Fraternal Secrets

The essays here are about conspiracies that actually happened – when the Australian Labor Party (ALP) was being formed, as English Freemasonry prospered, and as fraternalism  (mateship by another name) lived and died. All these essays have grown out of my interest in ‘fraternal societies’, aka ‘secret societies’. That these histories have been lost (ignored/denied/buried) has turned out to be another conspiracy. The most recent essay here is on ‘Conspiracy Theories’ involving Jesuits, Jews and Freemasonry.

FRATERNAL SOCIETIES – SECRETIVE, BIBLICAL AND FANTASTIC SHOW-OFFS:

(Talk written March 2019 and adapted here to introduce these essays)

I’ve spoken many times about what some call my obsession – to international conferences, small family history groups and museum professionals. Over thirty years, the account I’ve provided has changed many times as my understanding has increased. Initially, I had no idea what I was looking at, and over the time, I’ve been forced to reconsider even the most basic terms, such as how to most appropriately label these societies. Today, I’m confident I can provide this audience with an outline of what is close to the whole story. But I give you fair warning. Many recent researchers have looked at just some of the evidence and walked away scratching their heads. 

In order to interest others in this story I’ve tried different approaches. I’ve emphasised the secretive side, I’ve emphasised the apparent weirdness of the signs of fraternalism, I’ve emphasised that today’s National Health Funds were once Orders of Odd Fellows, or of Foresters. None of these assertions has been wrong but they’ve created a wrong impression – that, for example, ‘fraternal’ means health funds, or that ‘fraternal’ means secret societies, or that ‘fraternal’ means ‘the Freemasons’ and a few other small insignificant groups. It has taken me a long time to realise the range and variety of ‘fraternal societies’, their significance in the whole of ‘our’ history, and that no matter how weird or old-fashioned something might seem to me now, or to you, to other people that ‘thing’ whatever it was, was created and used by people for whom it represented a basic belief. It was a cultural identifier and part of their living history. I want to convince you today that the fraternal story remains alive not only to believers but for you too, not because of its successes but because of its failures.

A simple idea to keep in mind is this:  ‘Mateship’ or ‘mutual aid’ by another name, is not about wrapping yourself in an Australian flag, or arguing about Australia Day. It is about establishing binding contracts with like-minded people so that you are bound to help them when they need help, and they are bound to help you when you need it.

A DEFINITION

The term I’ve finally settled on is ‘fraternal society’. By ‘fraternal’ I mean societies which either currently use, or have used in the past coded regalia, secret passwords signs and ritual, and which have had a philosophy of mutual aid. So, all the societies I mention today are, or were ‘secret societies’. My grouping them in this way doesn’t mean that I think they are all the same. They are very diverse, in fact, and very distinct. Some you may have heard of – ‘The Ancient Order of Foresters’, ‘The Grand United Order of Odd Fellows’, ‘The Improved Order of Imps’ or ‘The Operative Society of Stonemasons Friendly Society.’ They are not always called ‘Orders’ and not always organised in ‘lodges’.

Covered by the definition are four sub-groups: of course, ‘the Freemasons’, then a group legally registered as ‘Friendly Societies’, then a group of trade-oriented societies, ‘trade unions’ if you prefer, and a fourth group which meet the requirements of the definition but which don’t fit into any of the other three, such as the Boy Scouts, the Loyal Orange Institution, Chinese triads and the Mafia, Catholic sodalities, Apex, Rotary and the like. These and many others use, or have used coded regalia, secret passwords, signs and ritual, and employed a philosophy of mutual aid. The names tell of their diverse allegiances – ‘The Protestant Alliance’, ‘The Sons and Daughters of Temperance’, ‘The Hibernian Australasian Catholic Benefit Society’. These, and many others, are the beating hearts of your history and you need to know about them.

None of these societies should ever have been lost to sight. I’m satisfied that each played important, often pivotal roles across the broadest possible spectrum – in politics, industry, community building, health and welfare, religion and in sport and recreation. Together they created European Australia. That they and their activities have disappeared from view is evidence of ‘fake news’ at work. It is especially ironic that this disappearing trick has been carried out under your noses and in plain sight.

