Showing posts with label Freemasonry. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Freemasonry. Show all posts

Tuesday, 24 February 2015


"Two powers like France and England, with a good understanding between them, might govern the world."

from Spike EP on Vimeo.

Napoleon was not French.

The Bonaparte Clan were leaders of a Grand Orient Masonic Oligarchy of Corsican Nationalists run by the British Admiralty as a kind of anti-French Italian Peasant Mujahadeen. 



- John Judge



- J. Edgar Hoover,
COINTELPRO Memo Concerning Dick Gregory,
May 15, 1968
from Spike EP on Vimeo.

"I'm not aware that there is such a thing as Southern art, at least not if you're defining it by technique. If there's something distinct about it, it's subject matter and also inner heritage. 

All Southerners who try to express themselves in art are very much aware that they are party to a defeat." - Shelby Foote

Friday, 20 February 2015





2001 and 2010
Written by a high free mason, Arthur C. Clarke, shows a Masonic belief system semi-obscured in allegory. Really tells a new world order beginning in 2001, ending with Part 2 - 2010. 

For follow up on final story, see Arthur C. Clarke's book 3001.

New Age Magazine 
(Formally retitled "Scottish Rite Magazine" following complications with the churches in the 1990s)
November 1969

Buzz performs a zero-G variant of the Hidden Hand
(Without the benefit of a top-coat)

Lucifer Rising

A Monolith

A Stereolith

The Monolith on Europa 
(and Elm)
As Above, So Below

2001 : Anno Lucis

2010 : The Year We Make Contact

Arthur C Clarke is still going to be Sir Arthur but the ceremony may have to wait for his reincarnation in another galaxy. That seemed the implication of the announcement from the seaside home of the prophet of the Space Age yesterday, as the impact of the Sunday Mirror's story slowly sank in to this sleepy corner of the global village.
On Sunday the newspaper declared Clarke to be a self-confessed paedophile. He was quoted admitting as much, and a Sri Lankan "friend" - head of current affairs at the Sri Lankan Broadcasting Company - alleged that Clarke was still having sex with boys "a few months ago". Clarke claimed he had not been sexually active for 20 years.
Yesterday it was announced that he had requested the conferment of his knighthood to be postponed, to avoid embarrassing Prince Charles. The request was accepted. The ceremony was due to be at the British High Commission tomorrow. Clarke was also said to be discussing the Mirror's story with his lawyers. In Sri Lanka, even the astrophysicist operates at a sedate, pre-modern pace, so 36 hours after the Mirror's story broke it was my duty to bring it to the attention of the director of the institute that bears Clarke's name. Professor Sam Karunaratne was visibly stunned.
"I can't even believe that a person of the calibre of Dr Clarke would be descending to things of this nature," he said. "It's unimaginable ... People are going to be, what do you say, flabbergasted about this."
I also showed the story to Sri Lanka's most energetic campaigner against paedophilia, Maureen Seneviratne, who was equally appalled. "It was the general opinion in the country that he was gay, but a paedophile... it's beyond my comprehension. He is one of the people that nobody could touch. A highly reputed figure, very influential."
There are seedy aspects of foreign involvement with Sri Lanka. Elsewhere in Asia, paedophilia means sex tourism. In Sri Lanka some Europeans have come into the country posing - and even performing - as businessmen or philanthropists. They set up homes close to the idyllic west or south coast beaches, and also close to communities of impoverished former fishermen. They then win the trust of local boys and begin abusing them, paying them tiny sums of money in return.
A German man is serving a two-year sentence and two other cases are going through the courts, and up to 100 suspected paedophiles are deported every year. Ms Seneviratne's organisation Peace (Protecting Environment and Children Everywhere) believes that as many as 7,000 children are involved in the trade at any one time. "Previous governments didn't even look into it, because all they were concerned about was tourism," said Ms Seneviratne.
"When we began working on the problem six years ago people thought the foreign paedophile was a wonderful fairy godfather giving out presents - so why were we rocking the boat? People were only outraged when the facts were brought to light."
The government of President Chandrika Kumaratunga has now taken Peace's research to heart and a presidential task force is investigating. Clarke has indeed been a wonderful fairy godfather for Sri Lanka. He set up the Arthur Clarke Centre for Modern Technologies 15 years ago with the money he received with a Marconi International Fellowship, and in a country that is still in many cases crushingly poor it is an inspiring success. Thanks to the centre, and Clarke's generosity with his contacts, many Sri Lankan scientists punch well above their nation's weight in research and development.
Whatever Clarke's past activities, his friends at the centre insist that he now lives a life of intense respectability.
The point is further emphasised in the novel 2061 : South Africans in Space.

" Even in this diffused light, it glittered strangely, and Floyd could see that it had a vicious edge

'The sharpest knife in the known universe, said van dr Berg happily.'

'We've been through all this to find a knife?'

Van dr Berg started to laugh, then found it wasn't easy inside his mask.

'So you still dont know what this is about?'

'I'm beginning to feel I'm the only one who doesn't.

Van dr Berg look his companion by the shoulder, and turned him to face the looming mass of Mount Zeus. From this distance, it filled half the sky - not merely the greatest, but the only mountain on this whole world.

'Admire the view just for one minute. I have an important  call to make.

