The following are the conclusions of the Home Affairs Committee inquiry into Freemasonry in the Police and Judiciary. The report was ordered by the House of Commons to be printed on 19 March 1997.
DISCLOSURE
It is obvious that there is a great deal of unjustified paranoia about freemasonry and we have no wish to add to it. We believe that there would be practical difficulties in requiring a register of freemasons in all areas of the Criminal Justice system, but it would certainly be possible to establish one. We also note that the Prime Minister himself has said that he was in favour of a requirement for public officials to declare whether they are freemasons or not, and that the Shadow Home Secretary believes that membership of the freemasons should be a declarable and registrable interest. We believe however that nothing so much undermines public confidence in public institutions as the knowledge that some public servants are members of a secret society one of whose aims is mutual self-advancement – or a column of mutual support, to use the masonic phrase. We note the claim by United Grand Lodge that freemasons are not a secret society but a society with secrets. We believe, however, that this distinction is lost on most non-masons. The solution is not bans or proscriptions or any form of intolerance. We acknowledge that a lot of honest people derive innocent social pleasure from membership of freemasonry and we have no wish to deprive them of such pleasure. The solution is disclosure. We recommend that police officers, magistrates, judges, and crown prosecutors should be required to register membership of any secret society and that the record should be available publicly. However, it is our firm belief that the better solution lies in the hands of freemasonry itself. By openness and disclosure, all suspicion would be removed and we would welcome the taking of such steps by the United Grand Lodge.
The View From Freemasons’ Hall
The following is a News Release issued by the United Grand Lodge of England on 25th March 1997, in response to the Home Office report.
- The inquiry was originally into the police and the judiciary, and Freemasons gladly accept the Committee’s conclusions at paragraph 32.
- As a lawful and law-abiding society, Freemasons will be disappointed by the hasty conclusion in paragraph 56 of the Home Affairs Committee’s report, which is in marked contrast to the observations in the report itself. Page xxii of the report shows how the Committee’s original understanding and tolerant view of Freemasonry was changed by an amendment. This draws on three suppositions for which the report provides no basis (and for which there is no basis) to support a recommendation which if implemented would interfere with a fundamental right in British life.
- There is no basis for saying in paragraph 56 that Freemasonry is a secret society. It is not one by law and never has been (the Unlawful Societies legislation in the 1700s exempted Freemasonry) . In practice our meeting places are known locally and published in Grand Lodge’s Masonic Year Book, which with its rule book Grand Lodge’s Book of Constitutions) is on sale to the public; our aims are a matter of public record, and Freemasons are free to disclose their membership.
- There is no basis for saying in paragraph 56 that one of Freemasonry’s aims is mutual self-advancement. Freemasonry’s aims were published in 1938 (and are re-printed in the front of the Book of Constitutions). None of these aims include mutual self-advancement. Grand Lodge’s written and oral evidence emphasised that Freemasonry is not to be used to advance interests, and that this is very clearly understood by every Freemason, even from the time before he becomes a member of a Lodge. [A column of mutual defence and support, to use the correct phrase, does not mean mutual self-advancement.]
- Paragraph 56 is wrong in saying that Grand Lodge claims that Freemasonry is not a secret society, but a society with secrets. This is a minor point, and only worth mentioning because it shows that the amendment comes from a mind reluctant to admit any evidence not matching its preconceptions. This phrase has been used in the past by Freemasons and commentators to summarise an important difference between Freemasonry and secret societies. In recent years it has been recognised in Freemasons’ Hall as too facile, and it is not in current use by central Masonic spokesmen, nor has it formed any part of Grand Lodge’s evidence to the Committee.
- The Committee abandons its initial and reasonable reluctance to recommend a compulsory form of registration of Freemasons. Before paragraph 56 was amended this was ‘because we acknowledge that to do so implies a basis for suspicion’ (the Committee would have agreed there was no such basis) ‘and would be an unnecessary interference with a person’s right to privacy which, like the secrecy of the vote, we struggle to preserve in so many areas of British life’. Instead, and on the uncertain basis of unfounded suppositions (see above), the report recommends that those concerned with the administration of justice should be required to register membership of any secret society, and that the record should be available publicly.
- Because Freemasonry is not a secret society, the Committee has been led into accepting a flawed amendment. This is legislation based on perception, not reality, and if it comes into effect will be a sad day for individual freedom.
Magpie says: If it’s not secretive there should be nothing to hide in disclosing if one is a member.
