Lloyd's of London as Masonic Institution

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Re: Lloyd's of London as Masonic Institution

Postby Simulist » Sat Nov 13, 2010 1:57 pm

Sepka wrote:
82_28 wrote:All those people in the photos could have chosen to burn that shit down, break everything. But they didn't. Why?


Because they serve the cause of Order, necessary to the functioning of civilization, and they're proud to do so. It's people like these who keep the world from collapsing into anarchy and chaos.

You speak of "order" as if achieving it — and then maintaining it — were the goal. But it took a lot of "disorder" to achieve order in the first place, didn't it? And once order is achieved, we recognize that "this" singular achievement of order really isn't the only worthy one possible. So more disorder must ensue, to elevate ourselves to the next step.

If successful, serving only "the cause of Order" amounts to ensuring that civilization remains only partway up the staircase.
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Re: Lloyd's of London as Masonic Institution

Postby slomo » Sat Nov 13, 2010 2:06 pm

Simulist wrote:
Sepka wrote:
82_28 wrote:All those people in the photos could have chosen to burn that shit down, break everything. But they didn't. Why?


Because they serve the cause of Order, necessary to the functioning of civilization, and they're proud to do so. It's people like these who keep the world from collapsing into anarchy and chaos.

You speak of "order" as if achieving it — and then maintaining it — were the goal. But it took a lot of "disorder" to achieve order in the first place, didn't it? And once order is achieved, we recognize that "this" singular achievement of order really isn't the only worthy one possible. So more disorder must ensue, to elevate ourselves to the next step.

If successful, serving only "the cause of Order" amounts to ensuring that civilization remains only partway up the staircase.

The Second Law of Thermodynamics is a bitch, isn't it?
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Re: Lloyd's of London as Masonic Institution

Postby Wombaticus Rex » Sat Nov 13, 2010 2:08 pm

Wow....thank you for these scans. Ordering the book today, I like his style.
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Re: Lloyd's of London as Masonic Institution

Postby semper occultus » Sat Nov 13, 2010 2:52 pm

..happy to oblige WR ...
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Re: Lloyd's of London as Masonic Institution

Postby AhabsOtherLeg » Sat Nov 13, 2010 9:10 pm

82_28 wrote: All those people in the photos could have chosen to burn that shit down, break everything. But they didn't. Why?



Tucking into roast pork and vegetables in the Lloyd's members' dining room, Bradley is deeply ambivalent about the institution that invigorated his life for 40 years.

"What the hell am I doing sitting here talking about Lloyd's in an affectionate manner? It perpetrated the biggest, most sophisticated, deliberate fraud in financial history. I hope it goes to hell. It caused me so much pain and agony, and there are so many people who dipped their fingers in the till and disappeared with money that wasn't theirs. It belonged to the Names. But this was the most marvelous job. I loved this job. I loved the fellowship. I loved the ambience. I loved the dark suits. I loved the politeness. I loved the intelligent thrust of it. I was dealing with people of extremely good intelligence and social standing, and it carried me up and up and up. Quite frankly, Lloyd's gets into you. Once you're a Lloyd's man, you're a Lloyd's man forever."


http://www.time.com/time/europe/magazin ... oyds8.html

That's why you'd go along with the most sophisticated, deliberate fraud in financial history (until recently)... because of the dark suits, the ambience, the politeness and the good social standing. Once you're a Lloyds man, you're a Lloyd's man forever.

The Lloyd's Litigation Database is a useful resource:
http://www.uniset.ca/lloyds_cases/lloyds_cases.html
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Re: Lloyd's of London as Masonic Institution

Postby 82_28 » Sat Nov 13, 2010 9:42 pm

Wombaticus Rex wrote:Wow....thank you for these scans. Ordering the book today, I like his style.


Indeed! I second that. Wombat, this is what I was getting at a couple of weeks ago with my feeble and unfortunately truncated research into the masonic founding of Colorado. Those scans are immeasurably important to what I indeed needed to keep that shit up. The SQUARE. The Mile. Oh, just name it. Amazing scans and I thank you for those.

Denver: The Mile High City. The white horse prophecy of neighboring Utah.

http://www.utlm.org/onlineresources/whi ... ophecy.htm

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Re: Lloyd's of London as Masonic Institution

Postby 82_28 » Sat Nov 13, 2010 10:06 pm

Something from my youth is coming to me, but I can't remember whether it is true or not. But it's about the geographical plotting of the state was meant to be a perfect square, but they fucked up somehow, because of the technology to do such things in the day. But, my imagination could just be making that up. Scanning old grey matter files as we speak. . .
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Re: Lloyd's of London as Masonic Institution

Postby AhabsOtherLeg » Tue Nov 16, 2010 2:42 pm

.
Not sure if it's relevant at all, or in what way, but I just wanted to add (for pointless detail) that Lloyds has it's own WellBeing Therapy Centre, with a team of Psychiatrists and Psychologists offering Cognitive Behavioural Therapy to stressed-out and coked-out execs.

Image

No NHS for the big boys! I suppose the serious cases would end up at Castle Craig eventually.

http://www.healthresponse.co.uk/london- ... london.htm
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Re: Lloyd's of London as Masonic Institution

Postby vanlose kid » Wed Jan 12, 2011 10:41 pm

hey wombat, posting this here. hope you don't mind.

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Freemasons in the policeThe Guardian
Published January 1997 No comments... »

Today the Guardian publishes for the first time what we believe is a unique photograph. It pierces the wall of secrecy which surrounds one of Britain’s most mysterious organisations by revealing a large gathering of London policemen wearing the white gloves, embroidered sashes and lambskin aprons of the worshipful order of freemasonry.

At the time that the picture was taken, these 60 men were members of Masonic Lodge number 9179, known as the Manor of St James, which was founded eleven years ago, on January 27 1986, for the exclusive use of Scotland Yard officers who had worked in the West End of London. The picture, which has been leaked to the Guardian by non-Masonic Metropolitan police officers, appears to have been taken at one of their inaugural meetings and includes men who then occupied some of the most powerful jobs in the force.

Since April 1985, when Sir Kenneth Newman was Commissioner, Scotland Yard have been advising their officers to stay away from the lodges. According to The Principles of Policing, which was produced under Sir Kenneth: “The discerning officer will probably consider it wise to forgo 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.”

And yet the Manor of St James is still active. On Monday of this week, a Guardian photographer caught dozens of former and serving police officers as they made their way through the crowded pavements of St James’s Street, off Picadilly. Wearing dinner jackets and carrying their Masonic regalia in flat black brief cases, they converged on number 86, an imposing sandstone building which looks like any of the gentleman’s clubs around the corner, in Pall Mall, but which is in fact the site of a Masonic temple.

Inside, they gathered to hold their annual ritual to install a London policeman as the new master of the lodge, to elect other police officers as their stewards, tylers and almoners, and to consider the names of prospective new members, all of them drawn from the past and present ranks of the Metropolitan Police, all of them willing to be blindfolded with a noose around their neck and a dagger to their heart while they are warned that if they break their vows of secrecy and loyalty, they will have their throats cut and their tongues torn out by the root. And then, until late into the night, they dined together.

The leaking of the photograph co-incides with new efforts by politicians and senior police officers to meet public concern about the role of freemasons in law-enforcement. Masons insist that they are misunderstood and that their organisation stands for service to “our God, our country and our laws”. Critics fear that the secrecy of the organisation and its stern oaths of “mutual defence and support” conflict with a police officer’s need to be seen to apply the law impartially.

The Police Complaints Authority, which says its own ranks are free of masons, is pressing for a new law to compel police masons to declare their membership on a register of interests. Last October, the Association of Chief Police Officers, ACPO, supported the move. And today (Jan 29), the House of Commons Select Committee on Home Affairs continues its own inquiry into the issue, taking evidence from ACPO as well as from the Police Federation, which represents lower ranks and which is fighting for the status quo. Until now, the issue has been as secretive as it has been controversial.

The evidence of the membership of the Manor of St James is that freemasonry reaches high into the command structure of the Metropolitan Police. Among the founder members of the lodge was Gilbert Kelland, who was in charge of all of London’s three thousand detectives when he was the Assistant Commissioner for Crime from 1977 to 1984. He is pictured here in his regalia, in the third row back, three from the right.

Among his worshipful brothers who joined the lodge, in spite of Sir Kenneth’s request, are two Deputy Assistant Commissioners, Peter Nievens and Edgar Maybanks; twelve commanders, including George Churchill-Coleman and Jim Neville, both of whom headed the Anti Terrorist Squad, and Malcolm Campbell, who was the head of Scotland Yard’s intelligence branch; John Cass, who was a Scotland Yard commander before becoming co-ordinator for the nation’s regional crime squads; at least two dozen chief superintendents; a dozen superintendents; and more than a score from the lower ranks.

One of the few officers in the lodge who did take Sir Kenneth’s advice is Tony Speed, who is now the Assistant Commissioner for Central London. He said last week that he had followed his father and grandfather into the Craft, joining his first lodge when he was 21. “There was no furore about it in those days and I have to say that in something like 20 years as a mason I never came across anything that made me feel ashamed or that I felt was wrong. But then about ten years ago, the public perception began to change and we were advised that we should reconsider our position and so, simply because of this problem of perception, I resigned.”