He punched a code sequence on his corset, wails  for the READY light to flash, and said: 'Ganymede Central 109 - this is Van. Do you receive?'

After no more than the minimum timelag, an obviously electronic voice answered:

'Hello, Van. This is Ganymede Central 109. Ready to receive.'

Van dr Berg paused, savouting the moment he would remember for the rest of his life.

Contact Earth Ident Uncle 737. Relay following message. LUCY IS HERE.

LUCY IS HERE. End message. Please repeat.'

Perhaps l should have stopped him saying that, whatever it means, thought Floyd, as Ganymede repeated the message. But it's too late now. It will reach Earth within the hour.

'Sorry about that, Chris,' grinned van dr Berg. 'l wanted to establish priority - amongst other things.

'Unless you start talking soon, I`ll begin carving you up with one of these patent glass knives.'

Glass, indeed! Well, the explanation can wait - its absolutely fascinating, but quite complicated. So I'll give you the straight facts.

'Mount Zeus is a single diamond, approximate mass one million million tons.

Or, if you prefer it that way, about two times ten to the seventeenth carats. But l can't guarantee that it's all gem quality.' "


49  Shine

As they unloadcd the cqulpmcnt from Blll Tee and set it up on their little granite landing-pad Chris Floyd found it hard to tear his eyes away from the mountain looming above them. A single diamond bigger than Everest! Why, the scattered fragments lying round the shuttle must be worth billions rather than millions.

On the other hand they might be worth no more than well scraps of broken glass. The value of diamonds had always been controlled by the dealers and producers but If a literal gem mountain came suddenly on the market prices would obviously collapse completely. Now Floyd began to understand why so many interested parties had focused their attention upon Europa the  political and economic ramifications were endless

Now that he had at last proved his theory. Van dr Berg had become again the dedicated and single-minded scientist anxious to complete his experiment with no further distraction. With Floyds help - it was not easy to get some of the bulkier pieces of equlprnent out of Bill Tee's cramped cabin - they first drilled a metro-long core with a posable electric drill and carried it caieftlll  back to the shuttle.

Floyd would have had a different set of priorities but he recognized that it made sense In do the harder tasks first. Not until they had laid out a seismograph array and erected a panoramic TV camera on a low heavy tripod did van dr Berg condescend to collect some of the incomputable riches lying all around them.

'At the very least,' he said as he carefully selected some of the less lethal fragments they'll make good souvenirs)

Unless Robbie's friends murder us to get them

Van dr Berg looked sharply at his companion he wondered how much Floyd really knew - and how much, like all of them, he was guessmg.

Not worth then while now that the secrets out. In about an hour's time the Stock Exchange computers will be going crazy!'

'You bastard!' said Floyd with admiration rather than rancour.

'So that's what your rnesssage was about'

'Theres no law that says a scientist shouldn't make a little profit on the side - but I'm leaving the sordid details to my friends on Earth Honestly Im much more interested in the job were doing here. Let me have that wrench please...'

Three times before they had finished establishing  Zeus Station they were almost knocked off their feet by quakes. They could 89 them first as a vibration underfoot then everythirtg would start shaking then there would be a horrible long drawn-out groaning sound that seerrld to come from every direction. It was even mrborne, which to Floyd seemed strangest of all. He could not quote get used to the fact that there was enough atmosphere around them to allow short range conversations without radio.

Van der Berk kept assuring him that the quakes were still quite harmless but Floyd had learned never do put too much trust in experts. Though the geologist had just been proved spectacularly right as he looked at Bill Tee heaving on its shock-absorbers like a sloop~classed ship, he hoped that Van's luck would hold for at least afew more minutes.

That seems to be it said the scientist at last to Floyds great relief.
Ganymede seemed to be getting good data on all charnels. The batteries will last for years with the solar panel to keep recharging theyn.

"For a moment il seemed as if the mountain was rising again - but it was the camera tripod toppling over The very last scene from Europa was a close-up of a glowing wave of molten sulphur about to engulf the equipment.

Gone for every lamented Willis. Riches infinitely greater than all the wealth that Golconda or Kimberley ever produced! What a tragic, heartbreaking lossy

'What a stupid idiot!' spluttemd Dr Kreuger. 'Doesn't he realize..'

It was time for another letter to Nature. And this secret would be much too big to hide.

56 Penurbation Theory
From: Professor Paul Kreuger, FRS, etc.
To: The Editor NATU RE Data Bank (Public access)

As is now well understood, the Europan foliation known as Mount Zeus was originally part of Jupiter. The suggestion that the cores of the gas giants might consist of diamond was first made by Marvin Ross of the University of California's Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in a classic pa er The ice layer in Uranus and Neptune - diamonds in the sky?' (Nature val 292 No. 5822 pp 435-6, 30 July 1981). Surprisingly Ross did not extend his calculations to Jupiter.

The sinking of Mount Zeus has produced a veritable choir  of lamentations all of which are totally ridiculous - for the reasons given below.

Without going into details, which will be presented in a later communication, l estimate that the diamond cone of Jupiter must have had an original mass of at least 10*28 grams. This is ten billion times that of Mount Zeus.

Although much of this material would doubtless have been destroyed in the detonation of the planet and the formation of the - apparently artificial - sun Lucifer, it is inconceivable that Mount Zeus was the only fragment to survive.

