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 Gala dinners, jive bands and Tom Cruise :
how the Scientologists woo City police

· Unlikely relationship has blossomed since July 7
· Contacts are mutually beneficial, claims group

Sandra Laville
Wednesday November 22, 2006
The Guardian


 
The opening of the Church of Scientology in London.
Photograph : Sarah Lee

It began with tea and biscuits for constables at the police cordon after the July 7 terrorist attacks, progressed to lunches with senior officers and continues with regular invitations to gala nights and jive concerts.

The Church of Scientology appears to be involved in an effort to woo officers from the City of London police - an unlikely partnership perhaps, but one that seems to be blossoming. Details of how more than 20 officers, from constables to chief superintendents, have been invited to a series of engagements by the scientologists over the last 15 months have been revealed by a freedom of information inquiry by the Guardian.

The hospitality included guest invitations in May for two constables and a sergeant to attend the premiere of Mission Impossible 3 in Leicester Square, where they were able to rub shoulders with the best known Scientologist of all and the star of the film, Tom Cruise.

The Guardian requested details of meetings between police and scientologists after a senior officer from the City appeared as a guest speaker at the opening of the £23m Scientology centre near St Paul's Cathedral last month.

At the lavish ceremony, Chief Superintendent Kevin Hurley, the fourth most senior officer in the force, praised the scientologists for the support they had provided after the July 7 attacks, when followers of L Ron Hubbard's movement appeared at the police cordons of the Aldgate bomb site offering help to those involved in the emergency operation. The relationship flourished in the following months, according to the City police's register of hospitality, which all officers are required to fill out.

Since July 7 the Church of Scientology has invited four police constables, an inspector and a chief superintendent to a charity dinner at their British headquarters, Saint Hill Manor in East Grinstead, West Sussex, where the officers received a donation of £5,000 for a City of London children's charity.

The hospitality continued with a member of the Hubbard Foundation buying lunch for about £20 for a chief superintendent at Boisdale restaurant in Bishopsgate, central London, where the £28 set menu currently includes mini-Macsween haggis, fish or meat of the day and raspberry cranachan.

Most of the engagements detailed in the register of hospitality were approved by a senior officer: either Frank Armstrong, the assistant commissioner of City police, Mr Hurley or his colleague Chief Superintendent Ken Stewart.

But the register of hospitality contains gaps on at least two occasions, where it is not known which officer attended an event or who authorised it.

The invitations to the Mission Impossible 3 premiere in May for three officers were followed in August by another event at the East Grinstead centre for an unknown number of officers. In September the register does not specify how many officers attended a concert at Bishopsgate police station by the Jive Aces; a band made up of Scientologists whose advertising states that they play "hot jive" and "big band swing".

The night before last month's grand opening of the Church of Scientology's centre in the City, one of the force's two chief superintendents joined a detective superintendent, a uniformed constable and a detective constable at a star-studded charity dinner at Saint Hill Manor, where prizes are awarded to followers who donate the biggest sums to the movement.

The dinner was attended by Cruise, who sat at a special table nearest the past year's biggest donors.

The next day, Sunday October 22, a sergeant recorded being offered refreshments worth between £3 and £5 by scientologists as he was policing the opening of the London centre. Another officer, a constable, was a guest at a charity gala in East Grinstead the following night, where he recorded receiving £50 worth of hospitality. Most recently, on October 24, two sergeants and two constables attended a Jive Aces concert at Saint Hill.

The relationship between the police and the scientologists comes despite controversy that the tactics adopted by the church are akin to that of a cult and the Charity Commission's refusal to recognise it as a religion in the UK.

The scientologists have also been criticised in the US over their role in counselling firefighters and police officers after the September 11 attacks when they set up a a medical clinic two blocks from Ground Zero in New York for professionals involved in the emergency operation.

