J Taylor Jnr

There is a 'cult' living amongst us, one that is secretive and one that chooses as part of their doctrine to separate themselves from the world wherever  possible.  The famous Aberdeen is the second in our series of stories of how Plymouth Brethren communities operate. 

Aberdeen is a city in the North East of Scotland, with a population of 224,000. It is famous for  granite buildings, oil, fish  and one of the biggest heliports in the world. It is also home to the largest  split in the history of the Exclusive Plymouth Brethren. 

The spilt occurred under the leadership of J  Taylor Jnr, and he was at the very centre of the controversy.  Taylor Jnr an American from Brooklyn, New York, had taken over the leadership of the brethren in 1960, following the death in 1953 of the previous brethren leader, his father James Taylor. Under the  reign of J Taylor Jnr  up to 1970,  the sect  was impacted by a number of changes and stricter enforcement  of doctrine, as instructed by Taylor Jnr. In many ways they were  the building blocks for the Exclusive Plymouth Brethren we see today. 

Members were forbidden from eating with non-members, from living under the same roof as non-members (including their own family), from going to university, and even from having pets (leading to many family pets being put down). They were discouraged from working for non-community members (being forbidden to work outside the brethren did not happen until much later), there was strict enforcement of already practiced doctrine, that  prevented members from joining trade unions and professional associations.

It was a  time of great change, one that even saw future leader John S Hales, the father of current leader Bruce Hales, ex-communicated for a period of time, for trying to commercialise the brethren. It was widely reported that Taylor Jnr was an alcoholic.

The brethren hold what are called 3 days meetings, these are now by invitation only and to a section of brethren members. They are now held simultaneously across the globe. There is one due in April 2024, where various locations will see the invited brethren gathering in numbers, to listen to the elite Bruce Hales acolytes, who will have travelled  the globe to speak/preach at these meetings.   

Back in 1970, the 3 day meetings were held over various weekends. Taylor Jnr was in the UK and he had already ministered in Reigate and Preston. It was towards the end of July when he arrived in Aberdeen to minister at a further 3 day meeting. At that time the leader would stay with one of the 'elders' in the area and so it was that Taylor  Jnr was a guest of leading Aberdeen member James Alec Gardiner, at his home in Abbotswell Crescent in the Tullos/Kincorth area of Aberdeen. Earlier in his UK visit Taylor Jnr had stayed in Harrow with English brethren couple Alan & Madeline Ker.  The Ker's had taken a flight to Scotland and  were  also present in Aberdeen.  On Saturday 25th July, Taylor Jnr ministered the 3 day meeting at the Music Hall in Aberdeen, it was reported that his speech fuelled by Whisky, his lubricant of choice, included swearing, blasphemy and was rambling, and somewhat incoherent.  The congregation responded with laughter, sometimes hysterically.    

It was during that evening, back at the home of James Gardiner that events transpired, which would further ignite the flames. Gardiner and another leading brethren member Stanley McCallum had become concerned at the amount of time Taylor Jnr was spending alone in his bedroom with Madeline Ker. On the Saturday evening they had knocked multiple times on the door over period of time, without response, they then later opened the bedroom door to find Taylor Jnr in bed with a naked Mrs Ker. Taylor Jnr left the following morning and returned to New York. The story however was to receive national press coverage and through a series of denials and changes to Taylor Jnr's version of events, the story rumbled on.  There was even a picture of Taylor Jnr with Mrs Ker whilst her husband Alan was away on business. It was clearly of significant importance to the brethren worldwide as news of what had happened spread. It culminated in Taylor Jnr ex-communicating communities from fellowship and many communities shunning Taylor Jnr in return. It was particularly noticeable in Scotland, where the followers of the Taylor Jnr brethren left in huge numbers.  In total it is believed approximately half of the global Taylor Plymouth Brethren left fellowship in the following weeks. 

Taylor Jnr passed away just a few months later in October 1970 and the new leader James Symington, a farmer from North Dakota, claimed the Aberdeen incident was a revival for the Exclusive Brethren. On the Plymouth Brethren website they state, Taylor Jnr, after ministering on four different continents in the months before his death, was "physically exhausted". 

In a final Aberdeen 1970 plot twist, the grandson of the late Madeline Ker,  is today employed by Sante Group,  the company that was awarded Covid contracts of circa £950 million under their previous name Unispace.  Madeline & Alan Ker went on to become directors of the now long established family business Orthene Chemicals.  Which is now ran by their son Charles. Techniclean Supply was part of Orthene Chemicals prior to being sold to two other brethren families in 2018.  Techniclean Supply  was also awarded a large PPE contract for £20 million in 2020.  

