible for the earlier 'betrayal' of masonic charity: closing and selling the School for Boys in 1977... the previous chairman of RMH was an eminent surgeon Lord Porritt ... the fact that a merchant banker, rather than a medical man, had taken over from the saintly Porritt was now seen as proof that the scheme to sell the RMH two years before was planned years before and felt that Richardson had been chosen because 'privatization' was a Rothschild speciality...

Comment: it is noted that researches come to the clear conclusion that the Rothschild family  and their partners, who appear to own and/or control over 60% of the world's wealth and valuable resources .. appear to have profited well out most wars in the last 300 years and in particular the 1st and 2nd Word Wars by encouraging them to happen and lending money to all sides of these wars ... and effectively bankrupting both Britain and Germany who had to pay back their large war debts to the Rochschilds in gold at the end of the wars .. with it also claimed that Adolph Hitler was a grandson of a Rothschild (see Mark Hallet's book 'Hitler was a British Agent and other researchers) and it claimed that the Nazi Consentration Camps and Death Squads first focus was to murder senior Freemasons and this way re-organise the world wide control of Freemasonry into the Rothschild family hands .. the quiet shipment of hundreds of millions worth of gold from Heathrow Airport to Switzerland  on pallets, wrapped in black plastic without any security with the late Thomas Allwood senior, transport engineer, on board to repay the Rothschild war debt, was brought to public light by INL News undercover journalist Thomas Allwood, who was murdered in Broxburn Scotland on the 21st June, 2013 a month before he was due to attend the High Court in London to have his application for Criminal Contempt against the Rothschild sponsored politicians..the UK Prime Minister- David Cameron, the UK Chancellor- George Osborne, the UK Home Office, the UK Border Agency and their Treasury Solicitors for deliberately preparing and presenting a false and fraudulent UK Border Agency Document 'falsely stating that USA Comedian had told the UK Border Agency Officers that he was paid $2,000 to be involved in introducing Fringe Entertainers in the making of a pilot of the INL News Group's and Thomas Allwood's 'Fringe Shows Have Talent TV Show' due to be filmed over five days in April-May 2011 in Edinburgh, Scotland'... as an illegal way of having Freemason Master Bowles at the London's High Court of Justice strike out a £500 million damages claim against ... the UK Prime Minister- David Cameron, the UK Chancellor- George Osborne, the UK Home Office, the UK Border Agency for the wrongful and illegal arrest of USA Comedian Ronnie Prouty at Heathrow Airport on the 27th April, 2011 and holding him custody for 24 hours and putting him in handcuffs the next day on a plane back to Los Angeles as a favour for Rupert and James Murdoch and the Rothschild family and their all powerful News Corporation and News International Media Group, as a way of commercially sabotaging the expensive fiming of a pilot of the INL News Group's and Thomas Allwood's 'Fringe Shows Have Talent TV Show' due to be filmed over five days in April-May 2011 in Edinburgh, Scotland'... there is mounting proof that leads to the involvement of Freemasons, MI5 and UK Special Branch in the planning and carrying out of the murder of Thomas Allwood on the 21st June, 2012 and the coverup of a lot of the known evidence and investigations by Scottish Police and Prosecution in the arrest and trial of Kyle Montgomery in November, 2012 for the murder of INL News undercover journalist Thomas Allwood ...

Conclusion by Martin Short at the end of his book 'Inside the Brotherhood

In my book I have tried where possible third hand evidence..not third-hand rumour... I have tried to provide sober deduction, not exaggeration... it should go without saying that anyone investigating a secret society - or even a 'private' one - as Grand Lodge now characterizes Freemasonry  - will always find evidence hard to come by...therefore 'rumour and speculation'. although unsatisfactory, become legitimate .. if the investigator 'exaggerates; what little evidence he or she gets, the 'private society should hold itself to blame...Freemasonry gives rise to genuine public concern, which Masons ignore at their peril...

 'What Public, Legal and Political Action Should be Taken regarding Freemasonry?

.... I suggest that  the action taken about Freemasonry should be more than would appeal to the Tory MP who says, 'if people wish to belong to secret societies, that is their own business' , but probably less than is required by the Labour man who feels that 'Freemasonry should be made illegal'....

