'Are
you Masons?' challenge to judges
By Auslan Cramb, Scotland Correspondent
(Filed: 19/02/2003)
http://www.prisonplanet.com/are_you_masons_challenge_to_judges.html
Three judges yesterday refused to reveal
whether they were Freemasons after
being challenged by a veteran human rights campaigner.
Robbie the Pict put the question to judges
hearing his complaint that a "secret society" of senior figures
in the Scottish establishment is undermining the impartiality of
the judicial system.
He believes that judges who are members of the
Speculative Society could have influenced cases against him
during his long-running campaign against tolls on the privately
operated Isle of Skye bridge.
The campaigner said that Sir Iain Noble,
chairman of the Skye Bridge Company, was a member of the same
organisation, and also suggested that the 250-year-old debating
club had Masonic connections.
Appearing at the Court of Session in Edinburgh
yesterday before Lords Gill, Kirkwood and Wheatley, he demanded
to know whether they were Freemasons.
"Have you ever taken the oath for the purpose
of entering into Masonic association?" he asked.
After a few moments of silence, Lord Gill, the
Lord Justice Clerk, urged him to continue reading his speech,
and said: "We are certainly not going to answer that question
right now."
The protester replied: "That is as much as I
wish to upset your lordships, the rest is downhill."
The latest case follows his conviction in 1998
for failing to pay bridge tolls. He claims the collectors of the
toll do not have proper authority and is arguing that no cases
involving the bridge should be heard by society members.
He wants membership of the group considered
against the background of a dozen failed appeals in his
anti-toll campaign.
Raymond Doherty, QC, advocate depute, produced
a list of members from an internet site to show the "Spec" was
not a secret society.
The society's own literature describes it as a
"secret brotherhood bound by intangible ties of shared loyalty
and common tradition".
A judgment will be issued at a later date. |