Letter: Masons and police

Sir: Chief Constable Bettison of the Merseyside police, by his refusal to demonise Masons, has finally said what my fellow historians should have pointed out long ago - that ever since the founding of Freemasonry there have been voices accusing its members of all sorts of dire plots and machinations.

In the 18th century, the role they played in spreading Enlightenment values led to their being condemned for having brought on the French Revolution. This ridiculous charge was trotted out again in the 1930s, notably in France, and in particular by the publicist Bernard Fay, later a prominent figure among intellectuals who supported the Vichy regime during the Second World War.

Masons were bugaboos long before anyone ever heard of Communists. Are we to believe, now that the "Communist threat" has been eliminated, that we are going to return to the good old days of the Masonic one?

Dr Jeffry Kaplow London SE3