BOYZ IN THE HOOD (Investigation into freemasonry and the British police force)
The recent Home Office recommendation that all members of the criminal justice system should declare masonic affiliations opened a can of worms in public. Peter Panatone reviews the evidence and the significant rift the issue has caused amongst the British police force.
Weird isn’t it? To think that policemen, judges, MPs, council officers and a multitude of other public servants go through such bizarre rituals.
Wearing a shoe on one foot and a slipper on the other, they roll up their trouser leg, bear their chest, are blindfolded and tied with a hangman’s noose and, whilst standing on a marble chess board with a dagger pressed to their heart, swear oaths of secrecy, allegiance and mutual aid.
And yet this ritual is performed by every one of the 350,000 masons in England and Wales, the 30,000 in Scotland and the estimated six million world-wide.
Such occult practices would normally be easy fodder for tabloid derision but one look at the kind of names known to be Freemasons explains why public criticism has up until now remained so scant. In Britain, aristocratic members of the ‘brotherhood’ – for they are all men – include the Duke of Edinburgh; the Earl of Cadogan; the Marquess of Northampton and the Duke of Kent. Among the political figures known to be ‘on the square’ are Willie Whitelaw, Cecil Parkinson and the current head of the Criminal Cases Review Commission, Sir Frederick Crawford.
Whilst a few high profile ‘brethren’ break cover to perform a public relations role and a few others are ‘outed’ by tenacious researchers, most Masons in public positions, including those populating the two Masonic lodges thought to operate in the Houses of Parliament, remain clandestine. When author and researcher Martin Short wrote to Willie Whitelaw asking him if he was a Freemason, the ex-Home Secretary replied: “I have never been an active Mason since I entered the House of Commons in 1955.” However, the 1987 yearbook for the Grand Lodge of Antient Free and Accepted Masons of Scotland – not publicly available but shown to Squall- reveals that he is still an active Freemason and a Scottish representative of Australia’s Grand Lodge of New South Wales. The casual ease with which such an influential political figure was prepared to lie about his Masonic affiliations casts further doubt upon Masonic integrity. It is a doubt many see will only be assuaged by enforced public declaration of Masonic membership by all public officials.
According to Sir Maurice Drake, a top ranking Royal Arch Mason and the High Courts’ principal libel lawyer before retiring in 1995, the public’s concern is misplaced: “It involves play-acting. An outsider might say it is a lot of grown men behaving like children. I can understand that but it is fun. The secrecy was always silly and I think the majority of people think that it is not very important.” His fellow judicial Mason, Lord Justice Millet, concords: “It involves a certain amount of learning and performing which is quite fun. We claim to have secrets but they are harmless. There is nothing in the slightest bit sinister.”
However, the oaths of secrecy sworn by Freemasons sound anything but innocuous. Upon entering the first level of Masonry, an initiate promises to guard its secrets upon pain of “having my throat cut out by the root and buried in the sand of the sea at low water mark… or the more effective punishment of being branded as a wilfully perjured individual, void of all moral worth.” This so-called “harmless play-acting” seems remarkably effective in ensuring secrecy. Even those who have ceased to be Masons refuse to speak of its ceremonies and practices, whilst the very few people with experience of Masonry who have dared to speak to researchers have done so anonymously. There is little doubt that retribution for public disclosure is a real threat in the minds of all those who have ever been initiated.
Commander Michael Higham wriggled in his chair in visible discomfort. In front of a packed press gallery, his pallor grew ever more pale as he sat cornered by questions thrown at him with increasing frustration by members of the Home Affairs Select Committee. As grand secretary to the United Grand Lodge of Freemasonry, the governing body for English and Welsh Masons, he had been requested to provide the committee with the names of Masonic police officers involved with units responsible for several miscarriages of justice. Despite indicating to the committee in November 1997 that the United Grand Lodge would reveal these names, a 50-strong meeting of the Masonic Board of General Purposes had ordered Higham not to reveal them afterall. The miscarriages of justice in question were major ones: the scurrilous ruining of John Stalker, the ex-Chief Constable of Manchester who got too close to the truth in his investigations into the Royal Ulster Constabulary’s shoot to kill policy in Northern Ireland; the disgraced West Midlands Serious Crime Squad which, after 30 charges of misconduct, was closed down in 1986, and the discredited police investigation into the Birmingham pub bombings which led to the malicious prosecution and imprisonment of the now pardoned Birmingham Six.