Although much would have fallen back on to Lucifer, a substantial percentage must have gone into orbit - and must still be there. 

Elementary peturbation theory shows that it will return periodically to its point of origin. lt is not of course, possible to make an exact calculation but I estimate that at least a million times the mass of Mount Zeus is still orbiting on the vicinity of Lucifer. The loss of one small fragment, in any Case most inconveniently located on Europa, is therefore of virtually no importance. l propose the establishment, as soon as possible, of a dedicated space-radar system to Search for this material.

Although extremely thin diamond film has been mass-produced since as long ago as 1982 it has never been possible to make diamond in bulk. 

Its availability in megaton quantities could totally transform many industries and create wholly new ones. In canicular, as was pointed out by Isaacs et al almost a hundred years ago (see Science, 151, pp. 682-3 1965) diamond is the only construction material which would make possible the So-called "space elevator", allowing transportation away from Earth at negligible cost. The diamond mountains now orbiting among the satellites of Jupiter may open up the entire Solar System; how trivial, by comparison, appear all the ancient uses of the quartic-crystallized form of carbon!

For completeness, l would like to mention another possible location for enormous quantities of diamond - a place, unfortunately, even more inaccessible than the core of a giant planet...

It has been suggested that the crusts of neutron stars may be largely composed of diamond. As the nearest known neutron star is fifteen light   years away and has a surface gravity seventy thousand million times that of ours.

And this can hardly be...

" And it had all happened long before the human race existed. 

Although some mysterious accident had befallen Discovery in orbit around Jupiter, there was no real evidence that it involved anythmg more than a shipboard malfunction. Although the philosophical consequences of TMA-1 were profound,  for all practical purposes mankind was still alone in the universe.

It's Kirby's Wife again - Big Barda.

Now that was no longer true. Only light minutes away - a mere stones throw in the Cosmos - was an Intelligence that could create a star and for its own inscrutable purpose destroy a planet a thousand times the size of Earth. Even more ominous was the fact that it had shown awareness of mankind through the last message that Discovery had beamed back from the moons of Jupiter just before the fiery birth of Lucifer had destroyed it:


The brilliant new star which had banished night except for the few months in each year when it was passing behind the Sun had brought both hope and fear to mankind. 

Fear because the Unknown especially when it appears  linked with impotence could not fail to rouse such primeval emotions. 

Hope - because of the transformation it had wrought in global politics. 

It had often been said that the only thing that could unite mankind was a threat from space. Whether Lucifer was a threat no-one knew but it was certainly a challenge. 

And that as it turned out, was enough.

Heywood Floyd had watched the geopolitical changes from his vantage point on Pasteur, almost as If he was an alien observer himself.  At first he had no intention of remaining on space once his recovery was complete. To the baffled annoyance of his doctors that took an altogether unreasonable length of time.

Looking back from the tranquillity of later years Floyd knew exactly why his bones refused to mend.

He simply did not wish to return to Edith: there was nothing for him down on the dazzling blue and white globe that filled his sky. 

There were times when he could well understand how Chandra might have lost the will to live.

It was pure chance that he had not getn with his f test wife on that flight to Europe. Now Marion was part of another life that rntght have beloved to someone else and their two daughters were amiable strangers with families oftheir own.

But he had lost Caroline through his own actions even though he had no real choice in the matter. She had never understood (had he really done so himself?)

Why he had left the beautiful home they had made together to exile himself for years on the cold wastes far from the Sun.

Though he had known, even before the mission was half over that Caroline would not wait he had hoped desperately that Chis would forgive him. But even this consolation had been denied his son had been without a father for too long. By the time that Floyd resumed she had found another in the man who had taken his place in Carolines life. The estrangement was complete he thought he would never get over it but of course he did - after a fashion.

His body had cunningly conspired with his unconscious desires. 

When at last he returned to Earth after his protracted convalescence to Pasteur he promptly developed such alarming symptoms - including something suspiciously like bone necrosis that he was immediately rushed into orbit. And there he had stayed, apart from a few excursions to the Moon completely adapted to living in the zero to one-sixth gravity regime of the slowly rotating space hospital.

He was not a recluse - far from it. Even while he was convalescing he was dictaling repots. Giving evidence to endless commissions, being interviewed by media representatives. He was a famous man and enjoyed the experience while it lasted. "



Sort of like jeweled basketballs all dribbling their way toward me. 



— Terence McKenna, Alien Dreamtime

Wednesday, 18 February 2015






We are the Police. Resistance is futile.
















Friday, 13 February 2015

Manson as a Scapegoat

"For years I was the personification of everything evil, everything rotten in this country. Yeah, you dumped all your own criminality off on me. 

I was your goat."


From the 1940’s, I lived a lifetime in and on your prison cross, kept in your punishments to be your goat, your blame, all your bad, long before your children of the '60s picked me up and my will from the leftover garbage of past wars you waged upon your young. 

I am a child of the '30s, not the '60s. I told and answered in truth for what I was asked. What they did and do to balance themselves in their own points of view for the life they said they wanted is their own responsibility. You gave them your blame, and all of your problems but no forgiveness. 


They are also making up more TV movie crime, as if you don't have enough. 



DOCTOR: Now, before you go rushing off, Mel, do you know what a Judas goat is? 