Most of his colleagues in the lodge did not see it that way. Malcolm Campbell is still serving as a commander and has not resigned from the lodge but says that he no longer attends its functions. Many of the others in the picture are now retired although sources who know the Manor of St James say they have been joined by a steady stream of serving officers.

Martin Short, author of the most detailed account of modern British freemasonry, Inside The Brotherhood, estimates that 20% of London officers belong to Masonic lodges. He says there is cause for concern about this and in December, he gave evidence to the Select Committee inquiry of a case he had researched recently in Lancashire which, he told them, “demonstrates just how badly the administration of justice can go wrong when police, Crown Prosecution solicitors and private citizens are all in the same Masonic lodge.”

This story began one night in 1988 when two Leicester businessmen were taking a late-night drink in a hotel in Blackburn. A group of burly strangers in dinner jackets ordered them out of the bar. The Leicester men declined to go. The strangers then announced that they were policemen and proceeded to beat them up. They then called other police who arrested the two Leicester men and charged them with assaulting police officers. When the Leicester men were released on bail the next morning, they found that the hotel manager had seized their belongings until they agreed to pay for damage caused by the fight and that someone had let all the air out of their car tyres and removed their hub caps.

The Blackburn police and Crown prosecutors pursued the case to court, where the two Leicester men faced substantial jail sentences for allegedly assaulting policemen. But the case fell apart. The jury rejected all of the police evidence and found that the Leicester businessmen were not guilty of any offence at all. The judge signalled his own view by taking the unusual step of ordering that the defendants’ costs should be paid out of the public purse. The two men then sued for assault, wrongful arrest, malicious prosecution, conspiracy to injure and libel. In an out-of-court settlement, they were awarded £170,000, most of which was paid on behalf of the policemen by the Lancashire force.

Martin Short told the Select Committee that freemasonry was at the heart of this case. The two Leicester men had stumbled into the tail-end of a Masonic event, a dinner organised by the Victory lodge of Blackburn. This lodge, said Short, is dominated by police officers: the policemen who were involved in the original fight, the officer who subsequently investigated the incident, a senior official in the Crown Prosecution office which handled the case, and the manager of the hotel where the dinner took place were all members of the Victory lodge.

No-one is suggesting that all Masonic officers are corrupt or even liable to become corrupt. However, in the past, there have been occasions when Masonic lodges have acted as nests of corruption, where detectives have rubbed shoulders with professional criminals in an atmosphere of friendship and loyalty with disastrous results. When Scotland Yard’s Obscene Publications Squad was destroyed by scandal in the late 1960s, twelve officers were jailed for taking bribes from pornographers. All of them were masons, including the head of the squad, Detective Chief Superintendent Bill Moody, who had even helped one of the pornographers he was supposed to be arresting to become a member of his own lodge.

On the other side of the argument, there have been high-profile examples of Masonic officers fighting corruption. During the Operation Countryman inquiry in the 1980s, it was a Masonic detective chief superintendent, John Simmons, who secretly tape-recorded his brother mason, Detective Chief Inspector Phil Cuthbert, boasting of his villainy and of the involvement of other senior officers in taking bribes and setting up armed robberies. However, Simmons was later ostracised by his lodge, while Cuthbert continued to be welcomed, even after he had been convicted and jailed for three years.

Some of the most angry critics of freemasonry are police officers who do not belong to the lodges. They fear that masons may promote brother officers and conceal each other’s wrong doing and that, on occasion, they might abuse their internal powers to discipline troublesome non-masonic officers. One serving Metropolitan Police detective said: “This is a secret society at the heart of Scotland Yard. I have no doubt that some masons use the lodges to get their way and this is not acceptable for the public or for the police service as a whole.” The Police Complaints Authority says that some officers have approached them privately to voice their concerns about some masonic colleagues.

One non-masonic officer says he reported to his commander that colleagues had invented a fictitious informer so that they could claim reward money for crimes which they solved and then share it among themselves. He claims that he was moved sideways while his colleagues were allowed to carry on and that he subsequently discovered that the corrupt officers and the commander were all “on the square”. Another claims to have heard a superintendent boasting that he was recruiting a new officer to his squad and that he was shortlisting only masons.

The Police Complaints Authority has run into problems with masonic officers. On one occasion a man complained that he had been charged as the result of a masonic conspiracy. He then discovered that the superintendent who was investigating his complaint was himself a mason. The superintendent resigned and was replaced by a second officer who also turned out to be a mason. On another occasion, a provincial Chief Constable simply refused to ask whether one of his officers, who was looking into allegations about masons, was himself a member of a lodge.

Masons played a prominent part in the demise of John Stalker, the former Deputy Chief Constable of Manchester who tried to unravel a cover-up of political shootings in Northern Ireland and in the case of the Scotland Yard Chief Inspector Brian Woolard, who found evidence that his career had been blighted by senior masons after he attempted to uncover the role of civilian masons in a fraud. Masonic officers argue that policemen who want to be corrupt can make bad friendships through golf clubs or Round Table dinners, and that the lodges have no special influence.

When Sir Kenneth Newman produced his advice in 1985, his office considered all of the available evidence. The booklet which he produced acknowledged that the lodges offered friendship, a chance to mix with “some of the most distinguished people in the land” and an invitation to self-improvement. It noted that many of the allegations that were made against them were unsupported or plain wrong. Yet it concluded that some of the allegations were reliable and that the exclusivity of the lodges, the oddness of their rituals and their collection of coded signals amounted to a significant problem. “They militate against the acceptance, by colleagues and citizens alike, of an officer who is a freemason as a man on whose fairness it is possibly to rely always and unquestionably… A freemason’s oath holds inevitably the implication that loyalty to fellow freemasons may supersede any other loyalty.” The worshipful brothers of the Manor of St James disagree.

The two sides of the story came face to face late last year when the current Metropolitan Commissioner, Sir Paul Condon, appeared in front of the Select Committee which is investigating freemasonry in law enforcement. The Commissioner had reassured the committee that all was well but, as he prepared to leave, he was confronted by Chris Mullin, the ebullient Labour MP for Sunderland South, who had acquired his own copy of our photograph. Mullin pulled out the picture and told the Commissioner: “I thought you might like to have a look at your alternative command structure.”

http://www.nickdavies.net/1997/01/01/fr ... he-police/

*
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Re: Lloyd's of London as Masonic Institution

Postby vanlose kid » Wed Jan 12, 2011 10:44 pm

ditto.

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A Firm in a Firm: Freemasonry and Police Corruption
By, Martin Short

Is a Brother off the track?
Try the Square;
Try it well on every side.
Nothing draws a craftsman back
Like the Square when well applied.
Try the Square.

Is he crooked, is he frail?
Try the Square;
Try it early, try it late;
When all other efforts fail,
Try the Square to make him straight -
Try the Square.(1)

Since the Metropolitan Police was founded in 1829 there have been two complete reorganizations of its detective department. Both were provoked by massive corruption scandals leading to criminal trials exactly one hundred years apart, in 1877 and 1977. In each scandal Freemasonry played a dominant role.

Scotland Yard's first 'Detective Force' was set up in 1842. It consisted of only two inspectors and six sergeants. By 1869, 180 detectives were dealing with minor crime in outlying divisions but serious investigations in London were left to only twenty-seven officers out of 9,000. In the 1870's most of this squad was itself a criminal conspiracy in which not only were the prime culprits Freemasons; Freemasonry was what brought them together.(2)

In 1872 a confience trickster names William Kurr was running a bogus betting operation. Like any shrewd smalltime criminal with big ideas, he saw that the way to make real money was to bring policemen into the racket. Bribing detectives after you get caught is costly and uncertain. Far better to cut them in on the profits beforehand and avoid arrest altogether. The one safe place where Kurr could proposition policemen was his Masonic lodge.

At a lodge meeting in Islington Kurr made friends with just the man: Inspector John Meikeljohn. In return for 100 Pounds - nearly half his annual pay - Meiklejohn agreed to give Kurr advance warning of any police action against him or his betting racket. At first the corrupt officer kept the payoff to himself but as the racket expanded, he involved three chief inspectors in the Detective Force whom he also knew as brother Masons.

Kurr needed bigger and better protection because he was expanding his operation with the skills of a new friend called Harry Benson. Here was a virtoso con-man of international disrepute. In 1872, posing as a French count, he had deluded the Lord Mayor of London into giving him 1,000 Pounds for relief work in the wake of the Franco-Prussian War. He was found out and imprisoned in Newgate where he tried to burn himself to death. Instead he merely crippled himself but in 1873 he hobbled out of jail and came to know Kurr. Together they planned new scams to part mug punters from their funds.

One by one, Inspector Meiklejohn sucked his Masonic colleagues into Kurr and Benson's network. First he found out that Chief Inspector Nathaniel Druscovitch was inquiring into the swindles. He also discovered Druscovitch was 60 Pounds in debt and suggested Kurr might help him out. The deal was done, Kurr gave him the money and Druscovitch ws neutralized. His senior chief inspector, George Clarke, wsa also on the swindlers trail, but he agreed to lose the scent in return for a pay-off. A third chief inspector, William Palmer, was also bought up.

