Freemasons come out of the shadows
(but they won’t share any funny handshakes)
‘Hitler murdered 200,000 Masons’
ONE OF the UK’S most secretive organisations is on a mission to win recruits and bust myths – which include tales of secret handshakes and police corruption.
As the country opens up after repeated lockdowns, Freemasons have also undergone something of a transformation.
Today they will host their first mass initiation ceremony for more than 100 members from all walks of life, with the media invited for the first time.
The organisation has also taken on its first public relations team in a bid to change its image.
David Staples, a 46-year-old consultant physician, is the brains behind the makeover. He’s also the United Grand Lodge of England’s first CEO and wants to get people from all walks of life through the doors of lodges.
He is keen to promote the group’s charitable and fundraising work, and the friendships formed within it.
The organisation has more than 200,000 UK members, including women and young people, contrary to its reputation as a haven for middle-aged men.
However, there are no plans to combine male-only and femaleonly lodges.
David argues the Masonic world has not always been shrouded in secrecy, and that much of it is a response to persecution of Masons by the Nazis.
He said: “Before the Second World War you’d have seen Masons’ processions in the streets. Everybody would know who they were and it was something that people aspired to join.
“Then Hitler came along and murdered 200,000 Freemasons on the Continent and it suddenly didn’t seem such a terribly good idea for everybody to know who the Masons were.”
Today, he says, around 80 per cent of members are happy to be known as Freemasons but “about 20 per cent keep it private”.
And what of that “secret handshake”. Well, it does exists but is not used outside the lodge room.
David adds: “I have been a consultant physician since 2010 and a doctor since 2001. I’ve shaken tens of thousands of hands and I’ve never, ever been given a Masonic handshake outside of a Lodge room.”
Explaining the handshake’s origins, he says: “The history of it comes from medieval times, when travelling stonemasons would go around Europe and they would have to have something secret which proved their skill...
“Within the lodges of stonemasons that used to build the cathedrals and the castles, there were ways to identify the different grades and the different levels and different expertise of the workmen.
“Within our ceremonies, that is symbolically represented by the grip, the handshake. So we use it to say who is a first degree Mason, who is a second degree and who is a third degree.”
Today, David argues there are three key areas where Freemasonry can enrich life.
“There’s the charitable bit, there’s the self-improvement bit and there’s the friendship,” he said. He said Freemasons in England and Wales raised £51million for good causes last year and contributed 18.5 million hours of unpaid volunteering. He also argues that the deep friendships found in lodges offer something richer than the “echo chamber existence on social media”.
Women-only lodges follow the same ceremonies as men-only ones but David doubts that these will be combined.
“Neither the women want that, nor do my members want that,” he said. “There’s a memorandum of understanding that we’re both actually quite happy with the situation as it is...
“I like my boys’ nights out. My wife likes her curry nights with her friends – I wouldn’t be welcome on them.”
The influence of Freemasons in the police has been a recurring subject of public debate.
In series four of the hit BBC police drama Line of Duty, Masons are described as the “mafia of the mediocre”.
However, David argues the show’s central character, senior investigating officer Ted Hastings (played by Adrian Dunbar), is a better representation of the typical Masonic officer.
He said: “I think that’s much more the reality of it. You’ve got somebody there who’s striving to do the right thing, often in difficult circumstances.”
Describing the anxiety of officers to avoid the whiff of nepotism, he said: “People who are police officers very rarely say that they are Masons because of the rumours of this, that and the next thing going on in the police in the 1970s, and they want to be sure that when they get their promotion all of their friends know that it’s because of their merit.”
More than 100 people will join the Masons today in London’s Freemasons’ Hall. Around 6,000 more are waiting to be inducted, with lodges holding “emergency meetings” to process a backlog.
And a new website will be launched soon to introduce people to the Masonic world.
‘About 20 per cent
keep it private’