Can someone please explain the explosion of threads about the Freemasons?
I can’t tell you. It’s a secret.
That is just it…It ISN’T a secret society anymore. Hasn’t been for 200 years…YAAAAAAAAAAAAA
Only not everyone agrees with that statement, and there is still a blantatly secretive and dubious culture in some outposts of freemasonry. Italy banned secret societies in 1981 after controversy over the activities of a freemasons group called P2. The British government requested that all members of the police and judiciary voluntarily identify their masonic affiliations to allay concerns about the influence of freemasonry in the British legal system. One group of MPs in 1999 concluded that the activity of masons was an unquanitifiable but potentially significant factor in the outcome of the Stalker affair and 1980s miscarriages of justice in the West Midlands. Concerns over the sale of buildings in Merseyside and the running of Pembrokeshire council also implicated masons (the former case due to the testimony of a masonic officer).
There’s no doubting that freemasons have suffered some unjustified hounding over history, but they haven’t exactly covered themselves with glory in proving their transparency.
Blantatly? Damn. Blatantly was what I meant to say.
But P2 was never proven to be a Masonic organization, only that it had a few Masons in it. If I get a few members from the Black Panther Party to come over to my house and make a quilt, it does not imply that the entire group condones, agrees with, or enjoys quilting. On that topic, did they ever prove that “P2” existed? By “they” I mean government, or some official proof, not conspiracy theorists.
And as far as the British forcing cops to say whether they are members or not, is complete discrimination…“Fraternal profiling” if you will.
Good to see them stop short of blaming a xenophobic, crooked police force. :rolleyes:
then again, that probably wasnt in their brief.
The way I understand it, P2 was heavily Masonic. however, the reason for this is that its members were recruited within a particular lodge in Italy. The lodge then had its official status revoked. So while P2 was a conspiracy of masons, it was not a Masonic Conspiracy(hope that made sense). Oh and since I started to masonic treads recently I assume that played a role in the OP here. What happened was that I had two seperate things I was wondering about after reading another thread, one question belonged in GQ, the other seemed more at home in GD. so that might have made it look like there was more of an influx of new threads than there was.
Why the sudden interest in the sudden interest??? What are you trying to hide??? Who sent you???
DaLovin’ Dj
They probably reran The Simpsons’ “Stonecutters” episode again.
As far as the UK Civil Service goes, working in a prison makes me a Civil Servant, the declaration of Masonic memebership is carried out using a standard form sent throughout National Government organisations.
Is is worded in such a way that leaves one in little doubt about the conerns of those who collect such information.
Although very polite and very simple, the form asks wehter you are a member of any secret organisation, or not, or wether you do not wish to confirm either way.
Return of the form is compulsory, it is a condition of employment but the explanatory leaflet that comes with it hints that failure to comply with the procedure may well be linked to promotion prospects, and false declarations are a discplinary matter.
There is a perception, wether true or not, that to get along in the UK Prison Service one had, until very recently to be a Mason and the aim of the study was to try to either prove or disprove that feeling.
In Northern Ireland this takes on a far more serious aspect since secret societies also means the Orange Order, and the current peace process in NI is highly dependant on the role and make up of the Northern Irish police force, which is almost exclsively drawn from the Protestant community, and in some ways can be said to be indicative of what caused the violence of the past thirty years, the feeling of Catholic disenfranchisement.
When one looks at how such memebership can be abused by looking at the Northern Ireland situation, then it is clear that secrecy in a public body is incompatible with that role, simply because it can be a threat to democracy.
No doubt someone will come along and gainsay the threat to democracy but we have seen its effects for real, and real people have died as a result.
Well, but the public body isn’t secret. In this case, individuals who are civil servants are also privately members of organizations. Not allowing civil servants in such organizations, or requiring them to report their membership also can be threatening to democracy, by limiting their ability to freely associate.
Is there anything really WRONG with the Masons (other than what Jack Chick says)? I mean, my grandfather’s been a Mason for years and my grandmother was an Eastern Star…I never really NOTICED them sacrificing animals or trying to overthrow the government or communicating with aliens (except my mother) and you’d think that since I was over there a lot, I would’ve seen SOMETHING peculiar.