This is a huge, diverse, dramatic story which, I will argue, is relevant to your understanding of today and that it’s very much ‘living history’. The collection being absorbed by the University of Newcastle is hard evidence supporting the claims I’ll be making. The items in the collection actually exist which means they can be touched and examined.

Even when I had little understanding of what they were, I saw items such as these as potentially important, and because other people were prepared to discard them I began gathering them up more like a conservationist than a collector. I now understand why these items have been deliberately devalued, damaged, thrown away and dismissed as unimportant.

I don’t use ‘fraternal’, by the way, because this is a female-free zone. There are many females in these societies, female Freemasons for example:

Other lodges were or are mixed,  like the Independent Order of Good Templars  or were women-only such as the Rebekah lodges of the Independent Order of Odd Fellows:

I use ‘fraternal’ because it seems the most appropriate term for what I’m describing.

In the 1980’s when I started this work I was involved mostly with labour history. As the Secretary of the local branch of the Australian Labour History Society I convened a National Labour History Conference here in Newcastle to which the then Governor General delivered a book review. I started a PhD on the history of May Day so naturally I was interested in banners. I noticed that many of the big old labour banners contained masses of symbols,  which I thought at the time must be Masonic symbols. There were even squares and compasses on regalia being worn in Newcastle’s labour day processions. No-one at Trades Hall could tell me why, and no-one wanted to discuss them. The researchers from other Labour History branches had no idea either. The evidence I was turning up was clearly new to them too.

For example: Don Bradman was among other things a Freemason and a Protestant who sought to keep Catholics in a secondary position within Australian cricket and if possible out of the Test team. Similarly, the Australian Rugby League team sent to the UK in 1948 excluded a Catholic despite wide-spread wisdom he was the best player in the country. After Les Darcy died in the US, his body was returned to Australia where it was taken charge of by a party from the Australasian Holy Catholic Guild. The news footage of the time shows them in regalia. ‘Jimmy’ Comerford. miners advocate, well-known locally, nationally and internationally as honest and plain speaking, was on the one hand a Communist Party member during the height of the Depression, the Chifley Miners Strike of 1949 and the Cold War, on the other he was a proud member of the MUIOOF, the Manchester Unity Order of Odd Fellows. His name badge is in the collection. You will be taught none of these facts in school or university. You won’t be taught either that Ned Kelly went to Glenrowan with a sash of ‘the Hibernians’ under his armour. Or that a ‘friendly’, the Australian Natives Association was the main vehicle for the push to federate Australian States in the 1880’s and 1890’s. Because non-indigenous history of Australia is basically of the 19^th and 20^th century the evidence of ‘our’ fraternalism tells of its development through those years. Fraternalism has a much longer history and that must be taken into account too. But ‘our’ fraternal period saw two fundamental changes in the way fraternals operated and in the way they were dealt with by the authorities. Those changes explain why ‘our’ evidence is the way it is though ‘our’ evidence only explains part of the whole story. We need the whole story to fully understand the evidence.

I’ve always understood the importance of ‘things’ to the telling of a story – buildings, the landscape, the smallest, at-face-value insignificant item. It seemed to me that ‘things’ could be read. It just happens to be the case that much of the fraternal evidence is visual evidence which is perhaps a strange thing to say about allegedly ‘secret societies.’ But the fact they wished to be seen as well as remain secret is a big part of the key to understanding them. My earliest efforts to understand what was in front of me included trying to ‘read’ the large marching banners celebrated but not interrogated in labour history. They have often been used to decorate labour histories but have almost never been examined for their secrets. What secrets do I mean? For a start the form of parades and their functions have changed as circumstances have changed. At the beginning of the 19^th century, all except ‘the Freemasons’ were illegal and even with them it was touch and go whether they were to be banned. By the end of the 19^th century fraternals were literally everywhere and showing themselves off. For some years after 1788 the only parades you would have seen in an Australian colony were military, the odd church service or a demonstration protesting a government decision. By 1900 Australian towns, cities and small villages all had spectacular parades, with brass bands, floats, banners and various kinds of dress-ups, like these Order of Druids members – funerals, annual sports day, labour days, shows of patriotism and of protest. In the 20^th century those bright, noisy parades disappeared again – not just from the streets but from public consciousness. In 1900 they were very popular and they were absolutely everywhere. Today, along with their history, they are forgotten. Why? Huge amounts of publicity and newspaper coverage marked every one of those fraternal event because they were the expressions of the public mood and public enthusiasms. Even the best known ‘secret society’ of all, ‘the Freemasons’, paraded very publicly, and in their regalia, as did the Federated Engine Drivers and Firemen  Association  

and the Amalgamated Miners Association.