...Most MP's who completed my 1986 questionnaire said than councillors, local government officers, civil servants, policemen, judges and MP's should all be required to disclose their Masonic membership....the only proper way to test political opinion would be to put a 'disclosure' bill to the vote. There is no chance that the present Tory Government in the UK would sponsor it, so an MP should introduce a private member's bill and a free vote should follow...this bill also should give the public access to full and up-to-date membership lists of all masonic lodges...as I suggested on Chapter 21, these should be available at reference libraries in the localities where the lodges meet, and a town and country halls...

... thus us Bromyard one Craft Lodge List would be open for inspection..

... In Truro six ... in Cambridge eleven ..... in Sunderland twenty-nine....

.... in Croydon eighty-nine ,, in Manchester 129 ... in the city of London over 200 ....

..... in Greater London another 1,450 or more...

..The degree of 'publication' might also be required of all other Masonic bodies: from the Royal Arch .. right the way through to the Society of  Rose Croix Order..

..The list of any lodge affiliated to a particular workplace, or recruiting mainly from within a specific organization, should be open for scrutiny by everyone who works at that place or in that organization. Thus the list for a town hall-lodge, such as the Borough of Newman, should be available at Newman Town Hall; the Holden Lodge list at Midland Bank; he London Hospital Lodge list at London Hopsital; the lis for the Union Lodge of Norwich should be given on demand to any emplyee of Norwich Union; the Lutine, Lloyd's and Fidentia lodge lists should be viewable at Lloyds of London; likewise lists of all military lodges (including the 21st Territorial SAS) at regimental HQ's; lists of barristers', Masters, Court Clerks' lodges should be displayed in the Inns of Court, at the Bar Council and the High Court, and the Manor of St James's list at New Scotland Yard, and at Bow Street, Vine Street and West End Central police stations...

 ...Most Masons would argue against these measures...

..They would say that although they have nothing to hide, why should their lists be publicly available if the same is not required for the MCC, the Athenaem, the Labour Party, the Transport and General Worker's Union, the Royal and Ancient Order of Foresters, the Sons of Temperance, the Druids, Rotary, the Round Table, the Elks, the Royal Antediluvian Order of Buffalos, the Lions, the Kiwanis, the Baker Street Irregulars, the Sovereign and Military Oder of Malta, the Catholic Police Guild, BUPA, the AA, the Women's Institute, the Mother's Union or the subscription department of Readers Digest...

... The answer is simple. It is for Masons to demonstrate that any other organization has all these features:

1. A code of mutual aid, sworn by all members, to assist each other beyond the aid they swear to perform for all other people in society...

2. Oaths (however watered-dwon in recent years) which threaten that some physical, economic or social penalty - or negative moral judgement - will be applied to those who reveal the organization's secrets..

3. Rituals which make use of blindfolds, nooses, daggers  or similar menacing objects or disorienting devices ...

4. Secret passwords, signs, grips or handshakes ...

5. Widespread public concern about the organization's activities or those of its members ...

I know of no golf club which has any of these features and no political party, trade union, friendly society, insurance company, businessmen's club, social group, or mainstream religious fraternity which has more than two of the above... If it can be shown that any other group manifests all of these elements, it should be subject to the same curbs as may be imposed on Freemasonry ..Some Masons claim that three Catholic organizations - the Knights of Columbus, the Catenians and Opus Dei - are quasi-Masonic ...If their rituals and oaths do resemble Freemasonry's, if genuine texts can be produced to prove it, and if there is widespread pubic concern, they too should be subject to any obligations imposed on the Craft..

..If Masons have nothing to hide, none of this should cause them great disquiet.... Just as their secretiveness breeds paranoia among the 'profane'. so a new openness would help dispel it, If the Freemasonry Craft is primarily a charitable organization, a movement or moral regeneration or just a load of men pursuing an arcane hobby, the have nothing to fear...`personal anxieties could be accommodated... such as that they maybe do not want their home addresses disclosed ..However, all voters' addresses are on view at public libraries on electoral roles... at Companies House, the home addresses of all company directors are available to anyone who pays a small fee ...As it happens, Freemason's home addresses might not be required, provided every lodge discloses the full named of all members..

