UK: LCD survey of freemasons
01 November 1998
Recent surveys by the Lord Chancellor's Department (LCD) have revealed that up to 19% of male magistrates and nearly 5% of judges are freemasons. The voluntary declarations followed an inquiry by the Commons Home Affairs Select Committee, chaired by Labour MP Chris Mullin, which recommended a public register of members of police officers and the judiciary stating whether they are members of the secretive organisation. The results are hardly surprising given surveys in the journal Labour Research showing that judges remain overwhelmingly white, male and upper class: about four out of five judges go to public school and on to Oxford or Cambridge. The committee's proposals for a register have led to about 40 members of the United Grand Lodge of England - mainly police officers and local government officials - resigning, according to Grand Lodge spokesman John Hamill. The register will be published by the government next year, but has been criticised as an "unjustified invasion of privacy" by a senior law lord, Lord Saville, who is chairing the inquiry into the Bloody Sunday massacre by British soldiers of 14 Northern Irish civil rights demonstrators in Derry in January 1972. Lord Saville's logic was further undermined when he asked: "What is the difference between asking that question [about membership of the freemasons] and asking wether you are a trade unionist or, in Vichy France, whether you were Jewish?"
Times 29.10.98; Independent 11.11.98.