In 1901 when Australia became a Federation, there is no doubt that the Ancient Order of Druids, the Odd Fellows, trade societies, the Freemasons and the Foresters, among lots of others, were still secret societies. The handbooks are still available.

Quite a few of the fraternals were legally registered as ‘Friendly Societies’ – that is they were benefit societies. At their regular meetings, lets call them ‘lodge’ meetings, members paid their contributions into the fraternal ‘pot’ and collectively decided who was ‘good on the books’ and who wasn’t. The ritual, the passwords and signs were all designed to keep the society’s funds in the hands of bona fide members and to prevent spies gathering information. Black and white balls were used in the first secret ballots to exclude suspicious characters, or one’s enemies. All these decisions happened behind closed doors which made governments very uneasy. But authorities of various kinds had been uneasy about fraternal societies for hundreds of years, since their beginnings in mediaeval times. A book, Mutual Aid, provided me with my first answers, what I like to say was the end of the piece of string I’ve been following since. The co-authors Green and Cromwell wrote: This book tells the story of Australia’s friendly societies. It tells how ordinary Australians… banded together to provide by their own exertions and from their own slender resources, some of the medical and other essential services they lacked…This neglected part of the Australian story ought to engage not only those who wish to see the record put straight, but also those searching for an Australian identity. The spirit of mutual self-reliance described in these pages has consistently been a prominent part of the Australian make-up. The idea of mutual aid, ‘mateship’ is not unique to Australia and not confined to ‘the friendlies.’ These authors had membership numbers and they quoted a belief held in the 1890’s that around 90% of all manual workers were in mutual aid societies. This figure included what you would probably call ‘trade unions’, the first of which emphasised that they were also ‘benefit societies’: eg, the Australian Clerks Provident Society, and the United Watermens’ Birmingham Benefit Society. Health and welfare! They met behind closed doors and used secret signs and initiated new members. In the HRD, the first ‘trade-oriented fraternal society’ was the 1857 ‘Mutual Benefit Society of the AA Company’s Colliery Establishment’. Almost its first decision was to arrange a fund to pay for a miner, Tom Lewis, to go to Parliament as its elected representative. There he was to lobby for an improvement in mine working conditions, specifically regarding the foul air made by shifts of men working for long hours underground. Health and welfare!! The origins of the registered ‘friendlies’ and trade-oriented societies are in the guilds of mediaeval times. They were combination trade-unions/benefit societies/drinking or convivial societies/secret societies and religious societies. As trade-oriented societies they protected wage rates and working conditions. As benefit societies they insured members against the future, and as convivial societies they regularly paraded and celebrated their camaraderie in taverns. As religious societies with their own patron saints they acted out bible stories in Mystery Plays and paid for church services. In the 19^th and 20^th centuries fraternal members continued these activities but in separate societies for each one or in societies which had some of the aspects but not all.

Look at this photo of an eight-hour day procession in Newcastle. It appears to show a ‘Masonic’ symbol on the regalia of a trade union participant (Central standing figure of group of five on the right). These are not ‘Freemasons’ they are stonemasons. This trade was organised nationally and affiliated with Trades Hall Councils. Minutes from one of their lodges in Queensland shows the square and compass symbol, initiations, and a tyler in the 1890’s when the members were legally negotiating pay rises. They were not the only trade which met in lodges and had passwords, initiations, or distinguishing regalia or operated benefit funds as part of what was a global phenomenon. A tyler by the way was the lodge officer who guarded the lodge door often with a sword. Members still made regular payments out of their wages into a common purse. And the same struggles for legitimacy, even for survival continued. As in the past, ‘our’ fraternals felt compelled to choose sides. The most intense divisions occurred over religion, race, class and gender, that is to say, over decision making power. This, of course, is the stuff of politics. It is why elections are hard fought and politicians are slippery fish. In the 19^th century the ‘friendlies’ did not choose health and welfare as their sole field of interest, ‘trade unions’ did not choose to make wages and working conditions their specialty. The categories came about as governments passed legislation saying what could be done by organised societies and what couldn’t. It was governments which defined the categories and insisted society members choose which category they wished to be in.

