Northants Police officers may have to start declaring if they are freemasons, as review commences
Two years on from former Northants chief constable Nick Adderley saying there was no legislation to allow it, the force now says it is conducting a review
Exclusive by Sarah Ward
Northamptonshire Police says it is reviewing its position on whether police officers who are also freemasons will have to declare the membership.
Last month the Metropolitan Police declared that following a survey of its staff, it had decided to make being a freemason a declarable association, with more than 300 officers coming forward so far to say they belong to the longstanding secret club.
The new policy is currently under challenge by United Grand Lodge of England, which had a request for an immediate injunction to prevent the new MET policy denied by a high court judge earlier this month and now awaits a further court hearing.
In 2023 Northamptonshire Police’s former chief constable Nick Adderley told NN Journal said there was no legal framework to require his officers to make it known to him whether they were freemasons, but now two years on, following the MET’s lead, a change is being considered.
The force said:
“We are aware of the position adopted by the Metropolitan Police, announced in December, that membership of the Freemasons or similar organisations would be added to its declarable associations policy. Northamptonshire Police is currently reviewing our own position on this.”
Asked for a timeline on a review, it said it did not have one.
Back in 2021 the independent inquiry into the 1987 unsolved murder of private detective Daniel Morgan made the recommendation to the government that police officers who are freemasons should make their membership known to their chief constable.
But police forces were slow to move and there was resistance from the freemasons. In December the MET issued a statement to say that successive leaders had considered whether it needed to make its staff declare membership and after a survey had decided now is the time in order to ‘address long-standing concerns and that public and staff confidence must take precedence over the secrecy of any membership organisation.”
In a challenge to the MET’s new policy the association, which has around 170,000 members in the UK, said any declaration would ‘undermine the public credibility of male and female freemasons’ and would be a breach of the Equality Act.
This is long overdue. Northants is way behind in this. When I applied for teaching employment in London Borough of Hounslow as far back as 1989, I had to declare such info.
Membership of a secret society whose members support each other is clearly incompatible with policing impartially. It would also be interesting to see how many councillors are masons.