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APRON STRINGS
 There are a quarter of a million masons in England and Wales. The governing body, the United Grand Lodge of England, holds computerised registers and it would be a simple matter for them to place these online.At a stroke this would make freemasonry completely respectable. Articles like those in the Brothers in the Shadows section which question the role of masonry in important sections of our public life would become a thing of the past. Time and time again, the United Grand Lodge has refused to give information to REBECCA. The result is the REBECCA MASONIC DIRECTORY It is the first meaningful directory of freemasons ever to be published in the UK. It is generated entirely from masonic sources.
FIRST - it forms the basis of a comprehensive listing of the 250,000 masons in England and Wales. Already, it holds the names of more than 10,000 individual masons. SECOND - it represents a fundamental challenge to the United Grand Lodge. In the mid-1980s, freemasonry introduced a policy of more openness in its dealings with society. How will the brotherhood respond to the REBECCA Masonic Directory? Will it accept that it is time to end the secrecy that surrounds the identity of individual masons? Or will it batten down the hatches and retreat to an even more severe form of secrecy? THIRD - the Masonic Directory already forms a comprehensive working guide to freemasonry in Wales. Two thirds of all Welsh masons are named.
THE HEADQUARTERS of freemasonry in England and Wales is in Covent Garden in London. This is where the United Grand Lodge of England governs the 47 provinces in England and Wales as well as the relatively new Metropolitan Grand Lodge of London. It is also responsible for 33 districts all over the world. There are more than 8,000 lodges. The REBECCA Masonic Directory has four parts: • a list of the 47 provinces in England and Wales and the Metropolitan Grand Lodge of London. This also contains the results of an e-mail survey to find out if the yearbooks are publicly available • an alpabetical list of lodges • an alphabetical list of the cities and towns where lodges meet. This is where the main entry for each lodge is to be found • the alphabetcial list of individual masons. This first stage of the directory is based on the masonic yearbooks of four provinces: North Wales, Monmouthshire, West Wales and South Wales.
Yearbooks for South Wales and West Wales were publicly available. Monmouthshire and North Wales have always declined to make their yearbooks available to journalists. These yearbooks are, on their own, of limited use to the layman. They need to be filtered to remove the jargon, leaving only essential information which then needs to be arranged alphabetically.
Every lodge in the four Welsh provinces is listed in two forms. An alphabetical list shows the city or town where the lodge meets. In the lodge listings-by-place, there are full entries for each lodge including a list of all members. The A-Z of Masons is the core of the directory. It contains more than 13,000 entries. To show how the Directory works in practice, take the example of Gerard Elias, QC the barrister appointed Counsel to the North Wales Child Abuse Tribunal. He features in the stories A Mason-Free Zone? and Brothers in Silk. His entry in the Members A-Z can be examined. There is only one G Elias, QC and the entry is G ELIAS, QC Lodge – Dinas Llandaf City – Cardiff Master – 1984 Date – October 1999 This entry tells the user that Elias belongs to the Dinas Llandaf lodge which meets in Cardiff. It shows that he was listed as a member in October 1999 and that he had been master in 1984. If an address is given, then that is shown. There is no address for Elias. If the user goes to the alphabetical list of lodges according to the place they meet, the entry for Dinas Llandaf can be found in the Cardiff section. This is the entry: DINAS LLANDAF LODGE Founded - 1973 Lodge Number - 8512 Installation - October 1996 (& October 1999) Members - 34 (35) Identified - 33 • N. BIDDER • G. BULL • G J. COOK • R J. CRANE • D. DAVIES • J A. DAVIES • G. ELIAS, QC • D T S. EVANS • K T. FLYNN, OBE • F A. GREEN • A L. GRETTON • G. GROSSMAN • J H. HERMER • P L. HOWELL-RICHARDSON • E T. INGS • J M. JARMAN • F A. JONES • G A. JONES • G H. JONES • I. JONES • M S. LEWIS • B H. MORGAN • K. MORGAN • W G D. MORGAN • C H. NURCOMBE • P G. POWELL • J. PRICE • J W. RICHARDS • The entry shows that Dinas Llandaf began life in 1973. Its Grand Lodge number is 8512 and the installation of its officials, including the master who holds office for a year, is in October. This list was based on the 1996-1997 yearbook entry. It was checked against the position in October 1999 to give some idea of what was happening to members. Dinas Llandaf is unusual in that its membership today is slightly higher than it was in 1996. The entry shows that the number of Members in the lodge was 34 and that the number of masons REBECCA was able to identify was 33.
The former MP for Cardiff North, Gwilym Jones, is a member. He was a junior minister at the Welsh Office when Gerard Elias was appointed Counsel to the Child Abuse Tribunal. The Directory needs to be used with care. Many, many people have exactly the same name, especially in a place like Wales. So, before assuming that you know the man, check. It’s important not to jump to conclusons. Men falsely accused of being masons are likely to be furious about it. Also, just because a man is a mason doesn’t mean he’s up to no good. Common sense dictates that only a very small percentage of the men included in these lists has done anything that can be criticised. In other words, the Masonic Directory is a tool, not a bible.
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