Aberdeen Brethren Today

The Aberdeen brethren community today is one of the smaller communities with an estimated 120-150 members.  The members come from the extended growth of the seven main families.  These are the  White, Ross, Hoare, Doughty, Watkins, Alexander and Wilkinson families.  They are located to the North of Aberdeen, an area stretching from the Bridge of Don up to Ellon.  This is the opposite side of Aberdeen to the location of the 'Aberdeen Incident'.

In terms of 'elite' brethren members, there appears to be little evidence of Aberdeen being a leading brethren community. It is likely to be secondary in terms of seniority to some of the Peterhead brethren families. 

We suspect that Tim White is likely to be the leading community member based on his business turnover, his involvement with OneMediUK & Jesmond Construction Ltd, and his name being on the recent planning application for a new meeting room in Ellon.

​The two most successful family companies are Ryno Ltd and RS Machinery, owned by the White & Ross families respectively. Archer Marketing was awarded a PPE contract and is owned by the Doughty family. Archer Marketing is not a limited company, so we are unable to ascertain the success of the business.

Brethren business in Aberdeen

There are least four companies that we have found owned by members of the Plymouth Brethren community in Aberdeen.  Only one is of considerable size, the other being smaller or subsidiaries companies.

Ryno

​Ryno  Ltd is based in Ellon, Aberdeenshire and owned by the Aberdeen based White family. The company provides outside decking and paving, predominantly for commercial buildings. Clients include The Oval Cricket Ground, County Hall and Liverpool University.  The shareholder of Ryno Ltd is a dormant company called Ryno Holdings Ltd.  Ryno Ltd is a subsidiary of Whitesales Group Ltd, which appears to be a jointly owned group by the extended brethren White families in Aberdeen and Cranleigh, Surrey. All the companies are registered to an address in Cranleigh.  Whitesales is a company that provides rooflight products and purchased Scottish based Lareine Engineering, another company producing rooflight products, in 2021. Tim White shows as a director of Lareine Engineering Ltd. 

​Ryno Ltd accounts show a turnover of £17.7 million with a very healthy £2.8 million profit after tax, with a balance sheet showing assets of almost £6 million. We would put a value of circa £15 - £20 million on the business. 

RS Machinery

RS Machinery Group is situated on the Denmore Industrial Estate , Bridge of Don.  It is owned by the  Ross family, employing  43 people. It includes the Kube Blast Automation business. The group supplies fabrication machinery and machinery tools, alongside the blast booths from Kube. The company accounts  show over £2 million in assets.
The Ross family  have a  shareholding  in Stafford based Morgan Rushworth Ltd.  This is a joint venture with two branches of the Bushnell family (brethren families) via Selmach Holdings in Hereford and Stafford based Bison Machinery. Morgan Rushworth supplies cutting and guillotine machines. The Ross family also work with Bison Machinery supplying their Sterling Saw machines and parts.

It is difficult to estimate a value of the business  though we would be surprised if it was any less than £5 million.

Archer Marketing

Archer Marketing  is owned by the Doughty family.   The company supplies branded merchandise and is located in Blackdog, Aberdeen.  On their website they state they are part of the Global Promotional Group, this is a collection of brethren member owned companies all offering promotional merchandise and operating in Australia, Canada, Germany, New Zealand, the UK and the USA. Though strangely Archer Marketing is not included in the list of companies on the Global Promotion Group website. Joel Doughty is the sales director and is involved with the Rapid Relief Team.

Archer Marketing was awarded a Covid PPE contract during the pandemic.  The award by Edinburgh City Council was worth £640,000 and was awarded to 10 companies, including Archer Marketing. It  highlights an area of concern we have at Open & Candid, around the transparency of brethren linked companies tendering for public sector contracts. Out of the 10 companies awarded this contract  half of them are owned by brethren members, Archer Marketing, Streamline Corporate, SMI Int Group,  Landscape Supply Co and Denka UK.  

Due to Archer Marketing not being a limited company, we are unable to put a value on the business.

Denmore

Denmore is owned by the Hoare family, Denmore employs 10 people, producing bespoke Envelopes and trades under the name of Denmore Press. The business is located on the Denmore industrial estate, Bridge of Don. In their latest account the company have assets of £122,119. The Hoare family have also branched into bespoke luxury packaging under the trading name of Odillo.