..It is noted that today's MP's should bear in mind that any law to curb Freemasonry will face widespread evasion, as the history of the 1799 Unlawful Societies Act shows. Brought in 'for the more effectual Suppression of Societies established for Seditious and Treasonable Purposes', this was passed when there were fears of French plots to overthrow the Government of Great Britain and to achieve Irish independence. The Act claimed that societies such as United Englishmen, United Scotsmen, United Britons and  United Irishmen were plotting seditious ends, and that their members swore oaths and secret vows, used secret signs and operated a cell-like structure across the country, However, a blanket ban on such organizations would also have banned Freemasonry, which shared all offending characteristics. To gain exemption, England's rival Grand Lodges (the 'Moderns' and the 'Ancients') jointly lobbied politicians will skill which would do credit to today's ruthless 'political action committees' in the USA. Their respective leaders, the Earl of Moirs and the Duke of Atholl, pressured Prime Minister William Pitt. According to 1799 Grand Lodge minues, the Masonic delegation reported that Pitt:

'... expressed his good opinion of the Society and said he was willing to recommend any Clause to prevent the New Act from affecting the Society, provided that the Name of the Society could be prevented from being made use o as a Cover by evilly disposed persons for Seditious purposes..'

The pressure worked ... Prime Minister William Pitt duly introduced a clause stating the Act did not apply to ' Lodges of FreeMasons, the meetings whereof have been in great measure directed to charitable purposes'...

...Pitt must have been beguiled by the smooth talking aristocrats, particularly Moira... According to one Masonic Historian, Moira's 'timely intervention had saved Freemasonry from extinction'....

...'Presumably Moira and Atholl had told Pitt that no British Masonic Lodge was likely to contain plotters bent on ' overturning the laws, constitution and government. and every existing establishment, civil and ecclesiastical' in Great Britain or `Ireland...Yet even 'regular' Freemasonry (as opposed to the truly seditious continental variety) had harboured traitors... Many American Revolutionaries were 'regular' Masons, notably George Washington, Ben Franklin and Admiral Paul Jones who had been initiated in Scotland. One Boston Lodge, St Andrews , was full of rebels, including Paul Revere, General Joseph Warren, John Hancock and John Rowe... It was John Rowe who inspired the Boston Tea Party, according to one of the 'Indian' raiders who belonged to the lodge, was planned within St Andrew's itself...

 ...The American Revolution had begun only twenty-four years before the Unlawful Societies Act became Law... It is extremely unlikely that Briton's Prime Minister, William Pitt, had any idea of Freemasonry's  strength among the Revolutionaries - for sure Moira would have not told him! - but, had be known. he would have had good reason to suspect that the Freemasonry Craft might 'again be made use of as a Cover by evilly disposed persons for Seditious purposes'. Pitt wold also have had grounds for believing that not all brethren subscribed to their second Antient Charge: ' A mason is a peaceable subject to the civil powers, wherever he resides or works, and is never to be concerned in plots and conspiracies against the peace and welfare of the nation.'...

..Of course, even if Pitt had known about the Masonics of Washington and hi brother rebels, he may not have pressed the point because the Craft's leading petitioner, the Earl of Moira, had himself been a hero on England's side in the Revolutionary Wars. Pitt would have been 'snowballed' by Moira's revelation that no less than six of George III's sons were 'on the square', for how could a fraternity boasting 'so many of His Majesty's illustrious Family' possibly be seditious?...

...Nevertheless, the Act did impose major restrictions on Freemasonry. The 'names and descriptions' of all members of each lodge had to be registered with the local clerk of the peace.... By the time the Act was repealed in 1967, it had long been widely ignored .. Many lodges did not make returns..One pre-1967 lodge secretary told me: 'I never bothered and many other secretaries never knew this law existed..besides, who was going to make you do it... In out town most law enforcers - the Clerk of Peace, half the JP's and the police chief --were all in the lodge...!'