Ex-police officers had made allegations that Freemason officers in the West Midlands Serious Crime Squad had operated a “firm within a firm”. Serious allegations of malign Masonic manipulation extended to police officers in the John Stalker affair and to both journalists and police officers implicated in the Birmingham Six scandal. The Home Affairs Select Committee, which had been considering the influence of Freemasonry on the judiciary and police since 1995, wanted to know which of the 161 names under suspicion in these cases were Masons so that it could assess the validity of these allegations. But now, Commander Higham – who once gave a speech asserting “there is very little secret about Freemasonry” – was refusing to comply with one of the most powerful select committees in parliament. “I hope you will accept that is ‘no’, but not with contempt,” he whimpered in his impossible situation as public fall guy for the clandestine Masonic hierarchy.
For a while a constitutional crisis looked on the cards. The Serjeant at Arms issued an order giving the United Grand Lodge 14 days to comply with the request of the Committee or else…….. what? No one had ever defied parliament in this way before but now the Freemasons thought themselves powerful enough to try. Both parliament and the press held its breath. Finally, as the deadline approached, a deal was made. The United Grand Lodge agreed to provide Chris Mullin, the Chairman of the Select Committee, with the requested names on condition that only he and the clerk to the committee would see them. Not even the other members of the Committee would be allowed to see them and many argued that the necessity to strike a deal at all provided further evidence of the extant political power still wielded by Masons. The hapless Commander Michael Higham, who many view as a relatively harmless Mason occupying a public relations role, informed the Committee that the United Grand Lodge was to retire him early for reasons that he did not know.
The persistent public impression that masonry provides a conduit of perniciously manipulative influence in the police force finally found direct evidence to back up its concerns in the 1960’s, when 12 officers from Scotland Yard’s Obscene Publications Squad were jailed for taking bribes from pornographers. All 12 were found to be Freemasons, with one of them, Chief Superintendent Bill Moody, discovered to have helped one of the pornographers to become a fellow Freemason. The integrity of the police force in general took a serious denting from the scandal and non-Masonic police officers weren’t keen to take the rap. Public condemnation of freemasonic influence was, however, slow to appear.
In a pamphlet entitled “The Principles of Policing and Guidance for Professional Behaviour” published in April 1985, the then Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, Sir Kenneth Newman concluded: “The discerning officer will probably consider it wise to forego the prospect of pleasure and social advantage in Freemasonry so as to enjoy the unreserved regard of all those around him. It follows from this that one who is already a Freemason would also be wise to ponder, from time to time, whether he should continue as a Freemason; that it would probably be prudent in the light of the way that our force is striving in these critical days, to present to the public a more open and wholehearted image of itself, to show a greater readiness to be invigilated and to be free of any unnecessary concealment or secrecy.” Despite this call, the Manor of St James Lodge No9179 was set up exclusively for Metropolitan Police officers in 1989. At least two Deputy Assistant Commissioners and 12 commanders, including the heads of the Anti-Terrorist Squad and the head of Scotland Yard’s intelligence service, are known to have joined this lodge. The present Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, Sir Paul Condon, reiterated Sir Kenneth Newman’s call with a similar degree of unsuccess: “Because of the public’s concern surrounding this issue I would advise my colleagues that it is better that they are not involved in Freemasonry.”
Condon is presently being sued by a former metropolitan police officer for several malicious prosecutions brought after a Masonic dispute. Graham Peacock, a police constable for 26 years and a member of Masonic lodges in both London and Surrey, claims to have been victimised after a “bitter dispute” with a fellow Masonic police officer in 1992. Since that time he is alleged to have been maliciously prosecuted on three separate occasions for cannabis cultivation, murder and the illegal possession of firearms. He was acquitted of all these charges but spent time in prison on remand. He also claims that his wife has been phoned up and threatened, and that his cat went missing only to be found dead later with “horrific injuries”, thrown in the neighbour’s garden. If such exchanges go on between fellow Masonic police officers, what happens to others who have run-ins with Freemasonic officers? Two Leicester businessmen found out when they decided to have a late night drink at the Goat Moat House Hotel in Blackburn where they were staying in April 1988. Sidney and Shaun Callis (father and son) were unaware they had walked into the ‘Ladies night’ organised by the Victory Lodge of Blackburn. Two Masonic Lancashire police officers approached the pair and ordered them out of the hotel bar. After refusing to leave, the couple were beaten up and then charged with assault by other Masonic police officers also present. When the two men were released on bail the following morning, they found that the hotel management had seized the Callis’ belongings demanding compensation for damage to the bar. The Hotel manager was later found to be a Mason and a member of the Victory Lodge. The Callis’ also found that the tyres of their car had been drained of air and the hub caps removed.
