From the early days of the setting up of the All Sections Consultative Committee in December 1949, when representatives of nine of the ten Grand Lodges in the United Kingdom had gathered in Prince Henry’s Room in Fleet Street, and had there subscribed to an agreement under which they acknowledged for the first time that the R.A.O.B. was one brotherhood, a brotherhood composed of a number of Sections each operating independently and enjoying sovereign rights within our own organisation, all seeking to further the same fundamental principles.
In the ensuing years, this gathering of representatives went on to set up an agreement which resulted in the First Constitutional Agreement being signed sixty years ago, on Friday 18th December 1953 by nine of the ten Sections of the R.A.O.B. operating within the United Kingdom.
At the April 2011 meeting of the All Sections Consultative Committee, I was elected as Chairman of that body and as I had been thinking for a good number of years along the lines of many of our past chairmen who had dreamed of an R.A.O.B. under one banner I made the following speech at my installation as chairman.
It was with a little bit of apprehension that I made this speech as I for one did not want to seem too forward and certinly was not thinking about amalgamation of any of the banners, so with my best voice I put forward the following proposal.
“First of all a vote of thanks to Brother Peter McPhail for the way he has conducted the meetings of this committee over the last two years, his quiet manner and his undoubted ability to chair the meetings will be a hard act to follow, I hope that I can continue in the same vein.
Brethren, I thank you for the confidence you have shown in my abilities by electing me as your Chairman of this august committee for the next two years and because of your faith I shall take this opportunity to address you on a subject so relevant, that Banners can now only ignore it at their peril and to do so would not be in the best interests of the Order in general or indeed, its Membership. I make an apology if I am breaching protocol by giving the following statement but I make no apology for its contents, and before you start to furiously scribble down the contents of this address I have prepared copies of it to be available to all members present.
Over sixty years ago, in 1951, Brother Leonard Percey said that the All Sections Committee had brought to fruition, a conception of unity within the Order, and he recalled that in December 1949, representatives of nine of the ten Grand Lodges in the country had foregathered in Prince Henry’s Room in Fleet Street, and had there subscribed to an agreement under which they acknowledged for the first time that the R.A.O.B. was one brotherhood, a brotherhood composed of a number of Sections each operating independently and enjoying sovereign rights within our own organisation, all seeking to further the same fundamental principles.
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