...Even more restrictive, the 1979 Act had exempted only meetings of 'regular Lodges of Free Masons held (before) the passing of this Act...for some years the Masonic orders subverted this clause by reissuing the warrants of dominant or dead lodges, thus back-dating the foundation of many lodges. Not only were these Freemasons breaking the  criminal law, their stealth and deceit show they knew their actions were illegal..

... On the rolls of United Grand Lodge today there are fewer than 300 lodges which were founded before 1799, yet by 1967 another 6,000 had been 'consecrated'. Abroad view of the 1799 Act might have encouraged Masons to feel the exemption applied to any future lodges formed under both Modern and Antient Grand Lodges (united in 1813) and two more Grand Lodges in Scotland.. The terms of another Act in 1817 may have supported that view... However, neither Act legalized other Masonic Orders such as the Knights Templar (which had barely got going by 1799), the Rose Croix (founded in 1845), the Mark (organized about 1845), the Red Cross of Constantine (whose earliest lodge was founded in 1865) and the Societas Rosicruciana in Anglia (founded in 1866) ...... All these orders are self governing and have never come under the authority of the various Grand Lodges, which regulate only the CRaft and Royal Arch degrees. so they could never have been exempted from the ban on other societies imposed by the 1799 Act....

... The illegality of the `masonic Knights Templar is confirmed by the fact that their Grand Master, Lord Rancliffe, 'was personally concerned with the bill in the Lords' and neglected the Order thereafter. Masonic historians differ over whether the revival of the Masonic Templars some years later indicates that 'any question of illegality was over' or whether it suggests that 'the authorities were turning a blind eye'. My onw view is that all these 'higher' or ' sides' degrees ( from Knights Templar on wards) met illegally for more than a century until 1967.... Nobody would have dared enforce the 1799 Act (even had they known about it) because many magistrates, Court Masters, Court Lords, judges, policemen belonged to these same degrees... Through vested interests. Masonic law-breaking has been constantly connived at by the forces of law and order....

Today, any Parliamentary moves requiring public disclosure by masons should be matched by legislation creating an Ombudsman for the public servant and the police,as advocated by Brain Woollard ( see Chapter 13)... This is necessary to prevent the kind of career abuse which 4 million other State employees may suffer at the hands of Masons.. or... indeed..non-Masons..There must me many Masons in pub lic service who feel that hey too have had a raw deal at work ...In future they should have a mean of redress against anti-Masonic prejudice, especially if they are to be obliged to disclose Masonic Membership...

The former British ambassador featured in Chapter 32 has further suggestions:

...'..It should not be too difficult to procure form civil and public servants who belong to secret societies some written declaration and assurances about their activities..I also suggest that something should be done about the confidential personal reporting systems...It seems that any officer who believes he may be the subject victimization through the reporting system (as I was) should be entitles to state that the reporting officer as a Freemason and that this should be taken into account in assessing the report..Ideally, in my view, Freemasons should be excluded from the reporting process, but that is too much to hope for...

...I also suggest that the numerous voluntary organizations and charities which serve this country and have been one of its great strengths, should be required by law to keep an indication of any secret society membership by its officers..Members of any society - or indeed contributors to a charity - should, as a matter of routine, be able to obtain a statement of its officer's affiliations...This is not an unreasonable request, but a simple reassurance that the society is being run for the benefit of all members and not primarily for `masons perpetuating themselves in office...

In the present diminished and dangerous situation of our country, a very real danger exists from organizations, such as the Freemason Brotherhood - partly through infiltration, partly from the  illusionment and frustration which arises when our meritocratic system is deliberately and consistently distorted....'...

..In the House of Commons in June 1988 Labour MP Dale Campbell-Savours introduced a bill to compel police recruits to swear they would not join any organization such as Freemasonry....he also demanded that officers who are already Masons should resign from their lodges or leave the police force.. On first reading the bill was passed by 117 votes to sixteen, but it had no chance of becoming law because of the shortage of Parliamentary time...

..If any future bill along these lines looks as if it might become law, it will encounter fierce lobbying just like the 1799 bill did ,,,,  It will infuriate Masonic cops... It it ever reached the statute book, it could provoke mass resignation from the police force...