When their assault charge reached court the following year, the jury rejected police evidence and acquitted the pair. The Callis’ subsequently sued Lancashire Police for malicious prosecution and won £85,000 in compensation. The total pay out, including court costs, came to £170,000. However, the retribution did not stop there. Since 1989, unknown police officers put phoney criminal records for Sidney and Shaun Callis on the police national computer. Another unnamed person wrote to police suggesting that Sidney Callis was responsible for murdering two people, shot dead on the Pembrokeshire Coast in 1989. He was arrested for murder and interrogated at Hinckley Police Station before being released. Leicestershire Police also made efforts to revoke Sidney Callis’s 12-bore shotgun licence. As Callis told Private Eye magazine in April: “I’ve never had so much as a parking fine.”
The Home Affairs Select Committee was told that the Victory Lodge in Blackburn, whose members triggered this catalogue of retribution, is a lodge set up for police Masons.
According to Martin Short, author of ‘Inside the Brotherhood’ and a major testifier before the Home Affairs Select Committee, an estimated 25 per cent of Metropolitan Police officers and 20 per cent of national police officers still belong to Masonic lodges. The United Grand Lodge of England estimate that membership of freemasonry has declined by an estimated 200,000 over the last 30 years. Partly as a result of this diminution of power, more non-masonic public service officials have felt braver about publicly criticising the masonic network’s influence on promotion prospects within their profession.
The pace of this dissent in the police force picked up considerably when the powerful Home Affairs Select Committee instigated its inquiry into the influence of Freemasonry on the police and the judiciary in 1995, an event which immediately split the police force in two. Whilst the Police Complaints Authority and the Association of Chief Police Officers called for public declaration, the Police Federation and the Police Superintendents’ Association were vehemently against. The rift reached public airing after the 1995 Police Complaints Authority (PCA) annual report called for compulsory public declaration of Masonic membership by all police officers. Its chairman, Sir Leonard Peach, told the Home Affairs Select Committee that the PCA wanted to allay public fears that Masonry was being used to influence the outcome of its investigations.
The Police Superintendents’ Association’s backlash was remarkable. They told the committee: “Over the past two years our confidence in the impartiality of the PCA has been shaken. Many of our members no longer see the PCA as being truly independent.”
Indeed, public confidence in the PCA, whose investigations are predominantly staffed by members of the police force, has never been that strong. As the body responsible for investigating malpractice in the police force, many have pointed out the questionable validity of having the police investigate the police. However, for the Police Superintendent’s Association to criticise the PCA’s impartiality was unheard of, and provided further indication of the tenacity with which Masonry would fight to avoid public exposure.
The Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO), which acknowledged to the Committee that between five and ten Chief Constables (out of 43) are Masons, were nevertheless in favour of a declaration of membership in order to restore public confidence. This caused an internal rift within ACPO itself. Paul Whitehouse, ACPO’s vice chairman and Chief Constable of Sussex, asserted that “It’s the secrecy that is cause for concern”, whilst David Wilmott, Chief Constable of Manchester and presumably one of the five to ten Masons in ACPO, called it “an infringement of personal liberty”.
The Police Federation, which represents the rank and file of the police service, acknowledged to the committee that “there may well be a significant number” of their members who were Masons and were critical of ACPO’s pro-declaration stance: “It is for those who allege that Freemasonry does have such harmful consequences to establish a case, and so far such persons or bodies that take this view, have totally failed to furnish such evidence. Rumour and innuendo are not enough to make the case.” The paradox of the Federation’s position was there for all to see. Which policeman, for instance, could hope to firmly establish any case if the identity of all potential suspects was kept secret from them?
Indeed, the Home Affairs Select Committee received a number of submissions from individual police officers who remained anonymous in the Committee’s subsequent report. Whilst six of these submissions were from Masonic policemen insisting their membership had no adverse affect on their professional conduct, ten submissions were from policemen who claimed malign Masonic influence at work. The allegations they cited included suppression of serious criminal and disciplinary allegations, promotion preferment for Freemasons; cheating in promotion exams facilitated by Masonic connections and falsifying blood test results for Freemasons charged with drink driving. A constituent of Chris Mullin’s (the current chairman of the Home Affairs Select Committee) wrote to the MP saying: “I am a retired Chief Superintendent who commanded the Commercial Fraud Squad and Complaints and Discipline Department in a big metropolitan force and, as such, I conducted many enquiries in various parts of this country and abroad. I have frequently experienced interference from Masonic sources calculated to impede the progress of an enquiry and do not doubt that improper decisions have been made along the way.” Mullin was charged with not revealing any details of his case in order to protect the ex-police officer. From what?
