The Brotherhood (11 page)

Corruption among Scotland Yard detectives, always a problem, grew enormously during the 1960s. One cause of the trouble was that conventional methods of detection were becoming less and less effective in the face of the burgeoning crime rate. Many policemen believed in a surer way of securing convictions that necessitated a blurring of the 'them and us' divide between the law enforcers and the law breakers. The belief was that to combat crime adequately, the police had to be intimately acquainted with the ways of individual criminals and the day-to-day workings of the underworld. This meant cultivating certain smaller villains, who in return for favours could be counted upon to 'grass' on the bigger men the Yard regarded as its prime quarry. The idea was not new. London police for generations had known that brilliant detective minds which required only sketchy clues and a warm fireside to solve the most bizarre crimes were fine for 221b Baker Street and 10a Piccadilly - but in the cold reality of life at Scotland Yard, things did not work out so neatly. Real-life detectives had to some extent to depend on informers; and informers were usually criminals. In the past it had been an unpalatable necessity, never officially recognized. By the 1960s it was the norm. The system inevitably brought temptation to many police officers, who would be offered money to keep quiet about so-and-so's activities, or a cut in the takings if they made sure the regular police patrol was diverted or unavoidably delayed on a particular night when a job was planned.

The question to be asked is: were there any masonic elements in this corruption, and but for Freemasonry would the corruption have been less likely to have occurred or more easily discovered?

In forces all over England, Freemasonry is strongest in the CID. This had been particularly noticeable at Scotland Yard, and the situation remains the same today. Between 1969 and the setting-up of the famous Operation Countryman in 1978 there were three big investigations into corruption in the Metropolitan Police. These were:

There were corrupt masonic policemen involved in all these cases, but this report is not concerned with corrupt policemen who just happen to be Freemasons any more than it is with corrupt policemen who happen to be Roman Catholics, Rotarians or members of their local lawn tennis club. Many people see the discovery of a corrupt Free-

mason as proof of the corrupting influence of Masonry. This is about as sensible as condemning Christianity because a murderer is found to be a regular churchgoer. There might well be grounds for criticism of Freemasonry in the police, but where Freemasonry has clearly played no part in the corruption of an officer, where his membership of the Brotherhood is incidental, it must not be brought as evidence. Only one of the three major cases of corruption investigated in the seventies can be said to have had any serious masonic elements - the activities of the Porn Squad. This section of the Metropolitan Police was, in the words of the present Lord Chief Justice, 'involved in wholesale corruption. The very men employed to bring the corrupt to book were thriving on the proceeds of corruption.'

The worst of these men was Detective Chief Superintendent William 'Bill' Moody, former head of the Obscene Publications Squad. Moody, an exceedingly corrupt policeman, was an active Freemason. He was gaoled for twelve years, the heaviest sentence meted out to the 'bent' members of the Porn Squad. Moody and ten others, who had received sentences ranging from three years upwards, were told when their appeals were dismissed that 'the individual sentences properly reflected the degree [of responsibility] and complicity and wickedness'.

Moody still protests his innocence from behind bars. Ironically, it had been Moody who in 1969 had been placed in charge of the first of the major enquiries into corruption while himself extorting vast sums of 'protection money' from Soho pornography racketeers. In one transaction alone Moody received £14,000. Almost the entire Porn Squad was in on the racket, openly collecting huge bribes -at one stage estimated at £100,000 a year - from porn shop proprietors in return for the freedom to flout the law unmolested.

Moody lived at Weybridge in Surrey. He and several other Freemason members of the Porn Squad who lived in the area were members of the same Lodge. So, incidentally, were a number of pornographers. These included a smalltime pornographer who used to work in the nearby village of Cobham; another whose home was at Walton-on-Thames; and others who lived or worked at Hampton Wick, Weybridge and Hersham.

John Shirley, co-author of
The Fall of Scotland Yard,
who gave oral evidence before the Royal Commission on Standards of Conduct in Public Life, chaired by Lord Salmon, told me, 'It's fairly certain that the basis of a corrupt network, of the corrupt relationship between that particular group of police officers and those particular pornographers, was either formed or developed within that masonic Lodge.

'The point I was trying to make to the Salmon Commission was that, yes, police officers had private lives but in the nature of it the privacy of their lives needed to be more clearly known to their superiors. If it had been spotted that Moody was a member of the same Freemasonry Lodge as a number of well-known pornographers, on whom the police would have had files, then I think the link between them would have been established much earlier than it was.'

The major breakthrough in stamping out corruption on a grand scale within the Metropolitan Police was the, appointment of Robert Mark as Commissioner in 1972. As Chief Constable of Leicester until 1967 he was unhampered by long-standing personal loyalties, untainted by the years-old corruption at the Yard, and a man who loathed nothing so much as a bent copper. Within a very short time, Mark, a non-Mason, had turned Scotland Yard on its head. One of his first reforms was to set up the 'ruthlessly efficient' department A10 to investigate complaints against police officers. In
The Fall of Scotland Yard,
the authors explain:

The setting-up of
A10
broke the absolute control of the CID over the investigation of all major crime, whether it occurred inside or outside the Metropolitan Police. For the first time, uniformed officers were to be empowered to investigate allegations of misconduct - whether disciplinary or criminal - not just against their uniformed colleagues but also against the CID. This was a complete reversal of the status quo, where only CID officers had been able to investigate complaints against the uniformed branch
and
their own tight fraternity.

