The old ritual demanded absolute silence. The secret was known to only three men in the world, and those three could not reveal it without the consent of the other two. A violent blow was aimed at the head of the master, but his firm demeanor startled the ruffian, so the blow only glanced off his right temple. He sank to his left knee, and then the villain struck again, laying him lifeless at his feet.
This was not ancient history. This was Freemasonry’s third-degree ceremony, reenacting the murder of Hiram Abiff, the mythical architect of Solomon’s Temple. Half a million men in Britain today, including thousands of police officers, have passed through that ritual. In 1987, Detective Alan “Taffy” Holmes, a Freemason who had joined the craft while serving at Cuddon Police Station, faced the ultimate test of his loyalty.
He was not a corrupt man, but he was under enormous pressure to protect a Masonic colleague. Scotland Yard’s anti-corruption squad, CIB2, suspected he knew about crooked links between a Masonic detective commander and Kenneth Noye, the man convicted of receiving part of the £26 million in gold stolen in the 1983 Brinks Mat robbery. Without Holmes knowing it, CIB2 arranged for him to be secretly recorded as he gossiped with a fellow detective in his lodge. When they told him he had unknowingly betrayed his brothers, he became deeply distressed.
One morning, in his back garden, he shot and killed himself. John Simons worked with Holmes in the 1960s and knew him well. “He was a strong man, a very good man,” he said. “Honest, no fear in him whatsoever.
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At the time of his death, Taffy Holmes was master of Benham Lodge. His fellow Masons sent symbolic wreaths to his funeral. One read: “To our brave, wonderful, and worshipful master, who chose death rather than dishonor his friends and workmates. ”
They believed he had died like Hiram Abiff, refusing to betray the secrets.
The connection between Freemasonry and police corruption runs deep. Many allegations involve outsiders using Masonic bonds to persuade officers to drop prosecutions. Former Inspector Brian Hillard recalled a sergeant once telling him that a man he was about to prosecute had approached the sergeant to ask if the case could be dropped. “I said it would depend entirely on what the witnesses say,” Hillard remembered.
The man was prosecuted. He was fined. As he left court, he shook his head sadly and said, “I don’t know how we can do this to one another. ”
Hillard was certain the man was a Mason who believed Hillard was one too.
Masonic police officers claim they see no conflict between the job and the craft. But critics argue that a group within the force holds loyalties stronger than their duty to the police and the public. So why do so many young policemen join? Because a Masonic membership could improve your chances of promotion or selection for the elite CID.
That was exactly John Simons’ experience. But there was another vital qualification for young police officers eager to become detectives: you either had to be corrupt or willing to condone corruption. They didn’t want officers in the CID who would be horrified by corruption and make waves. In 1969, an old tradition prevailed at Scotland Yard.
Some senior officers took payoffs from major criminals and let them run their rackets, as long as the criminals kept the peace. The relationship was corrupt, and it was oiled by money. That year, The Times newspaper was contacted by a small-time criminal claiming he was fed up with detectives extorting money from him. Reporters tape-recorded his encounters with police.
One officer explained how the criminal could buy immunity to commit crime across London. That officer’s phrase was: “I’m a member of a little firm within a firm. ”
The officer was Freemason John Simons. When the story was published, Simons was charged with soliciting a £50 bribe and suspended.
He didn’t deny the corruption of the time, but he claimed the charge was absurd. Faced with what he saw as a setup, he sent word to the investigating officers that if he was jailed, he would expose many other corrupt detectives. The chief investigator was Superintendent Bill Moody, himself a Freemason. Simons sent a message to Moody through another Mason, saying he knew what was going on.
Unless the investigation stopped, he would expose everything he knew about Metropolitan Police corruption, Freemasonry’s involvement in it, and the porn squad. Simons knew the traditional punishment for Masonic traitors: having the throat cut, being severed in two, the bowels burnt to ashes. He understood the danger of a Masonic threat. It wasn’t about physical injury, he said.
It was about a group of powerful people holding tremendous animosity toward you. So Simons fought fire with fire. He gave a solicitor a dossier listing the crimes of fellow detectives, to be published if anything happened to him. Then some colleagues offered him a deal.
“I was more or less escorted out of the country,” he said. He received advice and money—£2,000, a fortune in those days. The money came originally from Superintendent Moody and his colleagues. Simons fled abroad.
When he returned seven years later, he received a two-year jail term. Ironically, by then the man who had investigated him was himself imprisoned for twelve years. Bill Moody had been jailed in 1977 alongside Commander Ken Drury of the Flying Squad. Both were Masons, and both had taken enormous bribes from pornographers.