Today, National Health Schemes do what ‘friendlies’ were doing by 1900. Cromwell and Green’s book was an argument against the Welfare State and for local control of health and welfare. They believed that State welfare schemes had failed and that ‘the friendlies’ needed to be rediscovered and rejuvenated. They didn’t realise that 19^th century fraternals were on a roll in an entirely new way. You’ll recall Wallsend Hospital, built in 1893 is known as the Miners Hospital and people have been told this was a project of the miners acting alone. More accurately it was a result of miners and their communities, through a range of fraternals, raising the funds to build a series of ‘hospitals’ and related services. In the 19^th century ‘fraternals’ lodges had names like ‘Morning Star’ and ‘Light in the South.’ Labour’s ‘light on the hill’ was just one among many similar claims. Much of the political rhetoric around Australia at the end of the 19^th century was about freshness, youth and a new blossoming when Europe was old, dark, tired. Fraternals were at the centre of this optimism. Unsurprisingly one ‘friendly’, the Australian Natives Association, or ANA, was the voice for Federation. Certain fraternals opposed denigration of European civilisation. In particular, Catholicism was ruled from Rome and British military greatness was worth protecting. There was to be ‘No Surrender’ to breakaway movements, like Irish Home Rule. In effect, the fraternals were secret societies that had become missionaries. It is struggle with authority which explains fraternal secrecy. Initially, fraternal societies had to be secretive in order to survive. It only became a problem when governments targeted them because they were secretive.  Their 19th century missionary zeal explains their colourful, coded regalia, their banners and their emphasis on parades and public display.

Put simply, all the fraternals wanted to create a better world – the Scouts, the Freemasons, the Rechabites, the churches, the industrial militants, the Odd Fellows – all had a message which they wanted to display to the world.  They all urged group identification and collective welfare but the way they expressed that message varied because they didn’t all see ‘the problem’ that had to be solved in the same way. Their suggested paths to a better society – ‘the New Jerusalem’ – varied greatly. This meant they weren’t all on the same side and they often clashed, publically. The pressures on each of them was great and like families they often split into factions or separated altogether into parallel organisations. The January meeting of this group clapped and cheered our convenor’s display of the aspirations espoused by the Co-operative Movement. You will recall that their leadership had a message. But few of the members were there for that reason, and co-ops were not fraternals. They stemmed from the same reform movements as fraternals and they paraded with fraternals but they, as institutions, concentrated on the individual welfare of lower prices and decided not to use secrecy, initiations or references to the Bible. Members had these things by also being unionists, free gardeners, odd fellows and Freemasons. Fraternals saw strength in the group and they sought through their practices to forge an individual’s identification with a collective. They sought to diminish the dangers of individualism in favour of community at the very time when individual endeavour was coming into its own. The established order was never entirely happy with them, some were absolutely opposed and fought back – with legislation and ‘deadly force’. In the 19^th century, against the fraternals’ increased public presence and their huge numbers, marketing became a major weapon. Individualist consumption, conformity, respectability were the new fashions.