..This might not be a bad thing, but it seems unlikely that policemen could be banned from joining Freemasonry unless this 'private, voluntary organization' is itself made illegal....In the present political climate (of near perpetual Conservative rule) there is no chance of this happening,....

...However, beacsue an action is otherwise legal,,, it does not mean that public servants have an in alienable right to perform it...

..In many respects the civil liberties of public servants and already severely curtailed....Millions of public servants (including the police) sign the Official Secrets Act which curbs their right to discuss, publish or otherwise disseminate information which they may learn in the course of their work... Also no civil servant, member of the armed forces or policeman may stand as a candidate in local or national elections without first resigning his or her employment. Since 1984 no employees of GCHO may belong to a trade union. The armed forces and the police have long been deprived of that right, just as they have surrendered their civil liberty to withdraw their labour and go on strike...Thus, imposing a similar curb on policemen in respect of Freemasonry has undeniable precedents.. They would retain the right to remain a Mason..but they would lose their right to remain a copper.. a judge. a Master of the Court .... a Lord of the Court .,, or any other job which has the power and/or authority in any way over the public in general..so that the same rule might well be applied to all other public servants..

...All this is for Parliament and the public to decide and debate... In the meantime Dale Campbell-Savours says: 'If Freemasonry were to shed itself of its secrecy, its exclusiveness and its oath of allegiance, I would have no objection to police officers being members....'

..However.. if it were to do all that, it would not longer be Freemasonry!....

..Even some senior Freemasons such as Former Deputy Assistant Commissioner, Peter Neivens ( an honorary Manor of St James Lodge)  has been concerned about excessive 'tears of sympathy' for Freemason Brothers who have been convicted of serious crime stares...'As for lodges which have allowed major criminals to remain as members for years after conviction... if that were proven to me, then if the authority rested with me, I would seriously think of disbanding that lodge...'

..If this policy were to be rigorously applied throughout Britain, not only would Freemasonry be far healthier : its opponents would have far less meat to feed on....Yet is must be doubted if the hierarchy as a whole would want to apply such discipline..As things now stand, Grand Lodge only acts against lodges like Waterways many years after they have become a haven for criminals, and only then after embarrassing media exposure.. It is therefore no wonder that in the meantime other lodges like the Queenswood contain cells of public corruption and the entire institution of Freemasonry is brought into disrepute as a result..

....however, Freemasons will argue that the merits of an institution as vast as Freemasonry do not turn on the vice or virtue of individual Masons... and that it does not change its esense because one Grand Officer, his Honour Judge Joseph Butler-Sloss, was exposed in the News of the World in July 1988 as a regular patron of Nairobi prostitutes while serving as a High Court judge on Kenya.. Freemasons argue that the private quirks of prominent men who happen to be a FreeMason should not be held against the Brotherhood... as Masons have said... this would be like condemning Christianity because quite a few vicars over the years have been caught molesting choirboys...

...As I write these final pages in December 1988 I am still being sent evidence of Freemasonry's reluctance to punish those who transgress its own moral code.. the evidence come not form outsiders..but from men who are themselves staunch Masons...One such source is leonard Acklam, a well-to-do self-made Yorkshire businessman who fought for years to win redress for a Masonic Grand Officer's outrageous attempt to interfere with justice...A Mason for 33 years, a Past Master of Brighouse Lodge (no. 1301) and a 30th degree member of the Rose Croix, Acklam is worth hearing...

...Leonard Acklam a Freemason, had employed a Freemason Solicitor to collect a £10,000 debt he was owed.. however his own solicitor lied to him about the case  and when appointing a new non Mason Solicitor who threatened to report the Mason Solicitor to the Law Society and sue for negligence, a senior well respected Mason, Sir Herbert Redfearn told Acklam that he 'would lose a lot of friends' and that Acklam should 'look on it in a true Masonic manner and forget it..  a  senior well respected Mason, Sir Herbert Redfern was not only interfering with Acklam's legal action against a Mason solicitor, but was also telling Acklams to forget the £10,000 he is owed...An in initial letter of complaint in 1981 sent to the local Yorkshire Ws Riding grand secretary did not go down well,,, for Redfearn was not only a Grand Officer of English Freemasonry, but also a leading industrialist, a deputy lieutenant of the county, a knight of the realm, a one time chairman of the National Union of Conservative Associations and the local Tory KIng-maker (future Tory MP Gary Waller was initiated in his lodge in 1971)..also he was photographed at Conservative Party occasions alongside Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, It was extremely unlikely. therefore. that any Yorkshire masonic body would dare condemn him...

