Oh God, not more rumour and innuendo

Over the last five years, two secretive societies kept coming onto my radar over and over again. The first was the Masons, and the second was Common Purpose.

I have a deep and distrustful loathing of the Masonic approach to life. First and foremost, it is antithetical to meritocracy: it is based on favour not fervour…on tentacular networks rather than individual talent. Second, it puts itself above the law, and thus denies the only equality worth having – equality before the law. And third, a Mason ran off with my first wife. Better to be honest about one’s prejudices, I always find.

Common Purpose by contrast I’ve been more equivocal about, and less sure of its practices and origins. Like Masons, CP members have insidious networks, and some severely second-rate members. Like Masons, CP folks seem to look after their own – and to Hell with legality. And on the two occasions I have tried in an open-handed manner to learn more about them, I’ve been rebuffed.

Until quite recently, I would’ve found Masonic practices guilty on all counts, and Common Purpose a case of damning circumstantial evidence in need of a little more investigation. I am bound to say, however, that over the last few weeks I’ve been meandering slowly to the conclusion that Common Purpose is more unpleasant reality than unproven fantasy.

The Masons and pc/CP are simply two sides of one counterfeit £7 note. That’s to say, they are putting forward complete rot as absolute ideals we must all follow. But the problem for any genuinely investigative hack is that both organisations have also become the target of wild and delusional accusations by what one used to call The Lunatic Fringe. If I had a euro for every time a contact suddenly started telling me about Masons spraying atomic waste on fields of wheat to wipe out the Underclass, or CP fanatics kidnapping kids to reprogramme them ready for The Takeover, then I’d be rich enough even in euros to be beyond all financial worries.

Unfortunately, both these secret societies take full advantage of the loopy-loos in order to smear everyone else who smells something unpleasant going on. I have in the past heard Masons defend lodge ritual purely on the basis of such practices having led some to the false belief that Jack the Ripper was a Mason. But I have yet to hear anyone explain how a Mason doing 140 mph along the M4 during 1992 got off thanks to the intervention of a Masonic Chief Constable.

Similarly, I have watched an interview with BBC News business editor Robert Peston talking about Common Purpose (he is a member) as a force for good…despite the fact that it helped propel him to the vastly over-promoted position he enjoys today. He is a man who, during the worst excesses of Blair, Campbell and Brown, was a glorified bag carrier for Number Ten’s ludicrous econo-financial pronouncements. He is also, I’m told, the epitome of everything Jeremy Paxman has come to detest about the BBC.

Ultimately, there is one blinding flaw in the defences offered by those who would apologise for the Masons and Common Purpose: why the secrecy? If there is nothing malign about them – if they have nothing to declare but their genius and unalloyed talent – then why have lodge vows of absolute secrecy and Chatham House Rules?

Blanket secrecy is merely one step beyond jargon. And the entire point of jargon is to baffle the bright inquisitor into believing that something quite simple is in reality unfeasibly complex. The recurring bleat of the security services when they have screwed up bigtime is that something must be kept secret “because the ordinary citizen cannot possibly comprehend what’s at stake”. About 10% of the time, I am persuaded to accept that. In the remaining 90% of cases, the only thing at stake is some incompetent bureaucrat’s pension.

Whether it was the original intention or not, secrecy breeds injustice: that ill-defined 10% of secrecy is necessary to protect the fluffy tendency from its own gullibility. But nine times out of ten, secrecy is a cloak to hide mediocrity, depravity, corruption, perversion, and every other form of moral weakness.

I offer the following to you as facts, although a combination of gagging orders and libel laws mean I cannot type those facts which prove my claims beyond all reasonable doubt:

* In the south-west of England, Masonic influence in the judiciary has enabled serial paedophiles to get away with, literally, murder.

* In the West Midlands and North Yorkshire, endemic paedophilia hidden with the connivance of Common Purpose has kept many a Labour Party local government disgrace secret.

* In the Principality of Wales and the English Home Counties, both Common Purpose and the Masons have been implicated in the illegal protection of paedophiles from justice. In one case, some of the most powerful legislators and administrators in the Land have found themselves the helpless victims of blackmail in this regard.

At the moment in Britain, we are in the middle of one of those periodic outbreaks of leaking truth about the seamy underbelly of the powertariat. It is up to each individual to decide whether the collusion of press proprietors and certain high-profile journalists in the process of plugging the leaks is coincidental, accidental, genuine or malign. But that some of it is malignant now seems to me beyond doubt. I have seen far too much evidence of media, police, judiciary, Whitehall, Westminster, Town Hall, and childcare corruption and cover-up to retain any serious faith in systemic decency.

Masons and CPers are not a cause of decadent lawlessness, but they are a symptom of it. They are also havens for the perpetrators of its worst excesses. This is yet another crossroads for British civilisation: we either accept the ridiculous cover stories of the powerful, or we stand up to them and reveal their flimsy excuses as the bullying falsehoods they so patently are. It is cant of the highest order to suggest that the aims and actions of Welsh policemen, Rotherham councillors, greedy lawyers, EU officials, expat media owners and perverse Judges amount to nothing more than rumour and innuendo.

What they in fact represent is the addictive appetites of Caligulan post-Imperial Britain. They can either be accepted or prosecuted: the choice is ours alone.