MEL: Er, yes. It's a decoy goat that's tied to the stake to lure the tiger out into the open. 

DOCTOR: Getting badly mauled in the process. I think I shall refuse the role. 

Monday, 26 January 2015

Churchill : Clement Attlee, The Focus and The New WelcomeLodgeLeft-Cover Staybehind Austerity Government of 1945

Clement Attlee was a loyal member of Winston Churchill's Wartime Government and War Cabinet.

Attlee himself personally played a key and integral role in Churchill's May 1940 Coup d'état to topple the Tory Government of Neville Chamberline, the elected leader of Churchill's own party, replacing him with Churchill himself, who never won a national General Election or received a popular mandate from the British Electorate in his own right prior to 1951, after 6 years of largely disastrous post-War Austerity served up under Left-Cover by the Attlee Government.

Like Churchill, Attlee too was a paid agent of influence of the pre-war Czechoslovakian government, co-conspirator in the secret combine known informally in Churchill's private papers only as "The Focus".

Winston Churchill - Worshipful Master, Studholme Lodge No. 1591 (1901)
Clement Attllee - Worshipful Master, New Welcome Lodge No. 3541 (1934)

Churchill's War by David Irving from Spike EP on Vimeo.

"After seven years' research in British and foreign archives like Washington, Moscow, Paris -- because the Churchill trustees still refuse access to his papers to any except their official biographer -- Irving has built up an unusual portrait of the man who brought devastation to Europe and ruin to his own people, while leading them to a Pyrrhic victory. Unstinting in his praise of the achievement of an old man in uniting and inspiring a moribund Mother Country to make one last great effort, Irving conceals little of the uglier detail, like how Churchill thwarted the only chances Europe had of peace in 1939 and 1940, or how he unleashed the cruel bombing war that killed one million Europeans. There are touching sidelights on Churchill' s strained relations with his own family, cast by the unpublished papers of his daughters; but a harsher light is thrown on the demi- corruption, hard drinking, cynicism, brutality, deceit and callousness of Winston's regime. He rejoiced in killing, was intoxicated by the sound of cannon, exhilarated by his own graphic language.

This is a stout picture of a hard old man, aged sixty as the book begins -- emerging from a political wilderness to fight a war with a toughness that appalled men even half his age. "Some chicken, some neck!" was his famous epigram at Ottawa at the end of 1941. He applied it to Britain; this book applies it to him.

Irving is one of the world's most widely read dissident historians: unwilling to rely on published biographies or histories, he cuts across fresh ploughed country, searching in unlikely places for the bare rock of history: diaries, files, and private papers. When Irving offers new theories, sometimes adventurous ones, these are never demolished. "Churchill," he concludes in this book, "was a man who destroyed two empires, one of them the enemy's."

DAVID IRVING was born in Essex, England, in 1938, son of a Navy officer, father of four teenage daughters. After unorthodox education in London University and a Ruhr steelworks his first book, The Destruction of Dresden, became a beststeller in 1963. He applied the same research methods to other controversial works: his biographies of Hitler and Rommel are the best known. Using primarily original documents and diaries, Irving's conclusions often differ startlingly from accepted views. He began researching this Churchill biography in 1976. "

Professional Politicians may well all be whores, but they are very rarely just COMPLETE whores, because their ability to achieve a consistently high return for their services is reliant to a very great extent upon that fact that everyone is always attempting to dance with them at once.


Mr. Attlee is asking for more as well!" 
- David Irving, 1990


(N.B. First Sea Lord Churchill was the intellectual author, prime mover and principle bungler of the disaster ours Norwegian Campaign, the failure of which was the entire basis for the crisis which precipitated this Consitutional Debate.

With NeoConservatives and 9/11 and Iraq War Military Commanders with a history of defeats prompting immediate promotion, this is sometimes termed as "Failing Upwards".)


- Worshipful Brother Attllee, 
New Welcome Lodge No. 5139,
Noway Debate, 
May 1940

"After the Munich Agreement of September 29, 1938, when Mr. Neville Chamberlain -- who was not in the pay of anyone, so far as I know -- went over to see Adolf Hitler and to sign, with Benito Mussolini and Edouard Daladier, the agreement which effectively spelt the end of Czechoslovakia as a military force in Europe, the Czech Government realized that their time had run out. 


"Poor Edward. Now there's bound to be a General Election". "Faced with the prospect of losing £2,000 a year from the Czechs". Can you believe it! "And his seat in Parliament"


In the files I found a telephone call which the Czech Ambassador Mr. Jan Masaryk made in September 1938 to Prague saying, Mr. Churchill is asking for more! Mr. Attlee is asking for more as well!


Mr. Michael Foot, a writer whom I deeply admire although a Socialist, wrote a book in 1938 called The Guilty Men. He did not know the half of it! He was pointing his finger at the innocent ones, like Neville Chamberlain, who had tried to save the peace."


- Julian Huxley, 
UNESCO Charter,
UNESCO: It's Purpose and Philosophy, 


It is not possible to implement an effective National Policy of Eugenics in the absence of universal, nationalised healthcare and social services.

It first requires that capacity and capability of the State to catalogue the entire society and hold a complete and detailed inventory of the entire population.


Whilst Home Secretary in 1911, Winston Churchill authored the Mental Defficiency Act of 1913, which calls for the mandatory sterilisation of "Mental Defectives", and their isolation from the general population in concentration camps to perform forced labour in service of the State.