From Chapter 14

 The Phoenix "....

.. If the Manor Lodge of St James was formed in defiance of the anti-Masonic views of a Metropolitan Commissioner, it would not be the first time the Brotherhood has waved two fingers at the most important police chief in Britain...

...Back in 1958 the new commissioner was Joseph Simpson. He was the first man ever to reach the top job after starting as an ordinary bobby...He was public school educated and a university graduate but, unlike his gentleman predecessors, he had done three years on the beat and had the deserved respect of most London coppers..In short, He was a policeman's policeman...

.... One shaft of light which Sir Joseph Simpson brought to the job was a distinct hostility to Freemasonry, or at lease a dislike of its most arrogant manifestations...During his early years in office he was greatly irritated by an organization calling itself the Metropolitan Police Masonic Association (MPMA),  The title gave it an official air, but its founders had no authority for using the words 'Metropolitan Police',... They might have had the unofficial 'non' from a previous commissioner, but Sir Joseph took a dim view and demanded its abolition....

... The MPMA;s members were not prepared to disband on the say-so of a mere commissioner - especially as earlier commissioners, such as Charles Warren, had themselves been Freemasons. Rather than abolish their fraternity in a fraternity, they decided just to change its name. They also decided to keep the initials MPMA. The were determined to keep 'Masonic' in the title, and 'Association' was harmless enough, also they would have to substitute another word for either Metropolitan or Police.... some wag in the leadership had a little education.... As this new body was going to rise from the ashes of the old, he thought, it could have no more appropriate name than  'Metropolitan Phoenix Masonic Association'.  This would get round Sir Joseph Simpson's vexatious objections, but it would still be the MPMA and the same old bird...

....Simpson died in office, from a heart attach three days after the batt;e of Grosvenor Square in 1969, but the Phoenix lived on..IN 1971 it had 288 members..Its rule book reveals that the inclusion of Metropolitan in its title was gratuitous and misleading, for its members only needed to be 'Master Masons who are regular, serving and retired officers of any police force'...

The rule book makes it clear this was no Masonic Lodge..Ritual was forbidden at its gatherings..Instead its objects were:

1. To introduce Master Masons of the Police Force who would otherwise have no opportunity of meeting as Brother Masons.

2. To promote fraternal intercourse by arranging social functions.

3. To render assistance to those who may be distressed by sickness or adversity.

4. Loyalty to Her Majesty the Queen and the Craft in General,

..Aside from the genuflection to the Crown, these aims might strike an anti-Msonic as a sugar-coated code of mutual aide, arousing fears in the outsider that the Phoenix as a means of achieving a kind of Masonic apartheid in the Police Service...Could it have acted as a wedge between Masons and non-Masons, or a jungle telegraph, or a 'firm in a firm'? .. Its members would doubtless deny it, but the club does seem like a collective support system: ideal for help up t˙e promotion ladder, or saving skins...

....The 1971 list contains one man still serving at Scotland Yard: a deputy assistant commissioner ..Another is a detective chief superintendent...Most members left the service long ago,,, Many held humble rank, so either the mutual aid principle never helped them gain promotion or they never sought to use it.... Perhaps the Phoenix was just a social club for men with a common hobby ... If so, one brother was such an enthusiast ha he took the hobby with him to a Mediterranean retirement,, In 1971 Brother A,J, Fookes was running a pub in Gibraltar called the Mason Arms...