More fearless was PC Kitit Gordhandas, from West Yorkshire Police, who wrote to the Police Review saying: “I feel that Freemasonry stands for white, male, middle-class members working for the advancement of themselves and their fellow Masons.”
After a two year enquiry, the Home Affairs Select Committee published their report in 1997: “We believe that nothing so much undermines public confidence in public institutions as the knowledge that some public servants are members of a secret society one of whose aims is mutual self-advancement.” The report recommended that “police officers, magistrates, judges and crown prosecutors should be required to register membership of any secret society and that the record should be available publicly.”
Home Secretary Jack Straw has acknowledged this recommendation and looks set to insist it covers the entire criminal justice system. Earlier this year, Straw told the House of Commons: “The Freemasons have said they are not a secret society but a society with secrets. I think it is widely accepted that one secret they should not be keeping is who their members are in the criminal justice system.”
Exactly how this is to be implemented is not yet known or indeed whether such public declaration might be extended to public servants both national and local. Certainly the clandestine leviathan of Freemasonry still has a multitude of friends in high places and has had to be dragged kicking and screaming to this point. The battle against the malignant opportunities for political and social manipulation offered by the extensive and secret network of Masonic influence is far from over.
hammer6: Moderator
Hi Magpie, Thank you for the post as I am sure it will raise a debate or two.
As for membership disclosure I recall a similar issue that was raised many years ago in England and as yet we do not have a ‘Who’s Who’ directory and we will never get one.
The secretive nature of these people are paramount to their existence but do we need such secrecy in the 21st Century?
The most important issue we feel is that as long as Freemasonry does not think that it is ABOVE the RULE of LAW by helping out fellow BRETHREN within the Judiciary then that is fine.
It is when they do help out BRETHREN and thus become a LAW unto themselves and ABOVE the RULE of LAW then there are severe flaws within the Judiciary itself and if this is the case then YES members should at the very least disclose their connections.
The RULE of LAW and ORDER is paramount to public confidence.
The following was an extracted post by STINGER:
The Masonic order will never allow its power to be eroded thus corruption by a brethren is always overlooked by the all seeing eye unless they have a pair of these on very conveniently.
The TRUTH is out there………..
hammer6: Moderator
The slapping of a Public Interest Immunity Certificate on John Stalker by the Northern Ireland Secretary in May was one of the more remarkable Government gagging orders of recent times and yet another bizarre episode in the long running Stalker Affair. The former Deputy Chief Constable was about to give evidence in court in a civil action brought by his friend, Kevin Taylor, against the Greater Manchester police.
In 1986 Kevin Taylor was a successful businessman, the former chairman of the Manchester Conservative Association and living in a plush converted mill on the outskirts of the city. When John Stalker was removed from the inquiry into the Royal Ulster Constabulary’s ‘shoot-to-kill’ policy, it was his friendship with Taylor, who was suspected of criminal dealing that was cited as the reason. Taylor suddenly became a national media figure: subject to a massive four year police investigation that resulted in his bankruptcy but prosecution only on a minor fraud charge. Taylor subsequently sued the Manchester Police for alleged malicious prosecution and claims he was the ‘victim of a high level conspiracy,’ in order to discredit Stalker.
As Taylor’s court case opened in May, a government lawyer applied to the judge with a Public Interest Immunity Certificate signed by the Northern Ireland Secretary, Sir Patrick Mayhew, to ban John Stalker from giving evidence. They maintained that any discussion of the Royal Ulster Constabulary’s alleged ‘shoot-to-kill’ policy could jeopardise the current peace process.
“It remains very much in the public interest that all terrorist violence be permanently ended and that nothing should be done which would prejudice or impede the efforts of Her Majesty’s Government to that end or which would be of assistance to terrorists now or in the future,” the government lawyer said.
This is a stunning assertion given that John Stalker was suspended nine years ago and has had no contact with the security services since then. The immunity is clearly in the government rather than the public interest. Nearly a decade later there still has been no proper explanation of the extraordinary events that led up to the Stalker Affair. Senior police officers have never been made to account for what, at best, could be described as their bizarre actions. If the Stalker Affair demonstrates one thing above all it is the lack of accountability that exists in the security services, police and government in Britain today.
The Public Interest Immunity Certificate already has a bad record. It was the signing of PIICs by several Ministers in the Matrix Churchill case that got the government into such a mess over arms to Iraq deals. The Scott Inquiry is likely to show that Ministers used PIICs to protect their, not the public, interest. In the Taylor case, Judge Mr Justice Owen decided to accept the PIIC but allowed Stalker to give evidence about non-security matters. Only the judge was allowed to hear the security elements of Stalker’s evidence.