It passed in 1913 with only a single "Nay" vote from Tony Benn's grandfather who attempted to filibuster single-handed it on ground of moral obscenity.

In 1920, Churchill (as Minister for War) wrote a front-page editorial denouncing Bolshevism as an international multi-generational Satanic Jewish conspiracy for World Domination going back at least as far as the French Revolution.

This is additionally problematic when we consider that Churchill's mother was Jewish, making him a born Jew as defined by Abrahamic law, if not a practitioner of the Jewish religion, and good evidence also suggests that he is the confirmed bastard child of Edward VII, further explaining the distance and hostility young Winston had for his syphilitic late common-law father, Sir Randolph Churchill.

Sir Winston has a Jewish official Biographer, Sir Martin Gilbert, CBE, who has to explain all of these things - and to his credit in one sense, for the most part he does not even bother to try.

Churchill and Eugenics
By Sir Martin Gilbert CBE

Abstract: When he was Home Secretary (February 1910-October 1911) Churchill was in favor of the confinement, segregation, and sterilization of a class of persons contemporarily described as the "feeble minded." The most significant letter Churchill wrote in support of eugenics was not, however, deliberately left out of the official biography by Randolph Churchill for reasons of embarrassment, but simply through oversight. -Ted Hutchinson

The author ( is an honorary member and trustee of The Churchill Centre, is the official biographer of Sir Winston Churchill and the author of more than eighty books, on the two World Wars, the Holocaust and 20th century history as well as Churchill.

Randolph Churchill has been accused of deliberately omitting from his narrative volumes and from the companion volumes-because he was ashamed of it-a letter from Churchill to Asquith, written in December 1910, stating that "The unnatural and increasingly rapid growth of the Feeble-Minded and Insane classes, coupled as it is with a steady restriction among all the thrifty, energetic and superior stocks, constitutes a national and race danger which it is impossible to exaggerate."

I can state without fear of contradiction that Randolph never saw this letter, of which there was no copy in the Churchill papers. Here is the story of that letter, and its context.

"The improvement of the British breed is my aim in life," Winston Churchill wrote to his cousin Ivor Guest on 19 January 1899, shortly after his twenty-fifth birthday. Churchill's view was reinforced by his experiences as a young British officer serving, and fighting, in Arab and Muslim lands, and in South Africa. Like most of his contemporaries, family and friends, he regarded races as different, racial characteristics as signs of the maturity of a society, and racial purity as endangered not only by other races but by mental weaknesses within a race. As a young politician in Britain entering Parliament in 1901, Churchill saw what were then known as the "feeble-minded" and the "insane" as a threat to the prosperity, vigour and virility of British society.

The phrase "feeble-minded" was to be defined as part of the Mental Deficiency Act 1913, of which Churchill had been one of the early drafters. The Act defined four grades of "Mental Defective" who could be confined for life, whose symptoms had to be present "from birth or from an early age." "Idiots" were defined as people "so deeply defective in mind as to be unable to guard against common physical dangers." "Imbeciles" were not idiots, but were "incapable of managing themselves or their affairs, or, in the case of children, of being taught to do so." The "feeble-minded" were neither idiots nor imbeciles, but, if adults, their condition was "so pronounced that they require care, supervision, and control for their own protection or the protection of others." If children of school age, their condition was "so pronounced that they by reason of such defectiveness appear to be personally incapable of receiving proper benefit from instruction in ordinary schools." "Moral defectives" were people who, from an early age, displayed "some permanent mental defect coupled with strong vicious or criminal propensities on which punishment had little or no effect."[1]

In 1904, as Churchill was crossing from the Conservative to the Liberal benches, A.J. Balfour's Conservative government set up a Royal Commission "On the Care and Control of the Feeble-Minded." When the commission reported in 1908 to the Liberal Government-which had come into office at the end of 1905, and of which Churchill was a Cabinet Minister-it recommended compulsory detention of the mentally "inadequate," as well as sterilisation of the "unfit," so that it would be impossible to have children and thus perpetuate what were then seen as inherited characteristics. Until that time only the criminally insane, whom the courts had judged to be a danger to themselves and others, were sent to mental asylums. Detention of the "feeble-minded"-for life-was considered by the Royal Commission to be vital to the health of the wider society.

Such detention, as well as sterilisation, were at that time the two main "cures" to "feeble-mindeness." They were put forward by the eugenicists, those who believed in "the possibility of improving the qualities of the human species or a human population by such means as discouraging reproduction by persons having genetic defects or presumed to have inheritable undesirable traits (negative eugenics) or encouraging reproduction by persons presumed to have inheritable desirable traits (positive eugenics)."[2]

In introducing its recommendations in 1908, the Royal Commission On the Care and Control of the Feeble-Minded-one of whose eight members was the chairman of the eugenics-influenced National Association for Promoting the Welfare of the Feeble-Minded-expressed its concern about "the numbers of mentally defective persons" in Britain "whose training is neglected, over whom no sufficient control is exercised and whose wayward and irresponsible lives are productive of crime and misery...and of much continuous expenditure wasteful to the community." The Royal Commisison suggested that permanent institutional care was the means to establish control over the feeble-minded. It also advocated the establishment of industrial "colonies" with schools.[3]