Now assured of total immunity from police zeal, Benson set up Sport, a news-sheet offering punters foolproof betting systems. In 1876, using the alias Hugh Montgomery, he deluded the Comtesse de Goncourt of Paris into 'investing' 10,000 Pounds. He rewarded here with several non-existant winners and then requested she invest a further 30,000 Pounds with a bookmaker of his choice. At this point she had a belated spasm of suspicion. She hired a London lawyer, who reported Benson and Kurr to Scotland Yard. They were soon jailed for fifteen and ten years' hard labour respectively. Only then did they reveal the role of the bent coppers. In the subsequent investigation the Yard's chief of detectives, Supt. Frederick Williamson, was dismayed to discover that three of his four chief inspectors were corrupt, along with their uninformed seducer, Meiklejohn. In 1877 all four were tried at the Old Bailey. Clarke was acquittted, but Meiklejohn, Palmer and Druscovitch were convicted and sentenced to two years' hard labour. It was a bad day for the police and hardly a distinguished one for Freemasonry with its principals of brotherly love, relief and truth.

This scandal discredited the entire Metropolitan Detective Force which was scrapped and re-formed as the Criminal Investigation Department. The CID was to have a seperate career structure and higher rates of pay than the main uniform force, a distinction which was to cause grinding irritation over the next hundred years. By 1884 the new structure of twenty-four detectives at Scotland Yard and 254 in the divisions, all under the central command of a new Assistant Commissioner (Crime), appeared to be an effective answer to corruption, Masonic or otherwise.

It took a hundred years for that illusion to be pricked, although close observers of the CID had known the truth for decades. A hint of what went wrong in the meantime comes in the story of Chief Inspector Reginald Morrish, a Metropolitan officer from 1911 to 1937. Morrish worked in the CID for sixteen years, winning forty-four commendations and eighteen awards. He also served in Scotland Yard's fraud and homicide squads. From 1943 to 197 he was a senior instructor at Hendon Police College and wrote several textbooks. One book he did not write was an autobiography. Not long before he died, aged ninety-two, he burnt his entire police papers. His son Ivor was horrified. He wrote:

During the whole of my early life at home, including a period in which we lived at a very busy police station in south London, my father's chief topics of conversation were the police, religion, bribery and corruption (which he saw as rife in all levels in the police force) and freemasonry. The one thing which seemed to worry him most of all was the connexion which he felt existed between freemasonry and corruption, and between freemasonry and self-advancement in the force. In his view there was no room for doubt about these connexions. He used to list all the officers who were masons. He noted the dates of their promotions, whether they had jumped anyone else of equal or greater ability, and all their connexions with other officers in the force.
On many occasions he was invited to join the masons (his two brothers were members) and he used to tell numerous stories of how both police officers and criminals sought favours of him in his pursuance of the detection of crimes. They seemed to assume that - like most other 'successful' officers in the Met - he was a mason of some standing. He received masonic handshakes by the score when investigating crimes, and he was offered bribes in the form of money, goods and even the services of women, in order that he might overlook vital pieces of evidence. Of course, not all those attempting bribery were masons but, according to my father, many were.

The most common expressions used by my father in relation to work were 'he is on the take', 'he is taking backhanders', 'he is receiving the drop' and 'he is on the square' with being amenable to bribes, corruption and perjury, so often did he use these phases in juxtaposition. Later on in life, when we discussed the position of freemasonry in the force and its connexion with corruption and self-advancement at the expense of others, it became clear that he regarded freemasonry as an evil per se which was to be held responsible for the larger proportion of corruption in the police force.

In 1933 or 1934 Det. Insp. Morrish had to run the Croydon Division while the divisional inspector was off sick. Looking through various registers and record books he became very suspicious of the way crimes were being recorded, so he carried out his own investigation. He concluded that the division's relatively high success rate for crime clearance was thoroughly bogus, because many crimes were being entered up as something else. A woman would have her handbag snatched, but this would be entered in the register as a case of 'Lost Property'.(3) Many other entries were far more ingenious.
After a thorough examination of every bit of routine and every crime over a period of several months, my father wrote a report on his findings and sent copies to his bosses: the divisional detective inspector and the area superintendent. As my father did not spare personalities, the facts he revealed militated strongly against both men's honesty. According to him, both were freemasons.
They met him together in private, sought at first to mollify him and then began to threaten and pressure him. He was told in no uncertain terms that, if he went on investigating the investigators, it could only lead to his own downfall. But he was adamant, and felt he had a duty to society, as well as his own integrity, to pursue the matter. He obviously had rattled his superiors who clearly warned him they would block all possible promotion for him.

I'm afraid they didn't understand what motivated him. Nothing and no one could ever browbeat him. He forthwith typed out an even fuller report which detailed all the criminal statistics he had investigated, and concluded with an account of his dealings with his superiors including their interview with him and the threats they had made. This 100 page report (which unfortunately he later burnt) he addressed to the Metropolitan Commissioner, Lord Trenchard.

Trenchard was soon paying personal visits to each station in the division, and insisted on seeing the records and documents referred to in Morrish's report. Eventually Trenchard called him up to his office but, moments before he was due to enter, Deputy Commissioner Norman Kendal tried to divert him. He suggested he need not see the Commissioner, as everything could be put right at this late stage - even his promotion - if he would only withdraw his report
Behind this soft approach my father detected a threat that, if he didn't withdraw, he could say goodbye to any future advancement. He politely refused and insisted on seeing the Commissioner. Later, as a result of the interview and the report, changes were introduced - in the Croydon Division at least - in the methods of recording and clearing up crime, and the way statistics on crime clearance were prepared.
Very soon afterwards the two superior officers retired. My father was transferred to the training centre at Scotland Yard and began his lecturing career. About six months later, when Lord Trenchard established Hendon Police College, he told my father he was promoting him to chief inspector and making him a senior instructor. When he later met my father at the college, he insisted it was he and no one else who had promoted him. The message, if oblique, seemed quuite clear to my father. I don't know whether Trenchard, or for that matter Kendal, was a mason or not, but my father always regarded the whole business as an indication that even the Brotherhood could be outwitted on occassions.

As evidence against Freemasonry, this account is difficult to assess. Sceptics would stress that the alleged incidents took place more than fifty years ago, might have been much exaggerated in the original telling and are recollected here by a son who might be spicing up his father's account. No documents have survived and we have no proof the 'villans' were Masons. A lawyer would dismiss it all as 'triple hearsay'. However, Ivor Morrish is a respected author of numerous teaching textbooks and a lifelong educationalist. He is unlikely to have invented so much detail. His father was a man of unquestioned integrity, and outstanding instructor, and deeply trusted by Lord Trenchard who was this century's greatest police reformer. As such, Reg Morrish's perceptions of Freemasonry should not be lightly discarded. What is more, they marry only too convincingly with the incontrovertible evidence revealed when scores of corrupt detectives were investigated in the 1970's. The full story of Metropolitan Police corruption at the time is told in The Fall of Scotland Yard, a book which I co-authored in 1977 with Barry Cox and John Shirley.(4) Here I isolate the Masonic aspects of the scandal.
In 1977 three Old Bailey trials revealed the tip of an iceberg of corruption in London's CID. Thirteen detectives were jailed, including two commanders, one chief superintendent and five inspectors. In the course of the investigation it emerged that most were Freemasons. The probablility is that they were all 'on the square'.

One trial focused on the Flying Squad, once legendary for its detective brilliance but now notorious for having a commander, Ken Drury, who was 'on the take' (cash, gifts, entertainments and holidays) from a professional criminal and pornographer, Jimmy Humphreys. The other trials revolved around the Obscene Publications Squad. It emerged that Craft membership was a prerequisite for any detective who wanted a share of the rich pickings to be extorted from London's profiteering pornographers.

The 'Porn Squad' was at that time a unit within the CID's central office, known as C1. Getting into this team was a prestigious step up for any detective, but selection was largely in the gift of the C1 commander or the superintendent heading the squad. From 1964 until 1972 it's eminence grise was Det. Chief Supt. Bill Moody who has a unique claim to infamy in the history of Scotland Yard. While heading one of the biggest-ever investigations into police corruption he was simultaneously collecting huge bribes from the dirty booksellers of Soho, London's notorious vice district.

Moody's extraordinary double life is revealed in The Fall of Scotland Yard. The essential details are that in 1977 he was convicted of conspiring to take money from pornographers over an eight-year period. Moody was convicted on sample charges, one of which involved a payment of 14,000 Pounds. The trial showed that for some years he had been pocketing annual kickbacks worth 40,000 Pounds. His pay-off at the Old Bailey was twelve years' imprisonment.

Bill Moody was an ardent Freemason, so ardent that he took some of his pornographer friends to his Masonic gatherings. One was Ron 'the Dustman' Davey whom he had met at another pornographer's birthday party in Trader Vic's Restaurant in the Hilton Hotel. In 1975 Davey was questioned by officers who had been appointed to investigate the porn squad's corruption. He told them he came to know Det. Sgt Cyril Jones (later sentenced to seven years in jail) through Moody's Masonic functions.