Moody had dealings with at least one pornographer, a man called Ron “The Dustman” Davey. They met at Moody’s lodge and did business through Masonic connections. At least three of the people tried with Moody were Masons. The trials lifted the veil on a hidden world where Masonic police mixed with Masonic crooks in the secrecy of lodges.
But honest Masons argued it was to the Brotherhood’s credit that several Crown witnesses were also Freemasons. They were primarily good investigative officers who pursued their duty with rigor. A hundred years earlier, in 1877, corruption had been so endemic in Scotland Yard’s detective department that complete reorganization was necessary. Even then, Masonry had played a dominant role.
In 1978, John Simons moved to take charge of the CID in the City of London police. Corruption had been rife among city detectives for decades, so he decided not to reveal that he was a Mason. “I knew the principles involved in it were Freemasons,” he said. “I wanted to do my job as it should be done.
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When officers first met him, they made the usual signs and used the usual language to identify whether he was a brother. Simons didn’t respond. But his cover was blown when an ambitious detective chief inspector named Phil Cuthbert met an old friend of Simons at a Masonic function. Cuthbert came running into the office the next day.
“You’ve been telling porkies, governor. You’re on the square. ”
Simons admitted the truth but insisted it made no difference to the job. For days afterward, the men who had tried to approach him came in with smirky smiles.
“So pleased to know you’re on the square. ”
Simons told them all the same thing: “It makes no difference. The job will be done as it should be done. ”
Nobody said anything contrary, but he knew his words had not been truly accepted.
Then Cuthbert asked for a quiet word on the square. Simons guessed what was coming: Cuthbert wanted to confess his crooked role in recent robberies, trusting the Masonic bond. But Simons was not prepared to treat a criminal confession as confidential. They met in a pub in Artillery Passage.
Cuthbert talked for three hours about senior detectives and their collusion in robberies. He was reckless about his own role. He believed that, as a Mason, he could speak freely and that Simons would never let him down. Simons was recording the entire conversation.
His evidence formed the core of the case against Cuthbert, who was tried in 1982 for taking up to £80,000 in bribes. He got three years in prison. But the man who gave evidence against a brother became a Masonic outcast. Weeks later, Simons attended a meeting at Connaught Rooms, the headquarters of British Freemasonry.
An old acquaintance, a police officer and a Mason, sat across the room. Their eyes met. The man stared at him, shook his head slowly, and ran his finger across his throat. “I thought, what am I doing here?
I need to get out of this place. ”
The gesture was a Masonic sign: that a man would rather have his throat cut than divulge secrets. The sign is given by drawing the hand sharply across the throat. No one seriously believes the threats will be carried out, but that does not reduce their psychological force.
There is nothing like fear to instill loyalty. But even more powerful is the threat of being cast out, becoming the total outsider, the man sent to Coventry for years. Simons resigned from his lodge, dismayed at the gap between Masonry’s high principles and its often shady practice. The lodge ceremony reads aloud the moral law: to be a good man and true, to obey the moral law, to be a peaceable subject and cheerfully conform to the laws of the country.
Too many Masons stray far from that ideal. Leonard John Gibson is a case in point. In 1979, Gibson was installed as master of the Waterways Lodge in North London, just seven years after his initiation. But Masonry was not Gibson’s only interest.
At that time, the Flying Squad circulated a confidential handbook of London’s top 100 violent thieves. Among them was Worshipful Master Len Gibson. His criminal record included convictions for handling stolen goods and shopbreaking. His specialty was armed robbery.
Yet eight policemen were members of the Waterways Lodge when Gibson was master. One was a former Flying Squad chief inspector who declined to comment. Soon after becoming lodge master, Gibson pulled off one of Britain’s biggest robberies: the theft of silver bullion worth £4 million. Three months later he was arrested.
In January 1981, at the Old Bailey, he was given a ten-year sentence, as were two other Masons in the gang. What happens to Masons convicted of serious crime? They should be excluded completely, some argue. There should be no road back.
But not all of Freemasonry felt that way. The Silver Robbers were not thrown out. Throughout Gibson’s five years in jail, he was listed by his lodge as a country member. On his release, the lodge welcomed him back.
Even after newspapers revealed the robbers were Freemasons, the Brotherhood’s ruling body, Grand Lodge, allowed them to stay. Then, six weeks later, Grand Lodge changed course. At a ninety-minute hearing, hundreds of Freemasons heard the robbers plead their case. Most voted against them, and they were expelled.
But the debate was intense and unprecedented. Freemasonry’s grand secretary said the argument in favor of allowing them to stay had no real merit. They felt they had repaid their debt to society. They enjoyed their Masonry and felt they had something to contribute.
But their presence as convicted robbers performing Masonic rituals alongside police was an embarrassment. It had taken nine years for Grand Lodge to discover the truth.