Churchill shared the Royal Commission's fears and supported its recommendations. The improvement of the health and well-being of the British race was a central aspect of his political and social outlook. As President of the Board of Trade, while advancing important measures of social reform, he had seen widespread poverty and demoralisation throughout Britain. In 1910, on becoming Home Secretary, he read a booklet by Dr. H.C. Sharp, The sterilisation of Degenerates. Dr Sharp was a member of the Indiana Reformatory. In 1907, while the Royal Commission was taking evidence in Britain, the State of Indiana had passed a Eugenics Law making sterilisation mandatory for those individuals in State custody who were judged mentally unfit. They were also refused the right to marry.[4] Other States passed similar laws. Between 1907 and 1981, more than 65,000 individuals were forcibly sterilised in the United States.[5]

Using a thick blue pencil, Churchill marked in Sharp's pamphlet the sections about the Indiana legislation and the operations that had been carried out on both men and women to sterilise them. In September 1910, Churchill wrote to his Home Office officials asking them to investigate putting into practice the "Indiana Law"-dominated by sterilisation, and the prevention of the marriage of the "Feeble-Minded." Churchill wrote: "I am drawn to this subject in spite of many Parliamentary misgivings....Of course it is bound to come some day." Despite the misgivings, "It must be examined." He wanted to know "what is the best surgical operation?" and what new legal powers would be needed to carry out sterilisation.

Churchill was answered by his Chief Medical Adviser of Prisons, Dr. Horatio Donkin, who described the Indiana arguments for eugenics as "The outcome of an arrogation of scientific knowledge by those who had no claim to it....It is a monument of ignorance and hopeless mental confusion."[6]

In October 1910 a deputation to the Government called for the implementation of the Royal Commission's recommendations without delay. Churchill, in his reply, recalled the fact that there were at least 120,000 "feeble-minded" persons "at large in our midst" who deserved "all that could be done for them by a Christian and scientific civilization now that they are in the world," but who should, if possible, be "segregated under proper conditions so that their curse died with them and was not transmitted to future generations."

Churchill had not given up his belief in sterilisation as well as segregation. On studying the case of Alfred Oxtoby, who had been convicted in June 1910 of bestiality and of indecently assaulting a twelve-year-old girl-and who had been described by the local police in the East Riding of Yorkshire as mentally inadequate and "over-sexed"-Churchill wrote to his advisers: "This seems to be a case where a complete cure might be at once effected by sterilisation." Churchill went on to ask: "Can this ever be done by consent?" In reply, Donkin wrote that sterilisation would not in fact remove Oxtoby's sexual drive, and that he was too insane to give informed consent. Oxtoby was sent to Broadmoor criminal lunacy asylum. Churchill asked that his case be kept under review at the Home Office in the hope that sterilisation would become possible in the near future.[7]

With Dr. Sharp's pamphlet and the Oxtoby case much in mind, Churchill decided to take the initiative with regard to the implementation of the Royal Commission's recommendations. He wrote to the Prime Minister, H.H. Asquith, in December 1910, about the "multiplication of the unfit" that constituted "a very terrible danger to the race." Until the public accepted the need for sterilisation, Churchill argued, the "feeble-minded" would have to be kept in custodial care, segregated both from the world and the opposite sex.

In his letter, Churchill told Asquith: "The unnatural and increasingly rapid growth of the Feeble-Minded and Insane classes, coupled as it is with a steady restriction among all the thrifty, energetic and superior stocks, constitutes a national and race danger which it is impossible to exaggerate. I am convinced that the multiplication of the Feeble-Minded, which is proceeding now at an artificial rate, unchecked by any of the old restraints of nature, and actually fostered by civilised conditions, is a terrible danger to the race." Concerned by the high cost of forced segregation, Churchill preferred compulsory sterilisation to confinement, describing sterilisation as a "simple surgical operation so the inferior could be permitted freely in the world without causing much inconvenience to others."

Churchill's letter to Asquith showed how much he regarded British racial health as a serious and an urgent issue. As he wrote to the Prime Minister: ‘I feel that the source from which the stream of madness is fed should be cut off and sealed up before another year has passed.'[8].

To reinforce his sense of urgency, Churchill circulated to his Cabinet colleagues the text of a lecture by Dr A.F. Treadgold, one of the expert advisers to the Royal Commission. It was entitled "The Feeble-Minded-A Social Danger." Written in 1909, the lecture gave, in the words of Churchill's covering note, "a concise, and, I am afraid not exaggerated statement of the serious problems to be faced." Churchill added: "The Government is pledged to legislation, and a Bill is being drafted to carry out the recommendations of the Royal Commission."[9]

In February 1911, Churchill spoke in the House of Commons about the need to introduce compulsory labour camps for "mental defectives." As for "tramps and wastrels," he said, "there ought to be proper Labour Colonies where they could be sent for considerable periods and made to realize their duty to the State."[10] Convicted criminals would be sent to these labour colonies if they were judged "feeble-minded" on medical grounds. It was estimated that some 20,000 convicted criminals would be included in this plan. To his Home Office advisers, with whom he was then drafting what would later become the Mental Deficiency Bill, Churchill proposed that anyone who was convicted of any second criminal offence could, on the direction of the Home Secretary, be officially declared criminally "feeble-minded," and made to undergo a medical enquiry. If the enquiry endorsed the declaration of "feeble-mindedness," the person could then be detained in a labour colony for as long as was considered a suitable period.