I have been to numerous of these and in fact Bill introducted me into his lodge. It has been put to me that I booked a coach on the following dates - 6.11.69 to Derry and Toms (10 people); 17.11.69 to Top Rank Suite, Croydon (12 people); 25.9.71 Regent Street. All were masonic functions at which I was a guest. Normally present were Bill Moody, Cyril Jones, 2 other police officers [whom Davey names] and our wives. I am quite sure there were many more outings.
It was part of Bill Moody's discredited defence that he had no idea Ron Davey was a pornographer. If so, he had overlooked Ron's conviction and a six-month jail term in 1960 for publishing 744 improper photographs of men and 105 of women. This fact was available to Moody not simply as head of the Obscene Publications Squad; he would have read about it in News of the World, for the newspaper had revealed how Davey was arrested in his darkroom with 2,486 dirty photographs. At another of his premises, police discovered 15,000 pornographic negatives and 15,000 snaps. Ron's home was an Aladdin's cave of naked lads. As the magistrate packed him off to prison, he told Davey he did not suppose anyone had ever before seen 'such a vast volume of absolute filth'.
Davey had been a pornographer for three years, after eight years working as a dustman. In 1975 when giving evidence against Bill Moody, he described himself as a 'maintenance engineer'. I have been unable to discover which of these three occupations he disclosed when applying for membership of the Craft.

Masonic activities in the dirty book trade went far beyond coach parties of pornographers, policemen and their wives living it up on the town. When Scotland Yard's anti-corruption squad went digging into the porn squad's later years, all sorts of Masonic connections emerged. One prosecution witness was Frank R. Andrews, who spent three years in the porn squad as a detective constable. When Moody recruited him in 1965, he already knew that everybody posted there immediately bought new cars or expensive houses. In short, he said, they 'sprouted wealth'.

Andrews was introduced to the system of another witness, D.C. Ernie Culver, himself later convicted of a cheque fraud. Culver explained how bribe moneys were shared out. Andrews recalled one chat with him about a forthcoming Masonic Ladies' Night.

He said words to the effect, 'Have you got enough money for the new dress for your wife?' I indicated that I didn't want any help but he then handed me a brown envelope aned said, 'Put that towards the cost of a new dress for your wife.' I did not want the money and decided to ditch it in a nearby waste-paper bin. We attended the ladies' evening as planned. Bill Moody was there with his wife and another sergeant.
Another convicted officer was Leslie Alton, a detective inspector and a Mason. He instructed Andrews to collect the weekly bribes in packets from pornographers, then share it out among the other officers. Andrews had known Alton was a friend for many years and tried to keep an eye on him when he got drunk.
On one occasion he got drunk and said, 'Come on, let's take a walk around the West End.' I was full of trepidation. He walked into a bookshop with me and said in a loud voice. 'I am detective inspector Alton of New Scotland Yard. How much have you taken today?' He then went to the cash register, opened it and started checking the proceeds. I was embarrassed and left him in the shop. When he came out he said words to the effect, 'Disipline. That's what these people need: discipline!'
Andrews assumed that, on past form, Alton must have stuck his hand in the till and grabbed a fistful of notes. They both left the squad in 1968 but from 1970 to 1972 its overlord was Commander Wally Virgo who, I understand, was also a Freemason. Originally jailed for twelve years for corruption, Virgo was later freed because the appeal court felt the judge's summing-up had been unduly hostile.
Under Virgo the porn squad was almost entirely Masonic. When one brother, Detective Inspector Anthony Kilkerr, became a prosecution witness his colleagues came up with a disarming explanation for the 20 Pounds in pornographers' pay-off money they had stuck in his desk drawer each week. Those crisp fivers were not the fruits of corruption, one suspect told an investigator, but whiprounds to help Kilkerr pay his Masonic inititation fees. This was a lie, of course, but the choice of lie was revealing.

Because Kilkerr would not take the money (he threw it away or left it in his desk), he was suspected of being a 'spy in the camp'. His 'Mr Clean' image so upset another detective named Peter Fisher that he told Kilkerr not to open his mouth because he was now 'involved' himself and would go down with the rest of them. If they were all caught, Fisher added, they 'could form a football team on the Isle of Wight'. This was a reference to the island's two high-security jails, but in the late 1970s convicted detectives were sent to open prisons in such large numbers that they could have formed their own Masonic lodges.

The porn and Flying Squad investigations were part of a massive anti-corruption drive by Sir Robert Mark. Soon after he became Commissioner in 1972 he set up a squad known as A 10 to 'rubber-heel' the entire force. By the time he retired five years later, A 10 had forced the dismissal or resignation of nearly 500 officers: 100 a year. The old regime had ousted an average of just sixteen. Most of the concentration of Freemasons was far greater than among uniform men. There is no way of finding out exactly how many were Masons, partly because Scotland Yard has never divulged the names of all 500.

To combat corruption Mark imposed the most thorough reform of the CID for a hundred years. In August 1975 he shuffled 300 detectives around London, in an attempt to break the dangerous custom of leaving them in one area for so many years that tended to develop a corrupt intimacy with local criminals. In 1976 he inflicted an even less welcome reform: systematic interchange between detective and uniform branches. No detective could expect much promotion unless he served in uniform for several years. This was devised not gratuitously to humilate the plain-clothes men, but to destroy the closed mentality and corrupt traditons of the 'firm in a firm'.

To what extent was this 'firm in a firm' Masonic? That phrase was immortalized by Detective Sergeant John Symonds on a surreptitious tape-recording made by two Times reporters in 1969. The tape appeared to support claims of a small-time thief that Symonds was extorting small sums of money from himl. Symonds was suspended and charged, but he fled abroad in 1972 after a threat disguised as a tip-off from the Mason in charge of his imminent trial. This was Det. Chief Supt. Bill Moody who, while taking huge kickbacks from pornographers, had been appointed by Scotland Yard to investigate the Time's allegations of relatively modest graft against lower-ranking detectives. Seven years later Symonds returned to give himself up. He was tried, convicted and given a two-year jail sentence. However he continues to proclaim his innocence, alleging (with justification) that he was offered up as a ritual sacrifice by corrupt men running the CID at that time, notably Bill Moody.

On the tape Symonds was alleged to have said:

Don't forget always to let me know straight away if you need anything because I know people everywhere. Because I'm in a little firm in a firm. Don't matter where, anywhere in London, I can get on the phone to someone I know I can trust, that talks the same as me. And if he's not the right person that can do it, he'll know the person that can. All right? ...That's the thing, and it can work - well, it's worked for years, hasn't it?
Symonds was a Freemason, and his 'firm in a firm' was essentially Masonic. Freemasonry was the security blanket - the ultimate in comforters - for a network of crooked cops throughout the metropolis. Their fraternal bonds reassured them that they could rely on each other's absolute discretion. On that basis the 'firm in a firm' provided whatever service was required. It could get criminal charges dropped against the guilty or ensure their aquital. It could secure the conviction of men who did not pay bribes or who got in the way of bigger fish who were paying. It could protect bribe-paying gangs by preventing their detection. It could even supply the direct participation of some policemen in serious crimes such as robbery. This standing conspiracy had several protective layers or shells. First, everyone in it was a policeman. Second, they were all detectives. Third they were all corrupt. Fourth, most were Freemasons.
Within this carapace crooked cops could get away, if not with murder, then with almost everything else. There was the classic case of Det. Sgt Harry Challenor, a West End Central officer who planted knives, hatchets and iron bars on dozens of innocent citizens. On one occasion he even 'found' detonators for explosives. His undoing came in 1963 when he framed a cluster of young men who had been demonstrating against a visit of Queen Frederika of Greece. He claimed that pieces of brick had been found in their pockets, presumably to throw at the Queen or at the policemen guarding her hotel. The accused were all cleared, eventually, because no brick dust couuld be traced in their pockets. Challenor himself was now put on trial for conspiring to pervert the course of justice. Three young constables who worked with him were convicted and jailed for three years, but Challenor was found unfit to plead and detaiined in a mental hospital at Her Majesty's pleasure.

According to a psychiatrist, he must have been 'very mad indeed' - clinically insane - for over a year.(5) Yet throughout this time his colleagues were apparently unaware of his lunacy. It had passed unnoticed while, with their connivance, he planted offenseive weapons on at least twenty-six men. These same officers could not see he was crazy even as they held down some of his victims so he could beat them up with unimpeded brutality.

Harry Challenor was a Freemason. So were several of his very close CID colleagues. So, too, was one recently retired high-ranking London detective who told me how in the 1960's he was appalled by the way other policemen used to exploit the Craft.

I became a Mason at the suggestion of an officer who is now deputy assistant commissioner. He wanted me to join his lodge but most of the members weren't policemen. Indeed he asked a non-policeman to propose me, so that other members did not think the police were trying to take over the lodge, as sometimes happens.
I soon realized that not all police Masons were as honourable as my sponsor. At the time I was a junior detective in Scotland Yard. One day a senior colleague came in crowing that he had been selected for a place on the intermediate command course at Bramshill. I was taken aback and asked him how he did it.

He said, 'It cost me 300 Pounds. I put it about in the right place.'

'You mean you bribed someone?'

'No. I took out "X" [a Commander] for a few lunches and invited him and his wife to my lodge ladies night. I bought her a little present, paid for the meal and the drinks. And what do you know? I'm off to Bramshill next month!'