Based on limited data, we would guess that the company maybe worth around £1 million.

Other business interests

Tim White of Ryno & Whitesales is  also a director of a company called  OneMediUk, this is the company that is responsible for the trust that operates the brethren private medical insurance scheme. There are six other directors including Doug Cowie from the Peterhead. Tim Pocock of Covid contract winner Origin Packaging. Ben Turner the father in law of the Tory minister Michelle Donelan. Bruce Hazell uncle of Anthony Hazell, the Covid contract winner with Unispace/Sante & CMT Equipment. Stephen Kirkpatrick who is based in Sydney and is one of Bruce Hales closest acolytes. 
White is also a director of Jesmond Construction. Jesmond is the company behind building new meeting rooms in Peterhead and Aberdeen. 

Value

Our estimated  value of the brethren owned companies in Aberdeen, is likely in the region of £20 million to £30 million. 

Meeting Rooms

The meeting rooms in Aberdeen are operated under the  Scottish registered charity, Jesmond Gospel Trust (SC024174). The accounts for financial year ending 5th April 2023, the charity reported income of £36,200 and expenditure of £147,930. The expenditure shows a transfer of £50,000 to the Peterhead Gospel Trust.  Over the last 4 years the Jesmond Gospel Trust expenditure is over £200,000 more than income.  The charity reported assets of over £2.4 million  for year ending April 2023 and cash in hand/at the bank of over £500,000.

There are two brethren meeting rooms, the main city meeting room in Balmedie (pictured above) and a smaller meeting room located  in Belhevie, which is adjacent to  a brethren members home and was previously a workshop. 

The Jesmond Trust have been successful in obtaining planning permission for a third meeting room  situated behind the Tesco supermarket in Ellon.  The planning application in the name of Jesmond Gospel Trust also shows that the applicant was Tim White of Ryno.  We found it interesting that in the week prior to the planning application being approved, two members (Jared White & Joel Doughty) of the Rapid Relief Team attended a meeting with the  Ellon MSP Gillian Martin.   The location for the new meeting room is unusual  in that its vicinity is   not central to the Aberdeen brethren community, instead 5 to 10 miles North of where the Aberdeen community mostly reside. The need for the additional meeting room is certainly questionable, as the two meeting rooms in Balmedie & Belhevie  are sufficient for the size of the brethren in Aberdeen.

The brethren attend regular meetings in their meeting rooms, with  numerous visits on  Sunday (the Lords day). The set up of the meeting rooms are in a octagonal shape and the men are the only ones allowed to speak or preach. They sit closest to the centre of the hexagonal and women are only allowed on the fringes. You will find no religious artefacts or symbols within a brethren meeting room.   The main (City) meeting room will often hold up to 800 people or more and will host on occasion, what are called 3 day meetings with attendees from a much wider area.   It is reported that these meetings can often have a crowd that is well above Health and Safety regulations in terms of capacity.

It is not straightforward to attend a meeting as an outsider.  This must be pre-arranged with the head office of the Plymouth Brethren Christian Church in Chessington, Surrey.  If you are well-disposed and approved to attend you will not be invited to the main 6.00am meeting on a Sunday.

OneSchool Global

The Aberdeen brethren children attend the OneSchool  Global,  Caledonia  at Millden, Balmedie, Aberdeen.  This is ideally located between Balmedie & Belhevie, and it is the school for brethren children from  the communities of both Aberdeen and Peterhead. The  school is on the site of the former East Aberdeenshire Golf club. Oneschool Global Caledonia has two sites, with a further site situated in Alloa, Clackmannanshire. According to the OneSchool Global website there are 177 pupils  attending primary and secondary education at the two sites of the Caledonia campus. This would indicate that for the whole of Scotland the brethren community is   circa 1,000 members.  Caledonia is one of 27 OneSchool Global schools in the UK.

​Brethren members are actively involved in the OneSchool Global structure.  We have found that for the  Caledonia campus that   the board members are Dale Rabey (Peterhead), Stuart Hoare  (Aberdeen),  Murray Lindberg (Glasgow),  Edward Paterson (Kirkcaldy) and Roger Paterson (Edinburgh). This gives representation from most of the Scottish based brethren communities. Neville Smerdon appears to be the overall contact for the Caledonia campus.