The Stalker Affair began in Northern Ireland on 11 November 1982 when three unarmed men were shot dead by members of a special RUC anti-terrorist unit just outside Lurgan. Less than two weeks later, on 24 November 1982, two youths were shot – one killed and the other seriously wounded – by the same unit in a hay shed also just outside Lurgan. The dead youth was Michael Tighe, who was seventeen years old, and the wounded one was Martin Macauley who was nineteen. Three old pre-war rifles were recovered from the hay shed, but no ammunition found. Three weeks after that, on 12 December 1982, two more unarmed men were shot dead, yet again by a member of the same special unit, this time in Armagh City.
Initially the shootings were investigated by other members of the RUC and a file sent to the Director of Public Prosecutions for Northern Ireland. The first prosecution to come before the courts related to the last of the three incidents and was that of Constable John Robinson of the RUC’s special unit. During the trial it emerged that many of the police’s original accounts of the shootings were in fact lies. In a headline-making appearance in the witness box, Robinson said that he had been instructed by senior police officers to tell lies in his official statements. Robinson was eventually acquitted.
His admissions caused uproar, fuelling accusations of a shoot-to-kill policy. Demands were made for an outside investigation. In May 1984, the RUC’s boss, Sir John Hermon, asked the Deputy Chief Constable of Greater Manchester, John Stalker, a highly-regarded officer with a long track record as a detective, to conduct an inquiry. He appeared to be the establishment’s man, recommended by his Chief Constable, James Anderton, and Sir Phillip Myers, Her Majesty’s Inspector of Constabulary.
Stalker set about the task with vigour. In September 1985 he gave a highly critical interim report, recommending the prosecution of eleven officers, to Herman. He found that his relationship with the RUC was rapidly cooling. For example, one vital piece of evidence Stalker needed for the inquiry was a tape recording of the secret MI5 bug placed in the hay shed where the second shooting had occurred. Stalker asked Hermon for the tape: he promised to hand it over, then refused. Stalker made it clear that he was unhappy with this decision.
What happened next has long been the subject of controversy. I, like many journalists who investigated the Stalker Affair, believe that Stalker was the victim of either or both of two cabals of police officers who had turned against him. The first was a group of top level police officers including Anderton, Hermon and Myers (perhaps under the orders of the government). The second was a group of senior detectives within the Greater Manchester police who wanted Stalker, a non-Freemason, removed as overall head of the CID. All those officers maintain they were only acting properly.
As there has never been an investigation into the Stalker Affair we cannot know for certain what happened. What we do know is at the time of the Stalker inquiry the Greater Manchester Police had become split by rivalries within the detective force. Chief Constable Anderton had promoted Peter Topping to Detective Chief Superintendent in charge of CID operations. Topping was later to become famous for his extensive and highly-publicised search for bodies on Saddleworth Moor in the Myra Hindley case in the late 1980s.
In the Taylor court case, Stalker described Topping as a good administrator but an inexperienced detective promoted over the heads of several far more experienced officers. Quickly, Topping and his allies had made little secret of their disdain for many of the long-serving members of the CID who they portrayed either as corrupt or old-fashioned. Topping’s allies saw John Stalker as the key proponent of the old-timers. Topping began placing his own men into key positions in the CID.
Stalker said good officers were being moved out of specialist HQ departments to be replaced by Freemasons: “I tackled DCS Topping about it. Topping was very proud to admit he was a Freemason. He said that he thought Freemasons were people he could trust and he would favour them in certain departments – but said ability came first and Freemasonry second.”
The schism was so bad that Topping set up a major secret inquiry team called the Drugs Intelligence Unit without informing a number of senior colleagues. Retired DCS John Thorburn, who was Stalker’s Number Two in the shoot-to-kill inquiry and from 1985 CID policy chief, said, giving evidence in Taylor’s case, that Topping’s secret unit caused a cancer through the force. The Drugs Intelligence Unit was not a drugs unit, that was just a cover name. One question that is still unresolved is whether it was set up to monitor organised crime or whether, from the start, it was aimed at the relationship between Taylor and Stalker.