He then told me that he'd realized the Commander could get anyone from our squad on the course. Now the Commander clearly wasn't someone you could bung fifty quid or take to a nightclub and get laid. You couldn't bribe or compromise him because he was straight. However, he was also naive so it was fairly easy to buy your way into his good books by lunching him or inviting him and his lady to your annual lodge shindig. He may have guessed what was in my colleague's mind but, even so, he felt able to accept as a fraternal Masonic gesture what in any other circumstances would have consitute an 'inducement'. You appreciate that a non-Mason would have no such opportunity.

My colleague was exceptionally unpleasant: a real crawler. Transparently obsequious, he'd do anything to get on. Most Masons are all right, so it would be unfair to damn them all because of him, but I have seen how such men manipulate Masonic connections to perpetrate acts of evil.

Some years earlier this same man worked on the same team as me. He found two villains in possession of stolen goods. They offered him a substantial bribe and he devised a way to get them out of trouble. Two fall guys were to be arrested and charged in their place. He went on holiday and our governor, a chief inspector, put me temporarily in charge of the case. However, at this stage I knew nothing of the crooked dealings which had already taken place.

I soon had to attend court because two men who had been charged with the crime were being remanded in custody. At the court one of them came up to me and said, 'You needn't think we're going to prison to save the skin of your Masonic friend' - meaning my police colleague. I asked him what he meant, and he convinced me that they had both been framed so the two villians who had committed the crime could get off.

My colleague always used Masonic phrases when speaking to anyone. He would ask people whether they were 'taught to be cautious', 'regular attenders', 'on the level' and the like. These two prisoners were not stupid and they knew from his talk that he was 'on the square', even though they were not.

I was in a quandary. I had not been involved in the arrests and I did not with to see the wrong men go to jail. I went back to Scotland Yard and reported the affair to a senior officer: a detective superintendent who was also a Mason and whom I trusted to sort it out. When my colleague came back from holiday he admitted to the superintendent that he had framed the two men on behalf of his villainous friends, and that he had taken a bribe. The superintendent was wild, but my colleague appealed to him as a brother for help.

I dreaded what might now happen. Would my colleague be put on trial for corruption? Would I be fitted up for betraying him? Or would the trial go ahead, with the defendents squealing in open court that they had been the victims of a frame-up?

To my relief at the time, the matter was sorted out - but in an extraordinary way. The defendents were given a Masonic solicitor whose brother was a barrister. The solicitor persuaded them to plead guilty to the crime which they had not committed. The barrister then did a deal with the judge who let them off with a suspended sentence and a fine. That fine and all their legal fees were paid by the villains who had committed the crime! No action was taken against the crooked officer, but I was moved to another job because he said he could not work on the same team as me!

I asked this former detective why he had done nothing about this gross perversion of justice and why, twenty years later, he was still not prepared to be named in this account.
I cannot go public even now because, although I was only the junior officer, I was implicated in the conspiracy as deeply as anyone. I had been involved in a trial when two men pleaded guilty to crimes which, I knew at the time, they had not committed. The rest of the team were as angry as I at our colleague's actions. They were equally innocent of any crimanlity, but we all became 'guilty' by being caught up in the web of protection woven around a crooked Masonic brother who had appealed for help.
Remember! This happened in the 1960s when many detectives were bent. I had reported this matter once and the powers-that-be had made their decision. If I had opened my mouth again I might have ended up on trial on my own admissions, not the villain who put me into this mess. Besides, my only evidence against him was the world of the two defendants who later pleaded guilty and were paid off.

My informant has told me this crooked Mason's name but I cannot name him for legal reasons. To be fair to Freemasonry, however, these horror stories have to be weighed against the fact that in the Porn Squad trials of 1977, three Crown witneses (Kilkerr, Andrews and Culver) were themselves 'on the square'. When it came to the crunch they were ready to tell the truth, even though it would send their Masonic brothers to jail.
Simiilarly, the officer who spearheaded Scotland Yard's anti-corruption drive in the 1970s, Deputy Assistant Commissioner Gilbert Kelland, was a Freemason. At his right hand was another Mason, DAC Ron Steventon, later head of A 10. Neither spared their brethren from the anti-corruption knife. This can be explained partly by the existence of two distinct Masonic traditions in the Metropolitan Police at this time. Gilbert Kelland, for example had spent the first twenty-five years of his service in uniform. He was not a 'carerr detective' and he never allowed his Freemasonry to intrude into, or overlap with, his police work. In contrast Freemasonry in much of the CID had become a cover for crookery and corruption.

Towering above all such distinctions, however, is the fact that no major corruption trials would have taken place at all if it had not been for the heroic if much-hated figure of Robert Mark, who was neither a detective nor a Freemason. It was Mark who created the climate in which, for the first time in a century, corruption - Masonic or otherwise - was no longer fashionable among London detectives. It was he who gave Kelland and Steventon orders to clean up the CID

It would be difficult to argue that Freemasonry had much beneficial effect on the Metropolitan CID between 1877 and 1977. Yet in the years since Brother Moody and his clan were purged, the Craft's reputation in the force has sunk even lower. This is partly because Masonic abuse in the 1970s propelled many honest and honourable policemen out of the Craft. One such man now holds a very high rank in Scotland Yard.

In the 1970s the old CID porn squad was so corrupt it had to be disbanded. I was assigned to the uniform squad which replaced it. We used to raid one dirty bookshop after another but, whenever I tried to fix a formal interview date with the shop owners, they would pull out their diaries and say pointedly, 'Sorry, I can't make Tuesday. It's my lodge night, you understand.'
They automatically assumed I was a Mason, which was not surprising since the crooked detectives we had replaced were all Masons. By letting me know they were 'on the square' the pornographers clearly expected me to drop my inquiries. Of course, the Masonic fix had been going on for so many years they had every expectation it would soon be 'business as usual'. I was so disgusted that I resigned from my lodge.

Another Yard officer also quit the Craft about this time. He is now ranked just below chief constable in another force:
I joined my lodge just after I had become a sergeant. I went along for a year and met some spendid people. I confess it struck me as a wonderful thing for a policeman's career, but my career was going splendidly anyway. The lodge meetings were very boring - the most infernally boring thing I have ever been involved in. Also, my job as a detective was taking such long and irregular hours that I could not get along each week to my lodge of instruction. And when I was free I preferred to spend time with my wife and children.
For me the crunch came when we raided a notorious West End nightclub where the hostesses were really prostitutes. I was about to charge the owners with living off immoral earnings when they appealed to me 'on the square'. They were my brother Masons and expected me to let them off. I ignored the approach and went ahead and charged them. When the case came up at the Old Bailey they were acquitted. I was appalled, but I don't think the rotten verdict had anything to do with Freemasonry.

Unfortunately, not even Scotland Yard's 'rubber-heel mob' - A 10 - was immune from Masonic manipulation. For many years I have known a London solicitor who is a Mason. In the 1970s he had a client who was also a Mason. On his behalf the solicitor made a complaint to A 10 alleging serious criminal misconduct by a detective. In due course an A 10 officer was appointed to investigate. He assured the solicitor that he had never met the detective under investigation, and that he would pursue the inquiry with the utmost zeal. Taught to be cautious, however, the solicitor used his Masonic connections to discover more about the A 10 investigator.
To my horror I discovered he was in the same lodge as the suspect detective. I promptly made another complaint to A 10 saying these men knew each other and that, in the circumstances, they should appoint another investigator. Nothing of the kind! I received a curt reply saying the two men did not know each other and I was mistaken. But I had documentation to prove they had both been masters of the same lodge, and must have known each other very well indeed.
I immediately told my client about this connection and A 10's response. He was astonighingly philisophical. He said the investigation was now certain to be a whitewash, for no Mason would ever bring criminal charges against a brother Mason in the same lodge. I wanted to have a go at A 10 and produce my conclusive Masonic evidence, but my client insisted on dropping the complaint! What could I do? I was acting on instructions.

At this time A 10 may have been going through teething problems. No such excuse could be made for the Complaints Investigation Bureau, CIB2, which replaced A 10 in the late 1970s. There are many potential conflicts of interest when one policeman investigates another. One of these is Freemasonry and CIB2 must always be aware that hidden Masonic connections might contaminate the fair investigation of complaints. In its short existence CIB2 has had enough Masons among its chiefs to be aware of the very short odds that a Mason could be given the job of investigating on of his Masonnic brothers. In 1979 CIB2's allied disciplinary team known as CIB3 was headed by Chief Supt. William Gibson. Two years later he was succeeded by Malcolm A. Ferguson. Later still, Kenneth Churchill-Coleman took over. When the Manor of St Jame's Lodge list leaked out in 1986 who should be on it but Cass, Lampard, Gibson, Ferguson and Churchill-Coleman.
Perhaps all these men would pursue any complaint laid against a Masonic colleague with even greater dedication than one against a non-Mason, if only to prove that Masonic loyalties would not get in their way. But where would a member of the Manor of St Jame's Lodge stand if he were told to investigate another member? With some fifty serving officers in the lodge, this may very likely happen (if it had not happened already). Ideally, the investigator would refuse the job and suggest a non-Mason do it instead. Heaven help Freemasonry if the public ever find out that a policeman under investigation belongs to the same lodge as his investigator!