Inside the centre some firefighters abandoned the medical care and emotional counselling provided to them by the fire department's doctors, and instead took up a treatment devised by Hubbard. This included saunas, physical workouts and taking pills; a treatment which constitutes the scientologists controversial detoxification programme.

Mark Salter, a London-based psychiatrist said the scientologists were trying to replicate their ideology by disseminating it as widely as possible.

"You may well find that one or two police officers become followers. Look at the masons, I am sure they are well represented inside the police force," he said.

"They are a cult who are trying to maximise their influence by putting feelers out and using spin to make contacts and network in quite dangerous ways."

Janet Kenyon-Laveau, spokeswoman for the Church of Scientology in the UK, said the relationship between the police and followers was mutually beneficial, with followers engaged in clean-up campaigns in drug ridden inner city areas, which were praised by the police.

The City of London police declined to comment.

Special report : Religion in the UK (www.guardian.co)

 
 
 

Scientologists get £270,000 subsidy

By Adam Lusher, Sunday Telegraph 10/12/2006
[Texte intégral]
 

The controversial Church of Scientology has been granted a subsidy of more than £270,000 a year in public money, The Sunday Telegraph can reveal.

Scientology's lawyers used European rulings and Government equality regulations to force the City of London corporation to grant an 80 per cent rates discount for its new centre near St Paul's Cathedral. The "church", it is believed, is now pressing to pay nothing at all.

The corporation confirmed that this discount was on the basis that Scientology is a "charity", despite the fact that the Charity Commission has refused to register it. The discount, referred to as a "mandatory rate relief", has been granted even though the Church of Scientology has estimated global assets of $398 million (£203 million), is supported by film stars including Tom Cruise and John Travolta, and was once described as "corrupt, sinister and dangerous" by a High Court judge.

The Scientologists' £10 million, Grade II-listed London centre would normally have incurred £343,045 in non-domestic rates; the organisation has, however, secured a £274,436-a-year subsidy.

City of London sources emphasised that it twice refused rates relief before relenting under legal pressure. Papers released by the corporation under the Freedom of Information Act state : "Reliance was placed on a European Court of Human Rights decision concerning a challenge by the church against Sweden, which the church drew to our attention."

Religions can secure rates exemption by proving their buildings are public places of worship, but a City of London official confirmed that the Scientology discount was for charity work, adding, curiously : "A charity does not have to be registered to qualify."

The Charity Commission refused to register Scientology in 1999, ruling that it "was not established for charitable purposes or public benefit. Scientology is not a religion for English charity law purposes".

The Department for Communities and Local Government said the Scientologists' discount was coming solely from business rates in the National Non-Domestic Rates Pool. A spokesman said: "The pool operates so that, taking one year with another, the amount of money collected is redistributed. Any excess or shortfall in one year is therefore balanced in subsequent years."

David Maddison, a policy consultant at the Local Government Association, said, however : "The general taxpayer is paying because it is a centrally funded relief." Matthew Elliott, the chief executive of the Taxpayers' Alliance, said : "This will cost a small fortune. It's very odd, completely unfair."

Janet Kenyon-Laveau, a spokesman for the Church of Scientology, said : "All government agencies that actually come to the church conclude we are a religion, charitable and for public benefit.

"Our members are very active in immensely successful literacy, drugs and crime rehabilitation programmes. These, though, do cost."

The discount will deepen controversy stemming from the opening of the centre in October, when Chief Superintendent Kevin Hurley, of the City of London Police, said that Scientologists were "raising the spiritual wealth of society".

There is no suggestion that Mr Hurley benefited personally, but it emerged that other City of London Police officers accepted Scientology hospitality, including invitations to the première of Cruise's film Mission : Impossible III.

Scientology has attracted controversy regularly since L Ron Hubbard, the American science fiction writer, founded it in 1954, teaching that humans are immortal beings with a spiritual side called the "thetan". It claims to have more than 10 million devotees worldwide, with 123,000 in the UK.

 

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