Tribunal

 

When the case was finally heard before a tribunal, the High Court judge ordered her release and gave costs against the Home Office.The petty harassments and ignoble acts that have always been a part of religious persecutions were not wanting in Scientology's British experience.Members of the Church (and here I am referring to English members, not foreign nationals) were made the victims of various kinds of slander, discrimination and spite. Here are some typical instances:

The headmaster of a private school refused to accept the son of a prominent Scientologist as a pupil, declaring, "The father has drawn a great deal of attention to himself and the family belongs to an organization said to be socially harmful."Six doctors in East Grinstead, Sussex (home of Scientology's world headquarters) refused to accept Scientologists as patients on their National Health Service lists. A spokesman for the group told newsmen that "ethical reasons" prevented his stating his objections. A lay member of the East Sussex National Health Executive Council made a public statement, saying:

"It is within my official knowledge that local doctors are most unwilling to include Scientologists in their lists of patients for the reason that they naturally want to avoid association with people who are frequently unclean and are often found living in most unsatisfactory conditions" Britains largest insurance company, the Royal Insurance Group, withdrew its policy on Scientology's international headquarters - Saint Hill Manor. The reason given by company executives was that "we are pruning our portfolio of unprofitable business".

When the Scientologists purchased an advertisement in the Tunbridge Wells telephone directory, it appeared under the classification, Zoos. Later the Government Post Office wrote to Thomson Directories, who print the book, asking them not to carry any more advertising for Scientology under any classification.The ability of the group fighting Scientology to use even the Foreign Office to harass Hubbard and his followers in distant parts of the world (and I am convinced they did, despite official denials) should make even the most resolute flagwaver stop and think.

Consider, by way of illustration, the Corfu caper. Anyone who has read any of the many accounts of British war-time intelligence activities will immediately recognize a familiar pattern in the whole episode.Hubbard and 2oo of his adherents who had taken up residence aboard the 3,300-ton ship Apollo, thought they had found a haven far removed from their tormentors, when they docked in the harbour of Corfu, a Greek island in the Ionian Sea.The local population was friendly, their goodwill no doubt stimulated by the estimated $5o,ooo a month the Scientologists were pouring into the island economy, which had to depend ordinarily on what summer tourism brought in.After five or six halcyon months in their Greek refuge, however, the Scientologists began to realize that their enemies were at work once more behind the scenes, plant ing suspicions against Scientology in the minds of local authorities and spreading false stories among the people concerning the foreign "cult".According to the Scientologists' account of the affair, a substantial part of which I later verified, the main focal point of their difficulties in Corfu was the Honorary British Vice-Consul, a certain Major John Forte, whom Hubbard followers suspected, rightly or wrongly, of making derogatory statements about them to the Greek authorities.An article appeared in the Corfu newspaper, Telegraphos, warning the Scientologists that the Greek Government would not tolerate anyone spreading within her territory theories of religion, politics "or even of black magic".

Since all of Scientology's literature was in English and the people of Corfu spoke Greek, such a statement leaves one puzzled as to how Hubbard might proselytize the local population. It seemed, rather, a pretext for publishing the whispered gossip already being circulated by word of mouth.In London, the Greek Embassy was given copies of Hansard which reported in full the adjournment debate of March 6, 1967 concerning Scientology, as well as the Health Ministers statement of policy to the House on July 25, 1968, when he announced the ban against foreign Scientologists.Apparently to make certain that the information reached Greek Government authorities at home, the British Embassy in Athens made the same material available to the Greek Deputy Prime Minister there.The American State Department also weighed in with a request to Greek authorities for information concerning a thirty-one-year-old woman from Las Vegas, whose parents said had been kidnapped by the Scientologists. The woman had been aboard the Apollo, but had left the ship some time previously. Hubbard was unable to inform the Greek officials of the woman's whereabouts because he did not know. Later, she turned up in Athens and expressed surprise that everybody had been searching for her. "We wonder," said a Scientology spokesman, "which Embassy or Embassy official hid her all that time."

In exasperation, the Greek government on March 18, 1969 ordered the Scientologists to leave Greece. In reporting the incident, the New York Times wrote: "The expulsion order followed months of diplomatic pressure in Athens by U.S., British and Australian diplomats urging Greek authorities to examine the activities of those aboard the Apollo." Not long afterwards, when the Greek authorities' own investigation revealed the truth concerning the Scientologists, Interior Minister Stylianos Pattakos apologized for the incident and invited Hubbard and his followers to return to Greece.