A policeman who recently retired from Hampshire Constabulary wrote to me expressing his concern:

A detective I knew was a practising mason and had been master of his lodge. He made no secret of the fact and always wore a masonic ring, tie and cufflinks. This man was, to say the least, unscrupulous in his methods and it was well known in the legal profession that he 'doctored' his evidence in court. This was confirmed to me by a barrister. This officer was the subject of several internal discipline inquiries but always appeared to escape prosecution. Senior officers seemed to be afraid of him and I always felt this was because of influential people he moved with socially.
These days internal discipline and anti-corruption units need to be seen to be above reproach and suspicion, otherwise all sorts of lobbies and pressure groups (not just disorganized anti-Masons) will cry 'Whitewash!' In 1987 Scotland Yard's self-cleansing squad was put to the test again as another 'Masonic' corruption scandal broke.
Early one morning in July 1987 Detective Constable Alan Holmes shot himself dead in his back garden. Eight months later a corner's jury confirmed that he had committed suicide, but it did not have to say why. The answer lies in a tangle of personal and work problems complcated by Holme's Masonic bonds - not that Freemasonry was mentioned at any point during the inquest.

'Taffy' Holmes was a stocky 15-stone, broken-nosed, rugby-playing Welshman who drank to excess. He had a wife and children. He also had a mistress. He was totally devoted to the Metropolitan Police in which he had served for twenty-six years. At work he was gregarious, convivial and he would do anything for a friend. At the inquest one colleague said Taffy believed 'a problem shared is a problem solved'. Another officer felt he had 'misguided loyalties'. His perceptive father-in-law explained how it 'seemed essential to Alan that he should be liked by everybody'.

In the days before he died Holmes was under great pressure from the anti-corruption squad, CIB 2, which was investigating alleged links between a detective commander and a man convicted of receiving some of the 26 million Pounds 'Brinks-MAT' gold bullion stolen in 1983. The receiver, Kenneth Noye, is also a Freemason; the commander may be one too - but it seems unlikely that the two men have ever met. Even so, CIB 2 felt that Holmes (who worked on the Brinks-MAT robbery investigation) knew about such a relationship. CIB 2 may have arranged for another officer to secretly tape-record Holmes as he gossiped about corrupt acts by fellow-detectives. When Holmes learned about the alleged tape he was plunged into depression, partly because it seems these crooked officers were also Masons. He felt 'set-up' and betrayed. At the inquest one colleague (himself under no cloud) explained how, five days before he died, Holmes had returned very upset from an all-day grilling by CIB 2. He talked about another officer whom he had considered a friend but who had 'let him down and told lies about him'. He said he was going to kill that man and then kill himself. The colleague told the Coroner: 'He was very upset, but I didn't think he'd do it'.

Holmes was doubly appalled by this alleged treachery because he had only just introduced the 'traitor' into his own Masonic lodge. The treachery was even greater because that year Taffy was Lodge Master. What about the Five Points of Fellowship?: 'Breast to breast, your lawful secrets when entrusted to me as such I will keep my own.' Lawful or not, many brothers' secrets - Holmes included - had been betrayed.

At his funeral Taffy received full police honours. Deputy Commissioner John Dellow led dozens of Scotland Yard mourners. Holmes was eulogized as having 'a face as hard as granite but a heart as soft and vulnerable as a butterfly'. Most of the eighty wreaths came from police officers, stations and squads, but several were sent openly by Freemasons, including one large floral square-and-compasses. Another bore the inscription: 'To our brave, wonderful and worhsipful master who chose death rather than dishonour his friends and workmates.'

Death may be better than revealing one's own dishonour, but killing oneself to cover up for others is taking loyalty too far - even for a Mason. In any case, what did Holmes know which could have dishonoured his friends and workmates? In a suicde note he told his wife, 'I loved the police and never did them an ounce of harm', but might not his suicide bring more dishonour on the police than telling the truth about crooked colleagues?

Taffy Holmes was Master of Lodge no. 7114. When I was first told this fact, I thought it might be part of a pattern. Lodge 7114 is another 'Manor' lodge: the Manor of Bensham. I wondered if there was a 'Manor' lodge for each of the twenty-three old divisions of the Metropolitan Police. Might they all be like the St Jame's: jam-packed full of fuzz? With a hundred cops in each, the full slate would be 2,300. Further researches uncovered ten more lodges in Greater London with 'Manor' in the title, but only three correspond with a Metropolitan Police district and none of them is an all-police lodge. Even the Manor of Bensham recruits from all walks of life, but it does have a strong police connection. In 1986 at least five members were past or present policemen, including retired Commander Arthur Howard, QPM: once had of C 1, Scotland Yard's chief detective branch. It seems all these officers joined the Lodge while living in Croydon or serving in the local 'Z' District.

The full story behind the death of Bensham's Master may never emerge, but in March 1988 a report appeared in the News of the World saying he died for nothing.(6) It claimed another officer had told Holmes that a tape of his crooked colleagues' conversation existed when in fact no such recording had been made. Taffy's shame at having inadvertently betrayed his Masonic brethren was baseless. Whether or not that shame is what drove him to suicide, may the Great Architect have mercy on his soul.

Notes.

1. Masonic poem by David Barker, quoted in A Treasury of Masonic Thought, Robert Hale, London 1981.

2. This story was told briefly by Stephen Knight in The Brotherhood. I expand on it here to make a different point. For a full account see George Dilnot, The Trial of the Detectives, Geoffrey Bles 1928.

3. If an article was listed as 'lost', rather than stolen, no crime would appear to have been committed. Morrish's experience resembles that of Det. Con. Ron Walker of the Kent Constabulary who alleged in 1986 that some colleagues had been rigging the force's crime 'clear-up' rate by persuading convicted prisoners to confess to crimes which they had not committed.

4. Penguin 1977.

5. See the James Report (Home Office appointed Inquiry into the Challenor Affair), HMSO 1965. Mary Grigg, Challenor Case, Penguin 1965. For a more sympathetic view of Challenor, see Gilbert Kelland, op. cit.

6. News of the World, 20 March 1988.


Martin Short wrote, produced and narrated the prize-winning ITV documentary series on the Mafia in America, Crime Incorporated. To accompany the series, he wrote Crime Inc.: A History of Organized Crime in America. In addition to writing feature articles for The Times, The Spectator, New Statesman, Time Out and Special Forces, he co-authored (in 1977) The Fall of Scotland Yard, about police corruption in London. He is also the author of Lundy: The Destruction of Scotland Yard's Finest Detective (1991).

After reading history at Cambridge University, he worked - from 1969 to 1984 - on major current affairs programmes for the ITV companies Thames, Granada and London Weekend (on the Lebanon) and for Channel 4's Dispatches series (on the international arms trade). In 1988 he presented Charlie Richardson and the British Mafia for Longshot Productions and Channel 4. His series based on Inside the Brothehood appeared on ITV in 1989, and in 1994 he produced and presented the ITV series Gangbusters.

//http://www.freemasonrywatch.org/true_blue.html

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Re: Lloyd's of London as Masonic Institution

Postby semper occultus » Thu Jan 13, 2011 8:35 pm

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Re: Lloyd's of London as Masonic Institution

Postby vanlose kid » Thu Jan 13, 2011 9:14 pm

^^ Whoa!

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Re: Lloyd's of London as Masonic Institution

Postby semper occultus » Sun Jun 12, 2011 8:27 am

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Re: Lloyd's of London as Masonic Institution

Postby vanlose kid » Sun Jun 12, 2011 2:41 pm

Update: Is Lloyd's of London Too Big to Sue? plus Lloyds Litigation Timeline
Submitted by rcwhalen on 06/11/2011 10:53 -0400


Back in May, we published an article in the Institutional Risk Analyst, "UK Country Risk: Is Lloyd's of London Too Big to Sue?," that described the efforts by investors to get a hearing regarding claims of fraud and other misdemenors against Lloyds of London. A number of people have asked me to post the article on the web, which follows below.

In addition, I have included a rough time line of some of the more significant litigation and legislative developments in the UK, legal changes that have seemingly put Lloyds above the law both in the UK and elsewhere There is a vast amount of litigation involving Lloyds that covers several waves going back three decades. In every case, investors all over the world never get a hearing on the facts much less the merrits of their claims, either in the UK courts or the US.

But the more troubling issue for me is the clear appearance that investments in Lloyds represent a form of chattel bondage for investors that is a violation of the Constitution and laws of the United States. How can Lloyds be allowed to enforce claims of chattel bondage in the US without even allowing American citizens the right to challenge these contracts in US courts?

Chris
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
UK Country Risk: Is Lloyd's of London Too Big to Sue?
The Institutional Risk Analyst
May 12, 2011

"The years from 1929 to 1933 were, for America, a succession of breaking idols and abandoned faiths, some of them the notions of willful children, some deeply ingrained in the character of the nation ... Bank Statements: By agreement with the Government, banks placed an artificial value upon certain securities they held. Those who did not know of the agreement assumed that the values were actual."