The phoenix list shows that in the early 1970's there was a network of police Masons, in lodges all over south-east England, who were doubly committed to mutual aid. Today, it seems, the Phoenix may not be the bird it was. I have been unable to find out if it is still flying,,It may now be in one of its 'ashes' periods: about ti burst forth in full plumage ,, Perhaps the Manor of St James's Lodge is its latest incarnation... AS it happens, no 1971 Phoenix people show up as masons members..Perhaps this is only because there is a fifteen-year gap between the lists, but it seems to confirm that there must be thousands of London police Masons, otherwise there would be names in common....

Another indicator of the Crafts strength in the police force emerged when barrister Andrew Arden presented his 1987 report on the running of the London Borough of Hackney (see Chapter 6) ..During his research mr Arden was assisted by Grand Secretary Michael Higham,,He gave the 'profane' Arden forty-four lodge lists to help him identity Masons working for Hackney Council but. in performing this unprecedented favour, he knowingly divulged the identities of over 3,500 Masons who had no connection with Hackney and whose individual permission he did not seek..

.... Higham aslo divulged the occupation of 2,534 named Masons...Of these ninety-eight were policemen .... amounting to 3.9% of Ardens sample.. or slightly less than one Mason ^n every twenty five... if this were typical of thew the whole country..and if ( according to Commander Higham) there a re between 250,000 and 500,000 Masons under GRand Lodge, then between 9.700 and 19,400 policemen in England and Wales are Freemasons... However if my total figure of 600,000 living Masons, whether active or lapsed, is correct (see Chapter 9), then some 23,400 serving and retired policemen are Freemasons .... In December 1985 there were slightly fewer than 108,000 serving make police officers in England and Wales...  Even if we exclude my highest estimate and stick to the Higham figures ....it would seem that  between 9 and 18 percent of all policemen may be Masons : one in eleven or one in six of all men in English and Wales police forces...yet, as ever, when it comes to calculating Masonic strength, huge statistical crevasses have to be vaulter ....The records at Freemasons' Hall are always out-of-date because they show only the occupations declared when men become Master Masons .. Should they change t heir jobs or retire, these records stay the same... Yet even if 20% of men who said they were policemen have since retired, it seems that between 8,000 and 16,000 policemen are 'on the square'.. In addition, however, young policemen are being drawn into Freemasonry all the time, which may bring the total back to around 20,000... There a re thousands more in Scotland and Northern Island, where they probably form an even higher proportion of the police service, for reasons explained in Chapter 19..

... Higham supplied Arden with the names and occupations of men in fourteen individual lodges,,One lode had fifty-two members, of which eleven policemen out of eighty-eight members, another had five out of fifty four. Of course these high numbers are outdone by the Manor Lodge of St James , but the manor is not Britain's only all-police lodge... According to the Grand Secretary of East Lancashire, three lodges are composed entirely of ex-police officers: in Wales, Kent and Liverpool..The Kent lodge meets in Sittingbourne and is called the Watch and Ward,,, It was founded as recently as 1977, yet it has already won a place in Freemasons' Hall Museum by presenting a masonic gavel made in the form of a police truncheon,,,In the early 1980's  the Watch and Ward could muster only twenty-five members, but this is no proof of ill-health..Indeed, Masonic consciousness among policemen, both serving and retired, is growing stronger..The Liverpool lode, Sovereign;s Peace, was founded in 1979..

.... Most policemen belong to general lodges where they get to know men form other walks of life - that is one of the main benefits of Freemasonry - yet they are usually proposed by other policemen... A random sample of lodge summonses reveals that policemen are valued candidates for admission into almost any lodge..

.. In 1976 the Derby Allcroft Lodge of London initiated a Scotland Yard detective sergeant and a builder on the same day...It already contained several policemen, including one future member of the Manor of St James's, In 1982 Gateway Lodge of Witney initiated a Thames Valley officer along with an electrical engineer, a British Telecom warden and an Oxfordshire fireman... These lodges  contain a mix of employees, public servants and the self-emplyed.. Whatever a Mason's job, on lodge days he must be able to sop work early enough to arrive for the meeting at three or four o'clock,,Policemen can almost always manage this because they work shifts, or because senior officers are also Masons and will turn a blind eye if brothers slip off during working hours...