‘Modern’ history has been taught as progressive – scientific, democratic and enlightened. More accurately, any gains made in human rights and representation have been made out of constant power struggles – between those in power and those who wanted change. In the name of the common people governments have replaced monarchs and national parliaments have become the place where citizens finally have had their say. It is not accidental that secrecy, control of information and control of decision-making power have become central to global politics in the 21^st century. In the furious passage of history the fraternals were, at the very least, important change agents. As they did in other colonies they created communities all over Australia and contributed to the growth of political parties. But as party politicians sought votes by subsidising amenities they found the diversity of local voices difficult to manage. Fraternal society members made important decisions in private and they swore allegiance to principles which had the potential to undermine central authority. Lodges had money which the authorities could not control and they had networks which authorities could not easily monitor. Some fraternal members came to believe that ‘the State’ was the way that improved living conditions could be secured and were prepared to give up their local autonomy for legality. While that fight was in the balance the then-governments demanded they register and have their rules audited. Secrecy was not acceptable in any form and governments insisted that they would determine who was legal and who was not, which society could continue and which could not. Competition between ‘the fraternals’ intensified into the 20^th century and they wrote their publicity and their official histories as though they were the only fraternal society of importance. In effect they helped to bury their collective history in order to boost their single society’s fame. This is clear in labour history as it is in Masonic and ‘friendly’ history. If and when a society fell out of existence, it fell out of consciousness because its only supporters were themselves.

The evidence shows that ‘the friendlies’ did advertise for, interview and employ our first doctors and nurses – the once famous ‘lodge doctors’. Because of their interest in their members’ health, and that of their families, the ‘friendlies’ raised money for our first hospitals, churches, schools, and sporting teams. The ‘T & G’ [Temperance and General Insurance], which still has a named building in Newcastle, was started by ‘the Rechabites’, a friendly society. Chemist shops first made the medicines for their lodge members. The Combined Friendly Societies then started a chain of ‘Combined Pharmacies’ and then in order to reduce the cost of drugs they set up the Commonwealth Serum Laboratory. They were unable to withstand the campaigns of the AMA and State Health and Welfare legislation eventually left them nowhere to go but into financial services where their battles with regulation continue. I’ve yet to find a stonemason sash, or one of their ceremonial aprons. The collection does have many pieces of fraternal regalia. Ceremonial aprons are often beautiful as well as crucial pieces of evidence. The most interesting lodge furniture and ceremonial items are often the oldest, and so are rarely in showroom condition. They are often very rare. A lodge cannot operate without a Charter or Dispensation. The detail on these highly ornate documents is enormously valuable to family historians, in particular, as are individual membership certificates, Honour Boards, and Merit awards. These are areas of huge un-tapped research potential. The collection does have other trade aprons and one of the oldest surviving banners in Australia, created for an English ‘Friendly Society’ but used out here. Silk banners were not usually signed by the artist, this one is, making it even more unique. 20^th century banners were mostly done on canvas and some were signed as this one was for Manchester Unity Independent Odd Fellows, another ‘Friendly Society.

To summarise, I’m asking you now to get your heads around some seemingly incredible propositions. They seem incredible because of what you have been taught and are still being taught. The first seemingly incredible proposition is that most of what you believe you know about what I’m calling fraternals is false or, at the very least, is very flawed. The second proposition is that the telling of those falsehoods, those flawed narratives, has been deliberate. My third apparently incredible proposition is that you need to bring the Freemasons, the trade unions, all of GUOOF, and all the other friendly societies that have existed since 1788, together and think of them as one phenomenon. And then add the societies in my fourth sub-group for the whole. I link all these societies under one heading because I believe that none can be understood without reference to the others. And because the separation of the groups from one another has been a strategy, a deliberate strategy arising from the fact that the societies were in competition with one another – for members, for resources and for political influence. All of the societies in this massive conglomeration shared a history, a history which is described by the definition. They cannot be sensibly separated and have only been separated because of the nature of that shared history. The evidence shows that the beginning of the piece of string is in the Garden of Eden.  The Free Gardeners, a Friendly Society, were very big in Newcastle. The Biblical connection helps to explain many symbols in trade union banners.