Ah shucks, things look way better in ones head than when posted, what I meant was that a public servant who is therefore publicly accountable should not be seen to be*in a position where they may be percieved as being biased.
From the viewpoint of a Catholic in Northern Ireland, the fact that the overwhelming majority of those employed in certain work, such as law-enforcement, judiciary, civil service and almost any Governmental postion are Protestetant and that the vast majority of the highest postions have until recently been held by members of the Orange Order, whose membership is secret and whose interests are generally considered to be pro-Protestant and anti-Catholic, then democracy has already been compromised.
No-one is suggesting that folk should not associate freely with whom they choose, but to keep your membership secret when that organisation has certain interests that are at odds with a democratic society, this is when it becomes a threat, and is the furthest extension of the fears of those who do not belong to such societies.
People are always going to be suspicious of powerful individuals grouping themselves in secret societies and quite rightly so, if they have nothing to hide, then why hide it ?
(*****in the Civil sevice staff handbook, it is not enough to be free of corruption, bias, or lack of integrity, the potential appearance of it is enough to invoke investigations and even if you are in the clear it would be written up as being ‘poor judgement’ on the part of the employee)
No Noctourne, there is nothing wrong with the Masons, other than the ignorance of non-Masons. Most people forget that the Masons are pretty much the minor leagues for the Shriners…You know, the guys with the little cars, and funny hats?
However, the Shriners also run children’s hospitals, where a child whose parents don’t have insurance can get treatment at little or no cost. I expect if you told those parents that the Masons, or the Shriners were “a secret, evil organization”, they would probably rip your head off.
Ignorance. It is what causes rascism, and religious differences. This is pretty much the same thing.
Well, groups like the Masons or the Orangemen, while they’re secret societies in the sense that their meetings are closed, and they have ceremonies they don’t let outsiders see, aren’t secret in the sense that members have to keep their membership a secret, for example. I mean, here’s the list of officers of the Orangemen
http://www.grandorange.org.uk/officers.htm
Don’t get me wrong, I think the Orange Order is a stupid, bigoted organization, but it, along with the Masons, is a legal organization, and it’s none of the government’s business who is a member. The danger of the government keeping a list like that is that an individual might be denied promotion or otherwise disadvantaged if his membership in the organization is known. It, in all likelyhood, wouldn’t, but the possibility is there. The other danger is that, if members of the secret society really do want to bias the organization to help their members, now they have a list of who is a member. Forcing civil servants to disclose their membership is violative of privacy and, rather than reducing the problems from membership in the societies, increases them, because the membership and declaration of this membership becomes a political act.
Sorry to disagree but there are circumstances when this is quite rightly a matter of public concern.
The head of the Metropolitan Police Force declared that the way his organisation operates is institutionally racist following the findings of an inquiry into a seriously mismanaged investigation into the murder of a black teenager Steven Lawrence.
This report was extremely scathing about the attitudes of the police, and how the police had been allowed to become so inept(there are still some concenrs that this ineptness was sinister rather than incompetant)
The racist attitudes and policies of the London Police force led directly to riots and civil disorder in London which sparked copycat riots in other areas where there is a large minority population.
With that in mind would you say that it is an infringement of the rights of police officers to forbid them from acting politically on behalf of racist political parties such as the National Front, and the British National Party(BNP) ?
Fact is that if a serving police officer were found to belong to such an organisation they would find their employment terminated.
These racist groups try to keep their membership lists secret, it is not a criminal offence to belong to such a group, it only become that when one behaves in a racist manner, but as a black person, how much confidence would you have in a police force that allowed its employees to be part of such groups ?
In the context of peace and equality for all in Northern Ireland, the idea that you can be fair to all citizens of Northern Ireland, and a member of the Orange Order is anathema to anyone involved, for such folk to be part of law enforcement and involved in Orange Order politics is a fundamental clash between public and private life, they are incompatible, you can be one or the other, but not both.