Just what does Chris Mullin MP think he’s doing with the Home Affairs Select Committee? If you want to know what he thinks he’s doing, then read our interview with him. What are we to make of it? As we reported in last year’s summer edition, the committee as chaired by Ivan Laurence MP (he lost his seat in the election) exonerated the Craft from the slur that justice is compromised by members of the judiciary or police force being Freemasons. So why the new demands for disclosure by the judiciary and law-enforcement agencies? According to Mullin, it’s because there’s a public suspicion, and if we had nothing to hide then we wouldn’t mind disclosure. But suspicion alone is not a basis for disclosure. The burden is on the committee to prove that the suspicion is justified. So now the new chairman is seeking evidence to support the suspicion - a curiously inverted approach not a proper basis for gathering ‘evidence’. It plays into the hands of the paranoid type and conspiracy-theorist.
    We believe Mr Mullin should look deeply into the grounds for suspicion in the first place. The chief ground is simple ignorance - and often wilful ignorance - of the true character of the Craft. So far as the law currently allows, we cannot tolerate a situation where masons might be made to feel that they are doing something wrong by being masons. We know Freemasonry is good. While Chris Mullin believes that it is “reasonable” to enforce disclosure to allay suspicion, we say the existence of a list would have precisely the opposite effect; it would represent a tacit admission of potential guilt, an aquiescence to prejudice, and will in fact fuel suspicion. Hostile critics will be able to say : “If you were all above board, there’d be no law enforcing disclosure, would there?” This is an awful burden for private citizens to bear, no matter how restricted the list might appear to be.
    We believe in Freemasonry because we know what it stands for. Mr Mullin says he’s read one book on the Craft : Inside the Brotherhood by Martin Short. Is this objectivity? It is like asking a dictator to make a judgement on Christianity who has only read Karl Marx. The proper way to allay suspicion is to continue our creative policy of openness and information. Having said that, it is difficult to know what more we could do to open the eyes of the prejudiced and hostile. Would that all good men were masons! Those who wish to attack the reputation of the Craft - and it is our reputation which is at stake - should recall that Freemasonry’s greatest enemies have been totalitarian governments : Mussolini, Franco, Hitler and Stalin all persecuted masons. Freemasonry upholds a free and virtuous society. We are proud of our record and are not prepared to have it besmirched by the ignorant.
    The use of a Commons Select Committee to pursue a private interest (albeit expressed as a ‘public interest’) is a phenomenon which must make all good people wonder about the status of their civic rights in a free society. We should not be forced into defending the goodness of the Craft. We must continue to assert and practice it.
    Tobias Churton