Toast to the Royal Masonic Benevolent Institution

Your Royal Highness, Most Worshipful Pro Grand Master, Ladies, Gentlemen and Brethren. I am not going to attempt to serenade you like our opera singers, however it is my privilege this evening to propose the Toast to the Royal Masonic Benevolent Institution and I do so with the greatest of pleasure.

During the past 5 years of our Festival Appeal, the Members of the Province of Middlesex have learned a lot more about the RMBI and the wonderful, caring work that it undertakes on behalf of our older Freemasons and their dependents, together with their wholehearted commitment to ensuring that the individual’s right to dignity, respect, choice and control over their own lives is upheld and maintained. This work has been carried on continuously for over 160 years since the inauguration of the Royal Masonic Benevolent Annuity Funds for Men and Women were respectively established in the 1840s and the first of its residential homes was opened in 1850 in East Croydon, somewhat alarmingly named “The Asylum for Worthy, Aged and Decayed Freemasons”, but a name probably appropriate to the Victorian era. Since that time the RMBI has significantly changed and developed and now offers high quality residential and nursing care in its 17 homes throughout England and Wales, some of which also offer specialist dementia care, sheltered accommodation or short-stay respite care, as well as providing support and advice regarding health and welfare issues and the benefits available to those beneficiaries who choose to remain living in their homes.

The RMBI’s Homes have a quite remarkable and above average number of centenarian beneficiaries, which is testament to the quality of care they receive. The happiness of those beneficiaries and residents was most vividly brought home to me very recently by the cheerful, smiling nature and smart appearance of Brother William Frederick “Bill” Stone, an Oxfordshire Freemason and, prior to his death at the age of 108 on 10 January this year, one of the three known surviving former members of the armed forces to have served his King and Country in both World Wars. He often appeared on television in the last few months, both in the run up to the 90th Anniversary of Armistice Day on 11 November last autumn and since then, being quite remarkably lucid for his age and featuring prominently in several commemorations of both world wars for which he received many honours. What better example can you find of a man happy and content with the quality of care and concern for his welfare in the final years of his life?

Middlesex has made a lot of friends with the representatives and staff of the RMBI during the Festival period and we are most grateful for the tremendous support we have received in our endeavours on behalf of the work they do for the Members of the Craft and their families. I believe it is fair to say that we have all had a great deal of enjoyment whilst fund-raising for the RMBI, whether it be the generous support of all of the Lodges and Chapters or the other Masonic Orders in the Province and their individual members, or by some of the fun filled sponsored sporting activities that we have arranged, such as golf or clay shooting tournaments, sky-diving, swimming, the Great Cockrow Railway days or the now well known London to Brighton cycle rides starting at Clapham Common and ending up at the RMBI’s Barford Court Home at Hove, where the participants have been most warmly welcomed by the residents and staff alike and refreshed after their exertions by a barbecue in the gardens of the Home. During the past 4 years these cycle rides have raised in excess of £50,000 for the RMBI with over 100 riders taking part last year and this popular charitable fund-raising event is set to continue as a regular event in the Province’s future calendar.

However, probably for me the lasting impression I have of some of the fun of these events is epitomized by the vision of the first cycle ride in 2005 when three generously proportioned and well-formed middle-aged Masons, fortified and sustained by a diet of many years intake of traditional, nourishing Masonic Fayre, were to be seen peddling hard astride their trandem cycle, the frame of which was severely testing the bending moment calculations of its designer, hurtling down the hill from Ditchling Beacon on the A23 towards the northern suburbs of Brighton at excess speed, with their implicit faith placed in two small pairs of rubber brake blocks to save them for otherwise inevitable disaster. What more can I say about enjoyment and camaraderie?

At the Royal Horticultural Society’s Hampton Court Flower Show in July 2008, with the assistance of London and our neighbouring Provinces, Middlesex was fortunate to have its entry of a Masonic Themed Garden accepted for the Show and indeed it was awarded a Silver-Gilt Flora Award in the Small Garden Category. Our own “green fingered” garden manager, George Souter, and his colleagues have now completed the relocation of this garden to the RMBI’s Home at Watford, most appropriately named Prince Michael of Kent Court, for the future benefit and enjoyment of the residents living there. It is anticipated that our Provincial Grand Master will officially re-open the garden during the spring of 2009.

So I hope when the final figure of our Festival Appeal is announced shortly by the RMBI’s Chief Executive, David Innes, Middlesex will not be found wanting and will have achieved its simple objective of trying to do its very best for the RMBI and its beneficiaries, whilst at the same time having fun and enjoying ourselves in our endeavours, in order that the RMBI can continue its work of providing for our older Freemasons and their dependents and, to paraphrase some familiar words form our ritual well known to the Brethren, discharge their duty “to bear the heat and burden of the day from which they (the beneficiaries), by reason of their age should be exempt, and to assist them in time of need and thereby render the close of their days happy and comfortable”.

Ladies and Brethren; I now invite you to rise and join with me in a toast to the continuing and future success of the RMBI, coupled with the name of its President, Very Worshipful Brother Willie Shackell CBE.

Thank you.