According to Topping’s secret unit, Taylor was in social contact with members of the Quality Street Gang. The QSG was the name given to a loose knit group of Manchester’s leading villains who were involved in everything from serious crime to running arms to the IRA. Topping’s secret unit became convinced that Taylor, while not a member of the QSG, was laundering money for them and had lent his yacht, moored in Spain, for drug running. However, real evidence was harder to come by. Topping’s secret unit kept Taylor under constant surveillance for an incredible 114 days. He was also subject to telephone tapping and had his mail opened.
Stalker’s friendship with Taylor was open and well known to James Anderton. The basis for Topping’s investigation into the relationship came from two key conversations. In court, former DCS Bernard McGourlay said that he played golf in June 1984 with a Manchester businessman he had never met before called Gerry Waring, who mentioned a number of names of men associated with the QSG.
McGourlay said: “He went on in quite a joking manner about Mr Taylor and parties at his home in Summerseat. He said one of my bosses went to the parties. Later I approached Mr Waring in the car park, told him I was curious to know who the officer was and he said it was Stalker. I was very concerned.” McGourlay has said in the past, he thought Stalker should have been warned about what was being said, and two days later he went to see Mr Topping in confidence.
Around the same time two officers of Topping’s secret unit interrogated a long-standing police informant called David Burton, a well known con-man and fraudster. He made allegations against Taylor of crimes for which he has never subsequently been charged. Burton also spoke of the Stalker/Taylor friendship. Anyone familiar with Burton would have known he was a less than credible witness. But Topping compiled a report of all the gossip and rumour on Stalker and passed it on to James Anderton. It became the basis for Stalker’s removal from duty. In court, Stalker described the report as ‘histrionic and self-justifying’.
The timing of these events is interesting. Stalker had again asked the RUC for the MI5 tape. He was also due to interview Hermon on the 30 April 1986: the RUC chief failed to keep the appointment. On 9 May 1986, Topping’s officers raided Taylor’s home. They took away, among other things, half a dozen photos of Stalker and his wife at a party given by Taylor some five years before. Those pictures were taken, along with Topping’s report, to a secret meeting on 19 May in Scarborough of senior police officers, including Anderton and Myers. They decided Stalker would be investigated and taken off the shoot-to-kill inquiry. On 28 May, Stalker received a phone call from Anderton removing him from all duties. He was suspended a month later. The Chief Constable of West Yorkshire, Colin Sampson, was asked to conduct an inquiry into all allegations concerning Stalker. Sampson also took over the shoot-to-kill inquiry.
Taylor’s court case produced an astounding new piece of evidence of how trumped-up the charges against Stalker were. Anderton, when requesting Stalker’s suspension, gave the local Police Authority chairman a report written by DCS Topping alleging that Stalker was ‘an IRA sympathiser.’ No evidence has ever been produced that even begins to support this remarkable accusation.
Some observers have argued Anderton and Topping did the right thing in tackling suspicions over Stalker’s relationship with Taylor. And it is undoubtedly the case that, because of the curtailment of the Taylor court case, neither has been able to put their version of events to the public. But there are a number of important points to consider:
- Anderton had never given Stalker any indication that he was unhappy about his long-standing friendship with Taylor.
- The police intelligence implicating Stalker was little more than tittle-tattle that would have been treated with caution by experienced detectives.
- No-one has found a shred of evidence that Stalker acted improperly in his friendship with Taylor.
- The Greater Manchester police pursued Taylor for several more years, eventually only charging him with a mortgage fraud in which the mortgaging bank had made no complaint. He was acquitted but has been forced into bankruptcy.
Colin Sampson produced his report, alleging that Stalker had infringed some minor rules about using police staff cars. Stalker was reinstated to his post in the Greater Manchester Police, but concluded that working with Anderton would be impossible. In March 1987 he retired to write his memoirs.
Stalker himself said in his autobiography: “I cannot impute mischief or malevolence to anyone, but nevertheless I believe, as do many members of the public, that I was hurriedly removed because I was on the threshold of causing a major police scandal and political row that would have resulted in several resignations and general mayhem.”
In early 1988 the British government acknowledged that the Stalker/Sampson inquiry in Northern Ireland had produced prima-facie evidence of a conspiracy to pervert the course of justice by RUC men, but announced that no criminal proceedings would take place. They then appointed yet another senior British mainland police officer, Charles Kelly, the Chief Constable of Staffordshire, to investigate the RUC. Eventually, the only punishments handed out to any officers were reprimands.
Taylor’s case against the Greater Manchester Police was yet another belated chance to get at the truth about shoot-to-kill and the Stalker affair – but the use of a public interest immunity certificate effectively made that impossible.
