It looked like the Court of Star Chamber. A horseshoe table behind which the eleven inquisitors sat, the open end bridged by a small table for the witnesses. Stark lighting, a forest of microphones and the all-seeing relentless eye of a television camera recording every twitch and tick of a body under stress. Add to that a sense of awe and history at being the representatives who were laying the case for Freemasonry before a senior committee of the mother of parliaments and you have some idea of the feelings running through the Grand Secretary and I when we spent an hour and fifty minutes being questioned by the Home Affairs Select Committee on 26th February 1997.
    As so often happens in life, the reality was different to the perception. In the main we were treated with courtesy and quickly sensed that the majority of the Committee were genuinely interested in extending their knowledge and understanding of Freemasonry, to be able to consider seriously and fairly the question before them : whether or not Freemasonry had any influence on the criminal justice system. Courtesy, particularly on the part of the Chairman, Sir Ivan Laurence, QC, MP, and the Committee Secretariat, had been markedly present throughout what had been a lengthy and intensive process.
    When in 1995 rumours began to circulate that the Committee might inquire into Freemasons, following established practice, Grand Secretary wrote immediately to the Committee Chairman, offering to assist the Committee. Matters then went quiet until the formal announcement that an enquiry would take place, with a request for written evidence to be submitted. Once that process commenced our involvement increased, and a lengthly correspondence began, with the Committee seeking additional information and background briefings on matters raised in written submissions by others. When the Committee started its public hearings in December 1996 - interviewing representatives from all the various branches of the criminal justice system - our workload increased dramatically. Now having some knowledge of what areas were likely to be covered when we appeared before the Committee, we had to ensure that we were well versed in the facts rather than the perceptions that had grown up around the events to be discussed.
    To anyone simply reading the amended conclusion of the report, it would seem that all the hard work was for nought and that the report had dammned Freemasonry. Anyone reading the report itself, however, will find that it has a lot of positive things to say. Early in its public sessions the Committee acknowledged that it was not dealing with facts but with a perception that Freemasonry interfered in the criminal justice system. The report characterises that perception as “unjustified paranoia” for which no evidence had been produced. The witnesses who, with the exceptions of Sir Ian Percival, QC, the Grand Secretary and myself, were not Freemasons, were all asked from their own professional experience or that or that of their own professional experience or that of their colleagues they could provide hard evidence to support the perception. They all replied in the negative. Such ‘evidence’ as was produced was of an anecdotal nature capable of a variety of interpretations, and most of it referred to events that were more than twenty years old.
    There was much discussion of the obligations that Freemasons take and their relationship with the oaths taken by Judges and Police Officers. Having been given the annotated texts of the Craft obligations and the Charge to the Initiate, the Committee concluded “that when the oaths are read in context, there is nothing in them that would appear sinister, and nothing in the evidence that we have heard that would show a conflict between the oath taken by a judge or policeman and that taken by a freemason”. Even stronger was their conclusion that “We do not consider there is anything sinister about Freemasonry, properly observed, and are confident that Freemasonry itself does not encourage malpractice”. That confidence was further expressed in the original conclusion to the report which began by saying that “it is obvious there is a great deal of unjustified paranoia about Freemasonry and we have no wish to add to it. It later continues “We are reluctant to recommend a compulsory form of registration and that to do so implies a basis for suspicion 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.”
    That conclusion, which followed on logically from the report that preceded it, was amended at the last moment on the proposition of Chris Mullin MP, to a recommendation calling for police officers, judges, magistrates and crown prosecutors (but suprisingly not solicitors or barristers, who are an integral part of the criminal justice system) to publicly register their membership of any secret society. It is comforting that the fair minded - be they Freemasons or not - have recognised the illogicality of the recommendation and have questioned the basing of a legal requirement on a public perception for which no one could provide any evidence. The open-minded have also noted the illogicality - after all the assistance given to the enquiry by Grand Lodge and individual Freemasons combined with Grand Lodge’s general policy of openness - in characterising Freemasonry as a “secret society”.
    The Committee’s conclusion that openness is the solution to the problem of public perception is one that we would certainly agree with, and has been a definite policy of Grand Lodge, with the active support of the Grand Master HRH The Duke of Kent, KG, since 1984. One thing which came through in the evidence submitted to the Committee was that the basis for the public perception was in many cases the wholly human reaction of suspicion and fear of the unknown. That reaction can only be countered by our regaining confidence that our pre-1939 brethren had to talk openly and proudly about our Freemasonry to dispel the miasma of myth and perception that has grown up around it.
    Publication of the report was noted by the media but did not produce the “Mason bashing” headlines that might have been expected. What will happen to the recommendation is in the hands of the others, but the possible options and their effect are being actively discussed within the management of the Craft.