The British Foreign Office vigorously denied that Major Forte had bad anything to do with the spreading of rumours about the Apollo and her crew. Nevertheless, a small item appearing in British papers on September 2, 1971 informed their readers that Major John Forte, Britain's representative for thirteen years on the Greek island of Corfu had been sacked and would be paid £1.000 compensation by the Foreign Office."The major blamed the sacking on his fight against the Scientology cult whose leader's 'flagship' spent nine months anchored off Corfu," said the story.Major Forte's dismissal came soon after Sir John Foster, who was conducting an official inquiry into Scientology, asked the Foreign Office to investigate the Corfu incident.Hubbard charged that Major Forte was an agent acting under orders of the Foreign Office's "Black Propaganda" department. During the war, MI6, Britain's Secret Intelligence Service, actually operated such a branch whose function was to spread rumours and bits of gossip that would mislead and subvert the enemy, and "destroy them with whispers". The false stories were referred to as "sibs" among the secret agents, a word derived from the Latin sibullare, meaning "to whisper".

Scientologists pointed out that Christopher Mayhew, president of the National Association for Mental Health, had been one of the important figures in the wartime black propaganda section of MI6.

Furthermore, Richard Crossman, Secretary of State for the Social Services, who had succeeded Kenneth Robinson when the latter lost his portfolio, had also been one of the master minds in Britain's cloak-and-dagger operations during the war. A left-wing Socialist, he was at one time director of the German Section where, according to Sefton Delmer's memoirs in Black Boomerang, he took "a sort of benevolent interest" in a group of German Marxists who helped in the psychological battle against Hitler.

Malcolm Muggeridge, who was himself connected with British intelligence, but who apparently had a low regard for its war-time personnel, who he described as a collection of "oddities, misfits and delinquents", said most of the agents were leftists who, in the various Resistance Movements with which they were associated, tended to favour the Communist."It is ironical," Muggeridge observed, "to recall now that the French and Italian Communists got the money and arms which enabled them to establish themselves so strongly after the war, not from Stalin, but from AngloAmerican secret Intelligence sources."

Scientologists say that even before the Corfu trouble, they had evidence that British agents were planting suspicions about them with foreign governments. They assert that one of their members who had a peek in the files of the Spanish Marine Ministry found reports from both the British Home and Foreign Offices, which implied that Scientology's floating contingent were smugglers under investigation by Interpol.In Casablanca, a man who claimed to be a correspondent for the Manchester Guardian turned up at the Panamanian Consulate, stating that he was collecting information for a story on the Scientologists. (The Apollo was of Panamanian registry.)Scientologists claim that the "newsman" informed the Panamanian Consul, as well as the local newspaper that they were drug traffickers wanted by Interpol for smuggling hashish into France and South America.In their newspaper, Freedom (No. 27), the Scientologists announced (no doubt with tongue-in-cheek) that "to protect ourselves we are currently spreading the rumour that V (which is what the head of MI6 is cutely called) has had a nervous breakdown and that MI6 is being run by C'spsychiatrist) who studied twelve years to become an expert Communist. Two can play this game."

When Scientology was debated in the House of Commons on a motion for adjournment in March 1967, the Minister of Health had said that the Government took the view that there was little point in holding an enquiry because they already had evidence that the practice of Scientology was potentially harmful to its adherents.The following year, when he announced the ban against foreign Scientologists, the Minister had repeated that assertion: "My Right Hon. Friend the Home Secretary and I have amassed a considerable body of evidence about the activities of the cult in this country."Only seven months later, on January 27, 1969, Richard Crossman, Secretary of State for Social Services, informed the House of Commons that he was setting up an inquiry into Scientology.

To take executive action against the Church, as the Government had done, and then to establish an inquiry to determine whether official action was justified, recalled the Red Queen in Alice in Wonderland, who cried, "Sentence first - verdict afterwards."Several of the Honourable Members wondered why."May I inquire," asked Mr. C. Pannell, "why it is that first, Scientology is characterised as a fraud, and then we set up an inquiry into it? Would it not have been rather better the other way round?"

Sir G. Nabarro was puzzled by the Government's sudden about-face: "May I now be told by the Hon. Gentleman what has caused him to relent and to change his mind, and why he is now doing exactly the opposite of what it was endeavoured to persuade him to do a few months ago?"

Mr. Crossman had no forthright answer to these queries, and in reply expressed bewilderment that they should be raised, then talked around and around the subject without saying anything.To carry out the Inquiry, which had the broadest terms of reference, the Government named Sir John Foster, KBE, QC, MP, Conservative Member for Northwich.Sir John"s curriculum vitae followed the traditional pattern of England's ruling class. Educated at Eton and New College, Oxford, he became a barrister and later a Queen's Counsel. Prior to World War II, he lectured in international law at Oxford and afterwards became First Secretary at the British Embassy in Washington.Crossman said the Inquiry would be conducted by Sir John alone, not by a committee and that it would not be carried out under statutory powers; therefore no one would be required to give evidence. Moreover, such evidence as was volunteered would be taken privately and not on oath."I have done this for a very special reason," explained Mr. Crossman. "The kind of evidence we want will be from people of a nervous nature, who will not face crossexamination or any public examination. This way we are more likely to get them to talk than in any other form of inquiry."To Scientologist ears this sounded suspiciously like a secret tribunal before which lies, gossip and suspicion would be the only evidence to be heard. By excluding press and public and allowing Scientology's enemies to make charges unchallenged by cross-examination and unrestrained by swearing to tell the truth, the Government had set up an Inquisition along the lines followed by Torquemada.

