LODGING COMPLAINTS
What happens when a group of people challenge the clandestine power of
the Freemasons in public? Peter Panatone investigates the Exodus
Collective's run-in with the Freemasons of Bedfordshire.Photo:Nick
Cobbing
As a Freemason judge, Lord Justice Millet was not pleased. Following a
recommendation from the Home Affairs Select Committee last year, all
Masonic members of the criminal justice system will have to come out of
the closet. As one of the few prominent Masons already revealed, it's
Millet's name you'll often see quoted in newspapers, defending
the "civil liberties"of his fellow clandestines.
"You can't choose which judge will try your case, so what's the
point,"he argued in February this year.1 However, as members of the
Luton-based Exodus Collective are all to well aware, his assertion was
an audacious mislead of we, the jury.
Is it possible that Millet spoke unaware that his fellow judicial
Mason, Sir Maurice Drake, stood down from a murder trial in 1996, when
the defendant's legal team argued that Drake's Masonic membership might
lead to bias in his decision making? Not only was this thought to be
the first time a judge has stood down over Masonic affiliations - a
fact that could not have escaped the attention of Lord Justice Millet -
but Sir Maurice Drake also happens to sit with Millet on the Mason's
own Commission of Appeals Court. Drake, like Millet, is one of the few
high-profile Masons whose membership has been revealed publicly.
The murder trial in question involved Paul Taylor, a prominent member
of Luton's Exodus Collective. As Squall readers may recall, Taylor was
involved in an incident outside a Luton public house on a cold winter's
night in 1996. After an aggressively drunken man was asked to leave the
pub, a small scrap ensued outside the premises which Paul Taylor
stepped in to break up. The man continued his threatening behaviour and
was chased down the road with Taylor then returning to the pub. When
the man was later found dead inside a council compound in a local park,
he was deemed to have died from hypothermia, exacerbated by alcohol
consumption and blood loss caused by an injury incurred whilst climbing
into the compound. When Taylor heard about the discovery of the man's
body, he went to the local police to tell them about the incident
outside the pub. He was subsequently arrested and charged with murder.
Regular Squall readers will be aware that this was just one of many
extraordinary charges brought against members of the Exodus
Collective.2 Many of these incidents were included in a Channel Four
documentary broadcast in 1996, which investigated a network of
interlocking political and business interests implicated in attacks on
the Collective.3 One of the malevolent interlocking interests making
regular appearances throughout this incredible saga is that of
Freemasonry.
The Exodus Collective were once told by a friendly policeman that the
well-attended free raves they organise take serious chunks of profit
out of Luton's pubs and night-clubs.4 There are an estimated 5,000
people in the pubs and clubs of Luton on weekends5, unless, that is,
Exodus are holding one of their free raves which regularly attract in
excess of 3,000 people. Exodus became aware that business interests in
Luton would not be keen on the commercial challenge presented by the
Collective's aspiration to operate a low-price entertainment venue. One
such interest is Whitbread Plc, which have their headquarters in Luton
and own many of the pubs in the town. Samuel Whitbread is Lord
Lieutenant of Bedfordshire and chairman of the committee which selects
justices of the peace for the region. He is also a masonically
associated Knight of St John and shares an office in Luton with the
Crown Prosecution Service.
Indeed, persistent efforts to get their proposal for a community centre
considered by the council were constantly frustrated, despite support
from the local community, academics and some councillors. "It seemed to
me that Exodus on this occasion, and not for the first time, were being
treated less fairly than a good many other applicants,"said Cllr David
Franks, the leader of the Lib-Dem group, after a Luton Planning
Committee meeting in 1995.3 The Labour leader of Luton Borough Council,
Cllr Roy Davis, had proved particularly obstructive to the Exodus
Collective throughout the years. He was majorly responsible for seeking
injunctions against the parties organised by Exodus, the result of
which was the deployment of riot police from five different
constabularies, who made concerted efforts to stop Exodus' raves on
four separate occasions. As chairman of the General Purposes Committee,
he also rubber stamped council authorisation for the police to
prosecute three members of the Exodus Collective under the
Entertainments (Increased Penalties) Act 1990.
[...]
One of the especially malicious incidents involving Freemasonry was the
attempt by Dunstable Police and one councillor in particular to revoke
the pub licence held by Betty Jenkins, mother of Exodus members Glenn,
Richard and Elaine Jenkins.
Mrs Jenkins had taken over management of the Globe Public House in
1994. Not long after her arrival, a local resident, Charles Anderson,
began making extravagant complaints about noise emanating from the pub.
Although Anderson remained the sole complainant, Mrs Jenkins sought to
allay his concerns by spending ?3,000 on installing double glazing in
the pub and sealing up the door nearest to where Anderson lived.
However, Anderson's complaints continued, with references to the music
in the pub as "jungle drums"and to the clientele as "low-life trash".
[...]
The nature of Freemasonic manipulation and retribution lies, like many
a devil, obscured in convoluted detail; the currency of operation being
the clever mastery of mundane procedures. Sometimes referred to as "the
mafia of mediocrity", Freemasonry's clandestine and often malicious
deployment of clever manipulation is highly corrosive to any notion of
democracy and public accountability.
Starting up in 1992, as a group of friends with four speakers, no money
and a desire to dance together, the Exodus Collective has evolved into
a force for social justice that has rattled the hornets' nest in
Bedfordshire. As the only known organisation in the country which is
publicly and audaciously challenging Freemasons in both their locality
and in the national media, the saga of the Exodus Collective is
providing a unique insight into the sting of Freemasonry.
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