Gilbert Vivian Seldes
The Years of the Locust: America 1929-1932
Little, Brown, and Company (1933)

Thanks to Josh Rosner for the above quotation. We had a lot of fun speaking with him and the other attendees at the REthink event hosted this week by Housing Wire. There was a lot of very interesting discussion we shall be summarizing in The IRA Advisory Service. But first we return to a favorite topic, namely the ongoing criminal enterprise known as the insurance industry. If you think American International Group was a fiasco for investors and US taxpayers, read on.

Last month an American investor named Richard Tropp filed a writ of certiorari with the US Supreme Court to review a decision by the Second Circuit in New York regarding an epic litigation against the Lloyd's of London insurance market. Of note, there are a number of amicus briefs accompanying the petition which seeks to overturn the Second Circuit finding in favor of Lloyd's.

To us, the case of Tropp v. the Corporation of Lloyd's is alarming not only because it implies that thousands of investors in the Lloyd's insurance market have no contractual rights enforceable at law in the courts of England and Wales, but also because of what it says more broadly about the state of the law in Britain. Some two decades after the Lloyd's Ponzi scheme scandal first exploded onto the scene, the situation for investors in the world's largest insurance market has arguably deteriorated.

In their 1995 book, Risky Business: An Insider's Account of the Disaster at Lloyd's of London, Elizabeth Luessenhop & Martin Mayer catalog the duplicity and incompetence of the managers within the Lloyd's insurance market up to that time and how this malfeasance affected thousands of American investors. The restructuring which occurred two decades ago as a result of the crisis, however, and the legal changes in the UK, including making Lloyd's a self regulatory agency, have arguably made Lloyd's too risky for passive investors regardless of domicile. Unless you are a member of the City club that controls the Lloyd's market, it seems, you as an investor effectively have no legal rights -- at least in terms of rights enforceable in UK courts.

The Tropp filing states:

"In the face of litigation seeking to hold Lloyd's responsible for billions of dollars in insurance losses, incurred as a result of an alleged Ponzi-like scheme in which Lloyd's participated, Lloyd's was permitted by the U.K. courts to force a market restructuring under which: (a) it required market participants (known as "Names") to purchase reinsurance from an entity Lloyd's created and controlled; (b) Names were required to immediately pay a reinsurance premium as calculated by Lloyd's, without any opportunity to contest the existence or extent of their liability for the reinsured debt; and (c) although nominally afforded a post-deprivation hearing, the Names were allowed to challenge their alleged liability, or Lloyd's' calculation of its amount, only if they could show Lloyd's had engaged in fraud."

For 20 years UK courts have deferred to Lloyd's management's singular private law as preempting reliance on all familiar English law by anyone who is defending or claiming against those insiders. Thousands of American, Irish, and European defendants are "precluded" in UK law from evidentiary hearing of their defenses to Lloyd's lawsuits against them, which impose a lifelong 80-year liability, a 1600s-style colonial-era vestigial debt indenture.

According to the vast case record in the Tropp litigation, first in the UK and now in the US, English courts treat Lloyd's merely private claims under its bylaws as carrying preemptive statutory authority which in Britain's jurisprudence overrides all other law. Moreover, UK courts have expanded the shield of Lloyd's legal immunity to preclude hearing of affirmative claims against them as well, and to preclude even hallowed English-law equitable remedies such as specific performance and an accounting. This applies to both UK investors in Lloyd's as well as foreign investors.

Having been denied even a hearing in the UK courts, Tropp and others are seeking to have their claims heard in the US. This is part of a second wave of litigation by Lloyd's Names that also raises troubling questions about the state of British political and legal institutions, as well as the financial and business practices of Lloyd's. In order for a plaintiff to litigate a foreign claim in the US, they must prove among other things that the country "does not provide impartial tribunals or procedures compatible with the requirements of due process of law." It very much appears that the situation in the UK fits that description.

Indeed, the record in this litigation suggests that the UK must now be grouped with the savage nations of the third world when it comes to the fairness of English courts. Whereas in the past US judges, who still tend to look up to English courts as paragons of jurisprudence, gave these venues full credibility, the Lloyd's litigation suggests that American courts need to question whether the judiciary in England and Wales is comprised of tribunals of competent jurisdiction. To us, it seems that an investor in Lloyd's would be better off seeking redress in a kangaroo court sitting in, say, Caracas or Mogadishu than in a UK courtroom. American judges and regulators need to start asking more questions as to whether the decision of UK courts should be given even partial credence when it comes to claims by Lloyd's.

For those familiar with the evolution of Rachel's Law, named after New York based author Rachel Ehrenfeld, the sad state of the UK courts is nothing new. Liable judgments against writers obtained -- or really purchased -- by wealthy foreign litigants operating freely in UK courts can no longer be enforced in the US. As we've noted in the past, every writer in the US owes Ehrenfeld a debt of thanks for her lonely legal battle against one of the wealthiest men in the world. We've been there too.

We wonder, for instance, ought not the SEC consider the fact that even private contractual disputes between Lloyd's and it's investors are precluded under UK law? It is interesting to note that in the past wave of litigation by US investors against Lloyd's, the SEC actually took an overt public position supporting the plaintiffs against Lloyd's. In thoses cases, the US courts gave credence to the UK courts and ruled in favor of Lloyd's claims, driving thousands of US citizens and others around the world into bankruptcy and financial ruin -- all without a hearing on their claims or allegations of fraud by Lloyd's.

Perhaps it is time for Congress to consider a blanket ban on the enforcement in the US of any judgment held by Lloyd's, at least until this ersatz insurance market is brought back under the rule of law. The fact that the residents of the UK and investors around the world must endure this monstrous situation only confirms the decision of America's Founders to break with England more than two centuries ago.

We believe it is time for Congress, the SEC and other US agencies to recognize that in the case of Lloyd's the UK's governmental, regulatory and legal systems have failed. The situation compares with the similar US failure in the case of AIG, but Lloyd's is far larger in systemic terms. This may, at the end of the day, explain why successive UK governments have allowed Lloyd's to effectively exempt themselves from all legal claims by investors and take on the nature of a sovereign state.

For investors and risk managers, the legal and sovereign risk illustrated by the Tropp v. the Corporation of Lloyd's litigation boggles the mind. If the Tropp petition is denied by the US Supreme Court, can any US individual, fund or fiduciary invest in Lloyd's with confidence? If you examine the history of Tropp and other investors, particularly the way in which existing contracts with investors were unilaterally revised by Lloyd's after the crisis two decades ago, it is hard to describe the situation as anything but arbitrary and fundamentally unfair. Is this how the people of Great Britain wish to be seen in the global marketplace?

As one investor told The IRA, the US Supreme Court "must face the implausible, distasteful, and counter-intuitive reality" that the UK legal system did not meet even minimal US standards of due process when it comes to protecting the rights of investors in Lloyd's. Indeed, we see the true risk to Lloyd's as winning this US litigation. Then every American investor and fiduciary will be on notice that they may have no effective legal protection for any investment made in the Corporation of Lloyd's.

Questions? Comments? info@institutionalriskanalytics.com
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Lloyds Litigation Timeline [draft]

1979-81 US: Congress enacts CERCLA (Superfund, environmental toxics contamination clean-up liability), US EPA drafts regs implementing it. Separately, US courts expand asbestos Incurred But Not [yet] Reported (“IBNR”) liability to become “long-tail”, unlimited in time as to how far in the future a reinsurer is liable for claims which originated in the underwriting year it had insured, based on an “occurrence” test (had an IBNR liability originated in that year) irrespective of how far in the future a liability might “manifest” as a notified claim.

1979-81 UK: Lloyd’s itself is named co-defendant in multiple fraud suits by members of Lloyd’s syndicates against their syndicate’s managing agent, notably Sasse, on a theory of liability by Lloyd’s itself for negligent failure to supervise and regulate agents in Lloyd’s’ market. On reported advice of counsel that it could be held to have such a duty, Lloyd’s settles and pays. UK Government (“UKG”) appoints Fisher Working Party to examine why the market is egregiously infected with conflicts of interest and repeated insider self-dealing by agents against their principals the members of the Society of Lloyd’s. Fisher report 1980 finds that Lloyd’s’ contractual regulatory authority is inadequate to enforce fair dealing in the market, recommends that Parliament give Lloyd’s strengthened statutory authority as a self-regulator

Dec. 1981-spring 1982: Lloyd’s’ Panel of Auditors warns its Council (board) that based on notifications in 1981 by US insurers who had reinsured with Lloyd’s underwriting year 1979 syndicates of long-tail IBNR asbestos liability to policy-holders originating from underwriting 1979, the future timing of when that IBNR would “manifest” as notified claims and the amount of those claims could not reasonably be projected. The auditors warned that consequently those syndicates which had written comprehensive general liability (“CGL”) seemed massively underreserved on a solvency level (against the regulatory requirement to “reserve to ultimate”) as opposed to on an annual liquidity basis (only that amount required to pay losses from 1979 which manifested next year as notified claims), and that the auditors could see no way to calculate a fair-value premium for the “reinsurance to close” (RITC) which would be required to close the accounts of those syndicates for their 1979 underwriting year at the end of its standard Lloyd’s 3-year claims period at 12/31/81.

Note: It seemed to the auditors that those syndicates therefore had to remain “open” and go into “run-off”, insolvency workout. This information remains closely held for years among members of the Council committee.