Even unverified testimony from overseas countries was to be accepted.

The semi-privileged form the Inquiry was to take provoked adverse comment in several of Britain's leading newspapers, but it proceeded as scheduled.Sir John Foster concluded his Inquiry on December 31, 197o, and submitted his written report a few months later. But Sir Keith Joseph, who had by that time succeeded Richard Crossman as Minister for Social Services, showed a strange reluctance to publish it or to disclose its contents.After months of "waiting for Sir Keith", both MPs and newspapers began to evince a growing impatience.A Daily Mail reporter who had somehow learned what was in the Foster Report wrote that the Inquiry's findings had infuriated senior Government health experts, who had been behind the ban against Scientologists. He said the report could damage Whitehall reputations.In Parliament, too, demands were heard for public disclosure of Sir John's conclusions, based on his examination of Scientology and its activities. During the three years since the ban had been imposed, some Members, on their own initiative, had taken steps to learn the facts about the sect and its practices.

William Hamling, Labour MP for Woolwich West, had gone personally to Saint Hill Manor and had taken several courses in Scientology. He said that he had found them very useful and thereafter became a supporter of the movement. The interesting thing about Mr. Hamling was that he had been Private Secretary to Health Minister Robinson who had taken steps to bar foreign adherents from entering Britain.

In response to public pressure, the Foster Report was finally published on December 22, 1971. One of its two principal conclusions, which had stunned the mandarins in Whitehall, was that most of the Government's measures against Scientologists were not justified and that the entry ban on foreign Scientologists entering Britain should be lifted.The Report also criticized the roughshod way in which immigration officers had enforced the ban. They were, said Sir John, "even more stringent than the letter of the measures".While it was clear that, as a matter of law, the Secretary of State for Home Affairs was perfectly within his rights in refusing Scientologists permission to enter Britain, "the  mere fact that someone is a Scientologist is, in my opinion, no reason for excluding him from the UK when there is nothing in our law to prevent those of his fellows who are citizens of this country from practising Scientology here".

Sir John noted that "the attitude of the general public in Britain to foreigners - and to a good many other questions - demonstrates conflicting feelings of friendliness and hostility. On the one hand, there is the centuries-old insular tradition of contempt for Dagoes, Frogs, Wops and other lesser breeds without the law, who should be allowed to come here only for brief periods on sufferance, and then go home where they came from and trouble us no more. On the other band, there is the equally old tradition of welcome and hospitality, founded on a desire to learn from others, to widen our horizons, to enrich our experience and especially to help those who suffer persecution in their own countries,"The policy of successive Home Secretaries has been informed, with few exceptions, by the better tradition of friendliness and hospitality which has been the foundation in turn for our long-established policies of tolerance and asylum. The general principle on which the Home Office has in fact (even if not in theory) acted for a very long time is that foreigners should be free to come and go through our ports of entry as they please, unless there is clear evidence that they are likely to do us some specific harm, such as the commission of crimes, political activity endangering national security, the passing on of contagious diseases, putting our own people out of work, or indigence as the result of which we shall find ourselves forced to support them. In my view, such a policy has been right in the past and is right at the present time; as the world becomes smaller and the mobility of its peoples greater, it becomes more rather than less important that we should encourage rather than restrict the free flow of people and ideas.

"Against that background, it seems to me wrong in principle for the Secretary of State for Home Affairs to use his wide powers of exclusion against those Scientologists who happen to be foreigners or Commonwealth citizens, when there is no law which prevents their colleagues holding UK citizenship from believing in their theories or carrying on their practices here. If the practices of Scientology are thought to constitute a danger to our society sufficiently grave to warrant prohibition or control under the law, then it is for Parliament to make such a law and for the Executive to apply it impartially to Britons and foreigners alike within the confines of this country. But so long as none of our laws are being infringed, the classification of foreign Scientologists as 'undesirable aliens' so that they are forbidden entry through our ports, while the accident of birth permits those Scientologists who happen to be citizens of the United Kingdom to process and be processed here with impunity, seems to me to constitute a use of this discretionary power which is quite contrary to the traditional policy followed by successive Home Secretaries over many years."

Besides recommending that Scientologists of foreign or Commonwealth nationality should henceforth be admitted to Britain as visitors on precisely the same footing as other people, Sir John said that in his view Scientologists who wished to come and work in the UK ought to be granted or refused a work permit on the same criteria as everyone else, and the fact that they or their proposed employers are Scientologists should be regarded as quite irrelevant.The Report did not, however, favour admitting Scientologists as students, who under Britain's immigration laws, form a privileged class and are normally allowed to stay four times as long as the ordinary visitor. Sir John gave as his reason for this stricture the fact that on the evidence before him he was not satisfied that Scientology schools as then organized were bona fide educational establishments.