TO ILLUSTRATE

The Orange ‘movement’ is a very clear example of a fraternal society and its significance being airbrushed out of Newcastle’s history. The Loyal Orange Institute is determinedly secret, yet they insist on parading. They are one movement, yet they are riven with divisions of truly biblical proportions. Officially the movement dates from Ireland in 1798 with a confrontation between Catholic and Protestant ‘gangs.’ Some say a century earlier. One result of the 1798 skirmish was the transportation of some of the survivors to Botany Bay. One such transportee was Joseph Holt who was involved with plots involving convicts, Freemasons, John Macarthur and Napoleonic plans to invade the colony. Perhaps the first licenced tavern at Parramatta, ‘the Freemasons Arms’, was the location of seditious meetings. You won’t have been taught about any of this. Officially, the Australian Orange movement dates from the 1840’s. It spread throughout the continent, along with the other ‘fraternals.’ My incomplete records show well over 400 Orange lodges in NSW, of which around 150 were purely female with their own regalia. From the first, they were very politically active. In some circles today Sir Henry Parkes is remembered only as a revered ‘Father of Federation’. He was throughout his career rabidly anti-Catholic and secretly sponsored and was backed organisationally by the Loyal Orange Institute of NSW. Much of his electoral success depended on the unspoken agreement he had with this one organisation. He was, in other words, akin to those US politicians secretly dependent on and beholden to the NRA. Just a few weeks ago I travelled out to Cudal [west of Bathurst, NSW] in search of a cache of material which had turned up in an old shed on a sheep farm. While not being spectacularly successful, the excursion proved very useful, for example, in turning up Loyal Orange regalia produced for both male and female members in Orange, Wellington, Gulgong and Sunny Corner, Bodangora, and Stott’s Paddock, described as being ‘near Home Rule’. These lodges were using until comparatively recently facsimiles of David’s slingshot and Joshua’s trumpets to maintain their sense of identity. Their regalia matches that already in the collection from Kurri. Even in these smallest of Australian hamlets there was to be ‘NO SURRENDER’ to the enemies of Old Testament Protestantism or Britain and its monarchy. Tony Laffan, perhaps known to some here, is a local historian who has very effectively researched the Orange nature of much Hunter Valley politics. Here in Newcastle there were around 20 separate Orange lodges, with many more in the immediate vicinity, Minmi, Catherine Hill Bay, Weston, that sort of thing. Tony’s findings matched the evidence I was gathering. As I’ve written in my book, ‘They Call Each Other Brother’, immediately after the 1^st WW a breakaway ‘Loyal Orange Institute of Australia’ was established by a labour agitator called Skelton who also established his own political party for which he held the State seat of Newcastle in parliament for a number of years in the 1920’s. Walter Skelton was a Newcastle-based, Protestant prohibitionist. He was very strongly ‘Orange’ but as a railway worker he had labour sympathies and he was politically ambitious. He sought ALP pre-selection in 1921. At the time, after the 1917 Conscription battles and the Railway strike, neither the ALP nor ‘the Nationals’ were very popular among the general working population. Unhappy Protestant ‘labour’ voters suspected Catholic and/or Irish influence over the ALP but didn’t want to vote ‘National’. Skelton saw an opportunity and when he failed to get ALP pre-selection he established his own party, the Protestant Independent Labour Party. He was successful in the 1923 State election, defeating the National’s candidate who happened to be the Grand Chaplain of the Orange Order. Most of Skelton’s campaign supporters were Orangemen and a number were trade union officials opposed not only to Catholic influence but also to the ALP’s support of gambling, drink and Sunday sport. His public meetings were stormy and he moved with an escort of burly miners ‘ready for action.’ His unpublished memoirs relate that at least one meeting was abandoned under a hail of stones.[i] Shortly after Skelton’s win, and in the face of the Nationals being elected federally, the NSW ALP State Executive banned both the Protestant Federation and the LOI. The collection has the original and only Charters of Skelton’s breakaway organisation and its only Honour Board.

TO CONCLUDE

State insistence that societies conform to rules set by regulators continues today. ‘Trade-oriented societies’ have fought to retain their independence but the pressure on them to conform if they wished to be regarded as legal has not stopped. “The Freemasons’ may appear to have escaped State pressures but they have not. Each of the societies reacted in its own way to developments and has its own story and in the 20^th century they have enthusiastically participated in what for a time were called ‘the Culture Wars’ and in the 21^st are called ‘Fake News wars’. It is appropriate for this collection be held here in Newcastle, not because I was born here, but because, firstly, this city over two centuries has contributed a great deal to the fraternal story and, secondly, because this University is showing an inclination to promote the study of artefacts well beyond paper records. All need consideration and protection. Thank you for your attention.

[i]. W Skelton, A Fair Average Quality Australian Autobiography, self-published, copy at NLA 2696, pp.40-41.