1981-82: Parliament enacts Lloyd’s Act of 1982, which gives Lloyd’s strengthened statutory (as vs. only contractual) authority to supervise and regulate agents in the Lloyd’s market. Act required divestiture by brokers (representing the buyer side in an insurance transaction) and underwriters (seller side) of one another, to end flagrant structural conflict of interest: brokers and underwriters owned one another or had common controlling principals, so in effect were on both sides of deals in the Lloyd’s market. This had facilitated collusive self-dealing by both sides acting together, though nominally at arms’ length from one another, against their insured policy-holder customers (buyers) or their nominal principals the members of their managed syndicates (sellers).

Act sec. 14 provides an immunity shield for Lloyd’s and its individual officers, staff, and agents against liability in damages for negligence or other tort, except on showing of bad faith. Intent of the immunity, the subject of protracted Parliamentary hearings and heated opposition by other UK self-regulatory organizations (“SROs”) such as the Stock Exchange, was to facilitate the exercise of strengthened statutory self-regulatory “public functions” given to Lloyd’s by the Act to regulate its agents and the market.

1983: Lloyd’s’ very first bylaw after the Act, “Interpretation Byelaw (No. 1 of 1983), assumes statutory authority for all Lloyd’s bylaws including those issued in its private commercial capacity, not only (as Parliament intended) those issued in the performance of its statutory self-regulatory “public functions” under the Act. The byelaw requires that “...every Lloyd’s byelaw… shall be deemed to be ‘subordinate legislation’ [under] that Act”. UK courts uphold this self-assumption of statutory authority in considering particular Lloyd’s bylaws issued in its clearly merely private capacity (e.g. Arbuthnott v Fagan 1994).

The effect is that UK courts defer to all Lloyd’s’ bylaws as carrying Parliamentary authority from their statute, deeming them “statutory instruments” with authority exactly as if they were regulations of UKG agencies. (P&B (Run-Off) Ltd. v Woolley 2004, Court of Appeal [“EWCA”], para 31 [Lord Phillips, Master of the Rolls, then-Chief Judge of the EWCA]).

Note: Britain’s jurisprudence of “Parliamentary supremacy and sovereignty” is the anti-Marbury v Madison; Marbury was crafted by the early US Supreme Court to be, precisely, its antithesis. Under that jurisprudence, any UK legal instrument invested with statutory authority preempts, in the formal sense in which that expression is used in US constitutional law, all other English law. Thus, the UK courts, in deferring to Lloyd’s’ bylaws as “subordinate legislation” which bears Parliamentary authority, gave Lloyd’s the authority to override all other English law, such as the hallowed old English law of contract and of insurance, by formally precluding defenses against Lloyd’s claims when those claims relied on the legal authority of a bylaw -- whether issued in Lloyd’s’ regulatory “public functions” or in its merely commercial private capacity, and whether in the interest of the whole Lloyd’s market or only in that of insider management as against the market and its members.

1982-87: Lloyd’s recruits tens of thousands of new members, reportedly more middle-class rather than its traditional wealthy, including for the first time thousands of non-Britons. Lloyd’s had previously not allowed members’ letters of credit (“L/Cs”) supporting their underwriting to be secured by their home, but relaxes that rule, and recruits many elderly “house-poor” into liquefying their home’s capital value for investment purposes by securing an irrevocable evergreen L/C with it, at risk that it could be seized if Lloyd’s cash-called on the L/C to cover losses. Old-wealth Names from before 1982 are quietly moved off syndicates which reinsure what Lloyd’s insiders called the pre-1982 “old years” long-tail risk. 1990s analysis finds that new recruits, Americans and perhaps Irish especially, were disproportionately stacked onto those syndicates.

Before 1982, RITC by a syndicate to close its accounts for a particular underwriting year at the end of that year’s 3-year claims period had been with a non-Lloyd’s market reinsurer such as a Munich Re or Swiss Re, another syndicate run at arms’ length by an unrelated managing agency, or the successor year of account (“YoA”) of the same syndicate. Beginning 1982 for the long-tail syndicates, RITC increasingly is done only with the same syndicate’s successor YoA: the same managing agent is on both the buyer and the seller side of the RITC transaction, with no independent arms’ length scrutiny of whether the RITC premium paid by the prior-year buyer syndicate to its reinsuring future-year successor would meet regulatory accounting capital-adequacy solvency standards as being enough to bear all the IBNR liability being passed into the future by the RITC.

1987: Beginning reportedly with underwriting year 1987, Lloyd’s changes the General Undertaking that all members have to sign so as to require that new members commit to UK “choice of law” and “forum selection” in the event of dispute between Lloyd’s and members. For Americans, this contractual provision is construed by US courts in the 1990s to have been a voluntary waiver of all protections in US securities laws, overriding the anti-waiver provision of those laws.

1990-91: In response to cash calls against members to cover losses they had not been led to anticipate, a wave of UK and US plaintiff class lawsuits begins against the highest-loss long-tail and “LMX” Lloyd’s agents and Lloyd’s itself, pleading “fraud on the inducement” to the original contract and seeking rescission. The US lawsuits rely on US securities law rights and remedies. The UK groups win reportedly every such suit against agents, losing every one against Lloyd’s itself.

The US groups lose every lawsuit one against both Lloyds defendants on the basis that the “choice” clauses in their entering agreement committed them to dispute resolution under English law in UK courts, and since they hadn’t tried, they had made no showing (under the controlling case Bremen v Zapata establishing the standards in the Federal common law of forum selection) that UK remedies were “unavailable” or were “inadequate” to vindicate their rights in US securities law under comparable UK law.

Sept. 1991: In Bonny v Lloyd’s in the Chicago U.S. District Court, then-Magistrate (now District) Judge Joan B. Gottschall presciently determines that such UK remedies would be held unavailable by UK courts because of preclusion by Lloyd’s’ sec. 14 immunity, as a matter of UK public policy. Lloyd’s stipulates to a one-time waiver of reliance on its immunity if the court overrules her, denies US hearing to the Bonnys and leaves them only a UK option to litigate. The court does so, in reliance on the “stip” without reaching the question of whether, without it, the immunity would have left the Bonny parties without available UK remedy. The 7th Circuit upholds denial of US hearing.

Lloyd’s re-submits its Bonny UK barristers’ affidavits in Roby v Lloyd’s in the Manhattan US District Court (“SDNY”), assuring that court and the 2nd Cir of availability of UK remedies in contract, misrepresentation, fraud, public law, and all equitable remedies. The 2nd Cir. relies on those affidavits as evidence confirming Lloyd’s’ pleadings, and denies hearing to the Roby group in reliance on the availability of especially remedies in misrepresentation and fraud against Lloyd’s itself, rights against Lloyd’s’ agents (as issuers of Lloyd’s investment securities, financial participations in their syndicates), and equitable remedies including rescission equivalent to those in US securities law.

Subsequent 1993-98 denials of hearing to plaintiffs by other US courts in other circuits rely on Bonny and Roby case findings of availability of adequate UK remedy, focusing on, in particular, those UK remedies which would substantively vindicate plaintiffs’ rights in US securities law.

Meanwhile, in the UK, as this line of US cases was unfolding in reliance on Lloyd’s’ representations to American judges, Lloyd’s was aggressively litigating to develop law that would shield it from all the English-law remedies of whose availability it was at the time assuring US courts. Ashmore v Corp. of Lloyd’s (No. 2) (July 1992), before the 7th Cir.’s decision in Bonny and before both the District Court’s and 2nd Cir.’s decisions in Roby, established that Lloyd’s owed no statutory duty to its members, no common law duty of care, and no implied contractual duty for breach of any of which Lloyd’s could be liable to them, expressly including no duty to supervise its agents and no “duty to speak” to disclose wrongdoing by its agents to those agents’ members. Ashmore also held that “despite the absence of express reference to contract” in the sec. 14 immunity, which on its face is limited to shielding Lloyd’s from liability only for “negligence or other tort”, the immunity shields Lloyd’s from all claims in contract as well. This stripped all rights and protections in the hallowed English law of contract from Lloyd’s members, as a matter of UK law.

“Rule 11” duty notwithstanding, nobody on the Lloyd's side of these lawsuits so informed the US courts at the time.

Lloyd’s v Clementson (EWCA Nov. 1994) confirmed that Lloyd’s owes no implied contractual, or any other, duty to supervise and regulate its insider agents to protect Lloyd’s members from any breach of duty by their agents, and could not, therefore, be liable for any such omission.

A dozen years later, in Tropp’s UK case, Lloyd’s in its pleadings and the Commercial Court and EWCA in their denials of hearing were to rely on Ashmore and Clementson as the lead authorities which had established it as then-settled law that Lloyd’s’ sec. 14 immunity shut Tropp out of all hearing on his claims, precluded reliance by him on rights in all other English law on whose availability US courts had relied in the ‘90s line of cases which had denied plaintiffs US hearing, and precluded the UK courts from considering (much less granting) all the post-deprivation contractual and equitable English-law remedies for which he pleaded.

-30-

http://www.zerohedge.com/article/update ... n-timeline


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Re: Lloyd's of London as Masonic Institution

Postby seemslikeadream » Thu Sep 25, 2014 10:14 pm

bump
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
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