That tight fraternity, as has been mentioned, was and is
heavily masonic. And despite A10
's success in ridding the Yard of suspect detectives - nearly 300 had been forced to resign by spring 1975 - it was constantly obstructed in its attempts to obtain evidence solid enough to make charges stick. Even in cases of obvious criminality, fellow officers whose evidence was vital clammed up and obstinately refused to make statements, or co-operate in any other way. Some would not speak at all. It rapidly became clear why. The 'honest' men needed as witnesses were members of the same Brotherhood as the 'bent' officers. Many shared the same Lodges.

9
Operation Countryman

Operation Countryman, the biggest investigation ever conducted into police corruption in Britain, would never have come about if the Commissioner of the City of London Police between 1971 and 1977 had not been corrupted and unduly influenced by Freemasonry. Indeed, there seems little doubt that if James Page had refused to join the Brotherhood, he would not have been appointed Commissioner in the first place.

Page transferred at the rank of Superintendent from the Metropolitan Police to the tiny, 800-man City Force in 1967, at first simply for experience as Commander of B Division based at Snow Hill police station. An excellent communicator and a good host, Page brought a style of administration to Snow Hill that can rarely, if ever, have been matched in any force in the country. It was the style he had learned in the old Blackpool City Force, where he had served under disgraced Chief Constable Stanley Parr (pages 99-102). Coachloads of policemen would arrive at Snow Hill for darts matches, boozing sessions and parties 6f all kinds. This earned him popularity with 'the lads' in the lower ranks, most of whom, even the lowliest PCs, were encouraged to address him as 'Jim'. Two months before his forty-fourth birthday in March 1969, he was promoted to Chief Superintendent. At this stage, so far as is known, he had never set foot inside a masonic temple. Eight months later the then Commissioner, Sir Arthur Young, was seconded to the Royal Ulster Constabulary and Page transferred to Old Jewry, the force headquarters, as Acting Commissioner. Page's successor at Snow Hill, Chief Superintendent Brian Rowland, was astonished at what he found. 'It was,' said one of the most senior officers in the force at that time, 'like running a huge pub.*

By now Page had set the pattern of his relations with the public and the force. In stark contrast to the aloof and dignified manner of the man he was standing in for, 'good old Jim' would be right in there with the lads - drinking, guffawing over a bar-room joke, out within the hallowed purlieus of the City of London opening pubs, and all too frequently getting so inebriated that he had to be carried home in a patrol car. He was liked and respected as 'one of the boys', a very different kind of respect from that enjoyed by the absent Commissioner. In the minds of senior officers, Page's extravagant
bonhomie
was marring his undoubted abilities. 'He had a very good brain,' I was told by one of the top men of the time. 'He could think on his feet in crises and was a staunch supporter of his men.'

Although a significant proportion of City policemen had been Freemasons since the twenties and there had been a masonic element in many promotions over the decades, there is no evidence that before the "early 1970s the consequences had been more serious than occasional miscarriages of justice, a distortion of values, and a disgruntlement among non-Masons, inevitable whenever less able men are given preferential treatment. All this was bad enough but what flourished under Page was iniquitous.

In 1969, on the eve of Page's taking over as Acting Commissioner, a private meeting took place at his office at
Old Jewry. One of the highest-ranking officers in the force, whom I shall call Commander Dryden, had some urgent advice for his new chief. Dryden warned Page about two City police officers he knew to be corrupt. Because the Countryman investigations in the City have still not been completed - whatever offic
i
al statements say to the contrary - I shall give these men pseudonyms and refer to them as Tearle and Oates. Both were Freemasons.

'If you are ever going to run this force,' said Dryden, 'watch Oates and Tearle very closely. If you ever promote them you'll have so much trouble you won't know where to turn.'

Dryden told me, 'I'd not been long off the shop floor and was still closely in touch with events at grass roots. Everyone said that Oates and Tearle were corrupt. They would duck and dive with villains, take bribes to put in false reports on cases so that charges would be reduced or dropped altogether. One night, Oates was called to a jeweller's shop which had been found to have a broken window. He helped himself from the stock and reported that it had been missing when he arrived. Tearle was looked upon as being "swift", very shrewd and quick to make a few bob in league with criminals. A suspect man in all respects, he too would square a job up for a price.'

Dryden felt 'quite pleased' that he had alerted Page. It was a load off his mind, and he felt he'd done his duty.

So the matter rested .
..
for a while.

Sir Arthur Young was due to retire on 30 November 1971, so applications were invited for his successor. The process by which the City of London Corporation appoints a new Commissioner begins with the police committee, one of twenty-seven committees whose membership is drawn from the Court of Common Council, setting up a sub-committee. The sub-committee vets applications and draws up a short list which it passes to the main committee. Short-listed applicants are later interviewed by the entire Common Council, at which each delivers a prepared speech on his own behalf. Voting then takes place and the applicant with the highest number of votes is appointed, subject to ratification by the Home Secretary and the Queen.

Inevitably, Page applied for the job, but he knew he was skating on thin ice. On the grounds of his now notorious drinking habits alone, few in the force thought he had a chance. Everyone knew that the former City Assistant Commissioner, John Duke, had been groomed for Sir Arthur's job and had meanwhile transferred to Essex Police to await the day the office fell vacant. Duke had duly applied and the force waited for his appointment to be announced.