No legislation was introduced along these lines while Churchill was at the Home Office. In October 1911 he was appointed First Lord of the Admiralty, in charge of the Royal Navy, with new concerns and new responsibilities. On 17 May 1912, while he was at the Admiralty, a Private Members' Bill was introduced in the House of Commons, entitled the "Feeble-Minded Control Bill." This called for the implementation of the Royal Commission's conclusions. Hundreds of petitions were sent to Parliament in support of legislation. The Committee to further the Bill was headed by the two Anglican primates, the Archbishops of Canterbury and York. H.G. Wells was a supporter of the Bill. G.K. Chesterton led a public campaign against the Bill. Dean Inge, the Dean of St Paul's, complained that eugenics was so logical it was only opposed by "irrationalist prophets like Mr. Chesterton." In his public lectures and published articles W.G. Chesterton ridiculed what he called "the Feeble-Minded Bill.'"

The Feeble-Minded Control Bill rejected compulsory sterilisation, but made it a punishable misdemeanour to marry or attempt to marry a mental defective, or to solemnise, procure or connive at such a marriage. It provided for registration and segregation. And it gave the Home Secretary the power to commit any person who fell outside the definition of feeble-mindedness but whose circumstances appeared to warrant his inclusion.

On its first reading, the Bill had only thirty-eight opponents. But the Liberal newspapers opposed it vigorously, and Josiah Wedgwood, a Liberal Member of Parliament, denounced it as a "monstrous violation" of individual rights. Roman Catholics leaders denounced it as "contrary to Christian morals and elementary human rights." When Wedgwood spoke in the House of Commons against it, he called it "legislation for the sake of a scientific creed which in ten years may be discredited."

The Private Members Bill was withdrawn, but the Liberal Government, conscious of the strength of public feeling in favour of a measure based on the Royal Commission's conclusions, decided to introduce its own "Mental Deficiency Bill," for the compulsory detention of the "feeble-minded." This Government Bill was introduced to Parliament on 10 June 1912. In urging the passage of the new Bill, Churchill's successor as Home Secretary, Reginald McKenna, said: "I commend it to the House in the confident assurance that if it is passed into law we shall be taking a great step towards removing one of the worst evils in our time."

In his summing up, Josiah Wedgwood said: "I urge that the Government should, if this legislation goes through, see that all the homes in which defectives are looked after are homes run by the Government, and not for private profit, where the inspection is of the best and where the treatment is of the very highest character, and that the earliest possible term should be set to this licensing of private homes where private profit is likely to be the main cause of the existence of the home, and where, to a large extent, employment will be carried on under extremely undesirable conditions by people who are absolutely unable to protect themselves."[11]

Between 24 and 30 July 1912, a month after the Second Reading of the Mental Deficiency Bill in Parliament, the first international Eugenics Conference was held in London, and was attended by four hundred delegates. Churchill was a Vice-President of the Congress, and Alexander Graham Bell, the inventor of the telephone, was one of its directors, as was Charles Eliot, a former President of Harvard, and the Regius Professor of Medicine at Oxford, Sir William Osler. The Canadian-born Osler, who had been created a baronet the previous year, was one of the world's most prominent practitioners of clinical medicine.

The Congress opened with a reception and a banquet that was addressed by the former Prime Minister, A.J. Balfour. A programme of entertainment was provided by a committee headed by the Duchess of Marlborough (the American heiress Consuelo Vanderbilt, who was married to Churchill's cousin the Ninth Duke of Marlborough). Churchill did not attend.

The Congress on Eugenics led to renewed public pressure for Britain to adopt eugenics laws. In October 1912, Churchill discussed the proposed laws with Wilfrid Scawen Blunt, who wrote in his diary: "Winston is also a strong eugenist. He told us he had himself drafted the Bill which is to give power of shutting up people of weak intellect and so prevent their breeding. He thought it might be arranged to sterilise them. It was possible by the use of Roentgen rays, both for men and women, though for women some operation might also be necessary. He thought that if shut up with no prospect of release without it many would ask to be sterilised as a condition of having their liberty restored. He went on to say that the mentally deficient were as much more prolific than those normally constituted as eight to five. Without something of the sort the race must decay. It was rapidly decaying, but could be stopped by such means."[12]

The views of the eugenists were much influenced by the American psychologist Henry H. Goddard, who asserted that "feeble-mindedness" was a hereditary trait, almost certainly caused by a single recessive gene. His view was widely spread in 1912 with the publication of his book The Kallikat Family: A Study in the Heredity of Feeble-Mindedness, about those in the general population who carried the recessive trait despite outward appearances of normality. Goddard, the creator of the term "moron," was the director of the Vineland Training School-originally the Vineland Training School for Backward and Feeble-minded Children-in New Jersey. In his book, Goddard recommended segregating the "feeble minded" in institutions like his own, where they would be taught various forms of menial labour.[13]

