We are grateful to a reader of Freemasonry Today for suggesting that we might wish to interview Peter Harrison. Given that our interviews seek to cover masons doing interesting things it did not take us long to decide that we really did want to meet this man and mason.
    Shortly after speaking with his Personal Assistant, I answered my telephone to a booming, ‘Peter Harrison here, what’s all this about?’
    Some days later - and not being a stranger to executive offices - I was ushered into seriously large and opulent accommodation. It seemed too big - until he came in.
    He doesn’t meet and greet you – he envelops you. So, how do you start a conversation with a man who was a pioneer in developing the World Wide Web infrastructure, sold his business for £300,000,000, Vice President of Chelsea Football Club, sponsor of the Americas Cup for 2002 and 2007, winner of the Cowes Week Britannia Cup, heads his own charitable foundation and is a Freemason. I looked him hard in the eyes and demanded from him his most significant childhood impressions.
    ‘It was from between the ages of three to nine: my Father was mostly away in the war. So, it was survival with Mum, and sharing the care, with her, of a younger brother and an evacuee. It was Mum’s side of the family that had the ambition and even though on modest income, my parents managed, in the 1930s, to obtain a mortgage and buy our home. My Father did come back from the war but for me it was school, football, cricket and scouts. These developed within me the will to succeed, provided challenge and adventure and an initial understanding of the leadership qualities required to excite and motivate a team. I was always thinking from a leadership point of view.’
    That seemed to answer that question and we went on to discuss what happened after leaving school:
    ‘Resources had always been tight and so, in my mid teens, I determined to make money. That meant enough to meet all my obligations and to have some left over to do, what I wanted to do, with it. University wasn’t affordable but I was very lucky to have been advised by friends to go into accountancy and after starting at age eighteen at £1 a week, became chartered three years later. I continued with sport and began my over thirty year long, rugby playing career - sailing came a bit later. Accountancy, doing other peoples last years’ books, though an important task - wasn’t for me. I wanted to look at the future and saw a Ford’s advertisement for a post in their Forward Planning Department. This was it. In this job I acquired an understanding of the potential of products, how markets are built and how their future growth can be resourced and achieved. It is about market responses to the performance and price of emerging products, and business survival during their introduction and growth cycles.’

The birth of email

    We then moved on to a big opportunity: ‘Yes, one of the businesses I was running was Chernifeeff Instruments. It was not future-proof, it was too tied to the Defence industry and I couldn’t see sufficient growth. Their products were sending electronic data around ships. I was looking at the existing telecoms products and markets and thinking about sending data around bigger areas. The parent company did not want to go there and so I had to put the full value of my home on the line and acquire the business. I was now at the helm. I was looking at the telex machine and realised that here was a product that was capable of much greater performance and could create a new world market. I was not prepared to put up with some old institution that was not going to work. Therefore the instrument company was run to generate some of the resources to develop both a product and market for a telex machine that could automatically undertake dialling and transmission and link in with computers, VDUs and the emerging data management products. This was a substantial step in the birth of networking and the email.’
    In 1987 Peter Harrison’s vision led him to the networking start-up companies in the United States and he chose Cisco’s data routing system which provided high speed links between computers in a network – this was the arrival of World Wide Web. He projected a five year market growth but this he got wrong, tenfold - he had under-estimated its size! The rest is success, success, success. It was with my head reeling from international corporate entrepreneurialism and the world’s most complex products that the even more demanding subject of how Freemasonry fitted into all of this, had to be considered.
    ‘At about the same time as I took over Chernikeeff I became a mason. I enjoyed going through the lodge and my year as Master. I was immediately attracted to the charitable objectives. I became a mason, being initiated into the Reigate Priory Lodge, No. 4526. That wasn’t a difficult job really but at times it seemed more challenging than running a multinational business. If I didn’t do the money that night I could forget what it was all for.’
    ‘However, what has been most significant for me has been my last twenty four years on the Board of the Nutfield Masonic Centre, Surrey. It was that long ago that an elder brother said that he had been looking at me, wished to stand down from the Board and felt that I could take over from him. Obviously I was flattered at being asked – you always are - but I did think that I could bring managerial experience that could be recognised as being of use. I have been Chairman since 1991 and am standing down at the next AGM. As Freemasons we are building a speculative temple of good works – largely the cathedral of our charitable giving - but we do this from the ‘adjoining’ lodge building.’
    ‘The way that our charitable giving is organised is superb. Lodges are set ambitious targets and there is great recognition for those that achieve; jewels are struck and lodges can publish their degree of patronage. However we are masons and we meet in buildings and I would like to pay tribute to all those who work away at keeping a roof over our heads. It may however be unfortunate that there may not be systematic recognition of their work even though they are personally financially accountable and could be jailed for non-compliance with health and safety regulations. Perhaps even more significant is the possibility that the enhanced recognition of charitable giving is a disincentive to adequately support, maintain and develop Masonic centre buildings. It is after all, a straightforward asset management issue - investing in the future of Freemasonry. Our accommodation standards must comply with regulations, be worthy of our existing members and an incentive to new members. There was a time when I might have been interested in developing an asset management competence way beyond just the locality. But, I guess I failed to excite a team to develop this further - no mason in particular is bigger than Freemasonry in general.’

The Peter Harrison Foundation

    It was time to talk about now and the future. It had to be the Peter Harrison Foundation. It was set up in 1999 with £31,000,000 of his money to finance projects that help, largely young people, to overcome disabilities and disadvantage.
    ‘I believe that education and sport provide the stepping stones to self-development, the creation of choice, the building of self-confidence and selfreliance. By making these stepping stones available I hope that the Foundation will provide opportunities for people to develop their full potential.’
    It is obvious that he thrives in the work of his Foundation which provides about £1,250,000 per annum to projects in five programmes. I asked him if there were any links from the Foundation to the masonic charities.
    ‘For me this is an extension of my masonic commitment to charity, it is a part of my Freemasonry. When I was setting it up, it was all in the public domain. I was surprised that there were no masonic approaches either locally, regionally or nationally to explore some synergies of linkage or partnership working.’
    Nothing that I could ever write could do justice to Peter Harrison, man and mason. He absolutely refused to discuss his extensive private and personal Masonic charitable giving. Here is a person who had the vision to anticipate the World Wide Web and the email systems and the courage, competency and control to be a strategic part of its delivery – captain, navigator and helmsman. He has many interests, each of them competing for his attention; perhaps some are achieving better than others. As he said, no mason is bigger than masonry, but masonry must be big enough to use the potential of all its members, including those who are world class.

Gerald Reilly, a regular contributor to Freemasonry Today, is a member of St. Osyth’s Priory Lodge, No. 2063, Clacton on Sea.