...Thus it was that is january 1972 a thirty-teo-year-old detective sergeant took a half-day off from West  Hampstead police station in north London to be initiated in the Fryent Lodge alongside a C-op produce controller.. The Fryent is a general lodge but, over dinner, brethren proposed several toasts to the 'Blue Lamp', in honour of the Metropolitan Police....This may have something to do with the fact that the lodge meets at Hendon Hall Hotel, close to Hendon Police College from which it recruits some of its members...

it might be wondered how men (Policemen) whose work requires brain as well as brawn, a sense of truth and reality, and considerable courage, can allow themselves to be drawn into fraternity whose ritual requires a total suspension of disbelief and a taste for the occult... The outsider might be concerned  that men that must take so many crucial decision sin their careers - concerning life and death, imprisonment or liberty, kidnaps and sieges, as well as helping old ladies across the road... can subject themselves to such a welter of gobbledegook concocted in the eighteen century by men who were, in part, superstitious fantasists....Let us look at the other side of the coin.. Instead of caning cops all the time for rushing into the Craft, se should pause to consider why the Freemasonry Craft wants these policemen in the Craft...My masonic informer Badger explained it this way: whatever policemen may get out of Freemasonry, Freemasonry gets even more out of the police...

 ' Why do nearly all masonic lodges like to have a copper in their midst?

 Because Freemasonry is a vehicle for bringing together the various threads of a general view... Its a form of social cement.. a pyramid erected on the class system...

... It should go without saying that the police are a vital part of the pyramid, or rather the strongest shied the status quo possesses ...

....That is why policemen have to be continually sucked into Freemasonry: to maintain the deferential structure of society and to ensure that Freemasons and Freemasonry is perpetually favoured by those who enforce the law...'

Evidence appearing to support Badger's view came in a letter in the Independent in 1988. It was from M.E. Rowe, a retired policeman with thirty years' service. In 1980, while a senior officer in the West Midlands:

'..I was approached by a local businessman I knew personally who at the time was lobbying on behalf of a group of businesses who were concerned with the effect of proposals in which the police and local authority were involved. I declined to discuss the matter...  This refusal was followed by the offer of a membership of his lodge...I was told that he was in a position to ensure my acceptance as a member, and he would regard it as a personal favour if I would accept his offer.... I refused, saying that it was not consistent with the independence I thought was essential in my position..However, I did indicate that in the next eighteen months I would be retiring and then I might consider his offer - I was told with some favour that the 'offer' would not be open to me when I retired...'

If policemen pursue the Craft of Freemasonry as an amusing hobby or an antiquarian game which they leave behind at the temple.. it may be harmless as masonic spokesmen claim...

....The public need to be convinced ....

... In the meantime there is evidence to suggest that some Mason cops go on duty still mentally wearing their regalia and are not as impartial as their Constable's Oath requires....

Chapter 15 A Criminal Intelligence

.... Many masons tell stories of favo¨ra by policemen whom they have come to know through the craft..One brother told me how his Masonic connections cam in handy in unforeseen circumstances....

"..A friend and I were  developing and industrial heating system in our spare time... We  used to do research in a workshop at the back of his house..On one occasion, while he and his wife were away on holiday, I was working there as usual when suddenly the police turned up... They'd been called to the house by a neighbour who thought I was an intruder..I promptly explained who I was and produced my key, but I had no identification  on me so they were not satisfied... They took me to the police station and told me that, unless I could prove my bona fides, I'd be spending the night in the cells..,, I was trying to think my way out of this mess when I remembered that on several Masonic occasions I'd met a chief superintendent who was based at the station... After one lodge function he had invited us back to that very station's social club where we had a few drinks... Now I fond myself in this jam ... I naturally asked the arresting officers to let me talk to him...He came into the charge room, immediately recognized me and then took my captors into another room.. A few seconds later they cam out again and told me, lost civilly, I was free to go... I'm sure if i hadn't been 'on the square' I would have been kept in the clink all night, maybe longer..My masonic brother, the police chief, had done me a favour: a small one perhaps, but a favour nevertheless..Freemasonry had worked like a magic wand..

...Such interventions look less benign to non-Masons inside the force who see them as inextricably intertwined with Masonic manipulation of the police service as a whole...