The Mental Deficiency Bill passed its third reading in the House of Commons in 1913, with only three votes being cast against it. The new law rejected sterilisation, which Churchill had earlier advocated, in favour of confinement. On 16 November 1914, in describing the working of the Act during the previous year, Reginald McKenna told the House of Commons: "Institutions and homes provided by religious and philanthropic associations, and by individuals, have come forward in considerable numbers, and the Board has certified or approved of thirty-one of them, making provision for 2,533 cases. In addition to these there are the nine hospitals and institutions formerly registered under the Idiots Act which have become certified institutions or houses under the Mental Deficiency Act, and continue to provide accommodation for many hundreds of defectives. Nine local authorities have entered into contracts with one or other of these institutions for the reception of defectives from their area; five of these contracts cover a number exceeding eighty, and in the remaining four the numbers to be received are not specified."[14]

The concept of hereditary mental illness that could be halted by sterilisation remained widespread for many years. In 1927, in the United States, in the case of Buck versus Bell, the distinguished Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, then in his twenty-fifth year on the Supreme Court, closed the 8-1 majority opinion upholding the sterilisation of Carrie Buck-who along with her mother and daughter had been labelled "feeble-minded"-with the six words: "Three generations of imbeciles are enough."

In 1928 the Canadian Province of Alberta passed legislation-the Sexual Sterilisation Act of Alberta-that enabled the provincial government to perform involuntary sterilisations on individuals classified as "mentally deficient." In order to implement the 1928 act, a four-person Alberta Eugenics Board was created to approve sterilisation procedures. In 1972, the Sexual sterilisation Act was repealed, and the Eugenics Board dismantled. During the forty-three years of the Eugenics Board, 2832 sterilisation procedures were performed.[15]

Britain never legislated for sterilisation or carried it out. Detention in institutions was the chosen path since the Mental Deficiency Act 1913. That act continued in force for almost half a century. The 1959 Mental Health Act, introduced by Harold Macmillan's Conservative Government, was described in its preamble as "An Act to repeal the Lunacy and Mental Treatment Acts 1890 to 1930, and the Mental Deficiency Acts, 1913 to 1938, and to make fresh provision with respect to the treatment and care of mentally disordered persons and with respect to their property and affairs; and for purposes connected with the matters aforesaid."[16]

A year later the Mental Health (Scotland) Act 
repealed the Lunacy (Scotland) Acts 1857 to 1913, and the Mental Deficiency (Scotland) Acts, 1913 and to 1940 "to make fresh provision with respect to the reception, care and treatment of persons suffering, or appearing to be suffering, from mental disorder, and with respect to their property and affairs; and for purposes connected with the matters aforesaid."[17]

Detention, not sterilisation, had been the chosen legislative path in Britain between 1913 and 1959. But with the advances in medical science and medical ethics, fewer and fewer categories of "persons suffering... rom mental disorder" were considered needy of detention. Causes such as food and nutritional deficiency, poverty and deprivation, abuse and neglect, were identified as among the reasons-and early diagnosis, medication, therapy, community care and family support systems as the methods of treatment-of what was considered, at the time of Churchill's support for eugenics before the First World War, as hereditary "feeble-mindedness" with no cure.

[1] The text of the Medical Deficiency Act 1913 was published in the British Medical Journal (BMJ) in its issue of 16 November 1912, pages 1397-9.

[2] ‘Eugenics': Random House Dictionary: Unabridged (v 1.1). Random House, Inc. 21 March 2009.

[3] Report of the Royal Commission on the Care and Control of the Feeble-Minded, 1908. His Majesty's Stationery Office, Command Paper 4202 of 1908.

[4] sterilisations were halted in Indiana in 1909 by Governor Thomas R. Marshall, but it was not until 1921 that the Indiana Supreme Court ruled that the 1907 law was unconstitutional, as it was a denial of due process under the Fourteenth Amendment. A 1927 law provided for appeals in the courts. In all, approximately 2,500 people were sterilised while in State custody. Governor Otis R. Bowen approved repeal of all sterilisation laws in 1974. By 1977 the related restrictive marriage laws were repealed.

[5] Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Iceland, Norway and Sweden and Switzerland have at different times used sterilisation for the mentally ill. The number of sterilisations in Sweden was 62,000. The most notorious sterilisation legislation was promulgated in Nazi Germany in July 1933, under which more than 150,000 Germans, including many children and babies, judged ‘mentally unfit' were sterilised, and an equal number killed by gas or lethal injection between 1933 and 1940.

[6] Home Office papers, 144/1098/197900.

[7] Home Office papers, 144/1088/194663.

[8] Asquith papers, MS 12, folios 224-8.

[9] Cabinet papers, 37/108/189.

[10] Hansard, Parliamentary Debates, 10 February 1911.

[11] Hansard, Parliamentary Debates, 10 June 1912.

[12] W. S. Blunt, My Diaries: 1888-1914, 2 Volumes. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1921.

[13] Henry H. Goddard, The Kallikat Family: A Study in the Heredity of Feeble-Mindedness. New York, The Macmillan Company, 1912.

[14] Hansard, Parliamentary Debates, 16 November 1914.

[15] The Alberta Sexual Sterilisation Act was disproportionately applied to those in socially vulnerable positions, including women, children, the unemployed, domestic help, rural citizens, the unmarried, people in institutions, Roman and Greek Catholics, and people of Ukrainian, Native and Métis ethnicity.

[16] Royal Assent, 29 July 1959.

[17] Royal Assent, 29 July 1960.