One month into the case, Kevin Taylor agreed an out-of-court settlement with the Greater Manchester police for a figure believed to be around £1m. Taylor claims he was forced to settle because otherwise his legal aid would be cut off. The police say the decision to settle was to avoid huge costs and not an admission that they had done anything wrong. The premature ending of the case precluded Anderton or former DCS Peter Topping from giving evidence.
The Government has now successfully seen off attempts to find out why Michael Tighe, seventeen year old youth with no paramilitary links, was shot dead by the RUC in May 1982. As in all wars, no real healing peace can be achieved until both sides admit their own crimes.
OUR TEAM @corruptionwhistleblower.com clearly shows how a NON FREEMASON was treated as far back as the early 1980’s and this is what we uncovered in the above article.
Links:
FREEMASONRY IN THE POLICE AND THE JUDICIARY
https://paulviking.websitetoolbox.com/post/Freemasonry-in-the-Police-and-Judiciary-Should-members-Disclose-membership-996270
Communist and Masonic infiltration into the hierarchy of the Catholic Church
https://voxcantor.blogspot.com/2015/05/communist-and-masonic-infiltration-into.html
Masons in Law Enforcement
http://usavsus.info/MasonsInLawEnforcement.html
CIA and Freemasons among dark forces in Europe
http://www.freemasonrywatch.org/cia_freemasons.html
The Hidden Hand of Freemasonry
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UlE9Z7lFfJk
The Most Exclusive Secret Societies That U.S. Presidents Have ever belonged to and Why Donald Trump Might Be Part 1
https://www.cheatsheet.com/culture/secret-societies-presidents-joined-including-donald-trump.html/
Christian denouncements on Freemasonry ..
https://www.christian-restoration.com/fmasonry/cquotes.htm
The Deception of Freemasonry
https://www.christian-faith.com/what-is-freemasonry/
The Hidden PowerBehind Freemasonry Part 6 of 8
http://israelect.com/reference/JackMohr/jm078f.htm
Fiona Barnett
Fiona Barnett author of “Eyes Wide Open” investigates an Australian Experience of Ritual Abuse & Mind Control.
An Australian Experience of Ritual Abuse & Mind Control
Free Masonry Oaths
Unlawful Masonic Oaths / Obligations
http://www.elijahschallenge.net/index.php/masonic
Jesuits & Freemasonry: What You Need To Know from reliable sourceshttps://zaidpub.com/2012/01/25/jesuits-freemasonry-what-you-need-to-know-from-reliable-sources/
Freemasonry
https://amazingdiscoveries.org/S-deception_Secret_Societies_Freemasonry#!
Secret Societies
http://pdf.amazingdiscoveries.org/Section%20PDFs/Secret-Societies.pdf
The Jesuit Vatican New World Order
THE JESUITS CREATED FREEMASONRY
https://vaticannewworldorder.blogspot.com/2012/06/mysteries-freemasonry-jesuits-e.html
The Jesuits are the Illuminati
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GUrTmI7jtJ4The Jesuits have infiltrated and took control of Freemasonry and Zionism.
Fight Jesuit Freemasonry Political Organisationhttps://www.facebook.com/fightjesuitfreemasonry
JESUIT-FREEMASONRY CONNECTION….
https://tradcatknight.blogspot.com/2018/05/jesuit-freemasonry-connection.html
The Jesuits are a Military Religious Order of the Roman Catholic Church
https://www.biblebelievers.org.au/jesuits.htm
Rome’s Jesuit-controlled opposition – Freemasonry
https://sites.google.com/site/thegreatwhoreofbabylon/rome-s-jesuit-controlled-opposition-freemasonry
An Introduction to the Jesuit Order of Rome
https://quantumprophecy.wordpress.com/2013/10/24/the-jesuit/
The motto of the Jesuits is the same motto as the 32nd degree of Scottish Rite Masonry!
https://www.reddit.com/r/RomeRules/comments/8tdqo7/the_motto_of_the_jesuits_is_the_same_motto_as_the/
Allegedly, the Swearing of a Foreign Oath to Freemasonry.”Conceal and Never Reveal.” The Warrant for Freemasonry came out from the United Kingdom, “Sue v Hill” Illegally declared the United Kingdom a Foreign Power, but, in so doing actually declared that the Masonic Warrant to form Masonic Lodges within Australia did make this particular Warrant, the Warrant of a Foreign Power, it breaches PART IV – Both Houses of the Parliament, Section 44 Disqualification, subsection 1 of the Commonwealth Constitution in relation to Commonwealth politicians. This Offence is to be Discovered by either a Jury trial or Grand Jury trial.