The premises at Millden were formerly owned by the Springvale Education Trust. This Trust gifted the site to Brooklands Education Trust in February 2023. It would appear that Springvale Education Trust is no longer a live charity and that the Caledonia campus sites at both Alloa & Millden are now operated by the Brooklands Education Trust. Brooklands is also the parent  of the Tempo Group Ltd. This is the trading arm of the charity and operates the brethren Campus & Co stores in Scotland. 

Brooklands Education Trust reported funds of over £3.1 million in their accounts  for year ending December 31st 2022. 

Campus & Co

Campus & Co is the brethren member only retail  chain. If you are not a member of the brethren, then you will be politely turned away. Created as part of the eco-system to assist in the funding of OneSchool Global.  It would divert funds away from national grocery chains back into the brethren pot. There are 68 Campus & Co stores in the UK.  The stores are supplied by the wholesale  functions of national chains such as the Co-Op and Morrisons. Though  the stores are  encouraged to use a brethren company for their alcohol  requirements. Expensive Whisky is the preferred brethren tipple!  The whole operation is ran centrally from the main UBT offices in each country, with the lead being in Sydney, Australia at the premises that were recently raided by the Australian Tax Office. 

Usually the stores will cover more than one community and often sit close to a meeting room, or on the premises of a brethren member business. There is not a Campus & Co store in Aberdeen. The brethren members in Aberdeen must shop at the store in Peterhead. A planning application has just been approved for a new Campus & Co store in Peterhead. It is amusing to read the notes of the planning meeting, the lack of knowledge of the brethren displayed is quite remarkable, particularly from the senior planner. We calculate that 5 non-brethren jobs are lost for  the opening of each Campus & Co store.

The Campus & Co stores  are staffed purely by the female brethren members or retirees, both on a voluntary basis. The stores in most locations are very similar to high end small Waitrose stores, designed to the highest specification. The operation is run professionally by UBT, with a huge amount of training online, and regular marketing to the wider brethren population. If a brethren member decided to shop away from Campus & Co this would be to put themselves at risk of opposing the leader Bruce Hales. 

We estimate turnover globally to be over £50 million and the  finances of each  store is managed by the local Educational Trusts which are charities, they each set up a trading company as a subsidiary of their Charitable trust. In Aberdeen this would come under the Tempo Group Ltd, this is the trading arm of the  Brooklands Education Trust. Each community will supply trustees to the both the Ltd trading arm and the Educational Trust Charity.  Glenn Ross of  RS Machinery is a director of Tempo Group Ltd.   
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We believe that  each brethren household in Scotland, could be spending around £10,000 a year at Campus & Co!

Rapid Relief Team​

The Rapid Relief Team was set up following the UK Charity Commission saga,   the then Exclusive Brethren encountered back in 2012.  The issue started when the Charity Commission, as the regulator turned down an application from a gospel trust (a meeting room trust) for it to be registered as a charity. The regulator denied the gospel trust charitable status, concluding  that it did not advance religion for public benefit.   Bruce Hales and his UK brethren team led a long, hard and often 'dirty' fight to get the decision overturned on appeal. Lobbying at a level that few organisations would have the resources to match.  Obviously with the backing of many ignorant MP's, particularly from the Tory government benches, the appeal was successful and enabled the brethren to further achieve charitable status for over 130  gospel trusts across the UK and for other national brethren charities.

After this the Exclusive Brethren did two things, one they changed their name to the Plymouth Brethren Christian Church, a clever marketing gimmick to ensure both Christian and Church were linked to the brethren, rather than the sullied name of the Exclusive Brethren. Secondly they created the Rapid Relief Team, this was also a very clever idea. It gave credence to all their future applications, in that it provided   evidence of advancing religion for public benefit.

In Aberdeen, the Jesmond Gospel Trust  report their activities for the Rapid Relief Team in their annual accounts. Each brethren gospel trust now provides this detail as their  'proof' of advancing religion for public benefit. In the last accounts Jesmond Gospel Trust reported that under the Rapid Relief Team in the last 12 months they attended  Maggies Cultural Crawl, Dyce Family day,  Kayleigh's Wee Stars cycle 2022, and attended the fire at the Altens recycling plant.   Providing a total of 645 burger meals and refreshments.   They also provided Balmedie Primary school on multiple occasions with Early Bird Learning Kits containing food boxes,  SMARRT breakfast bars  and learning booklets.   Separate from the Rapid Relief Team, the Jesmond Trust made several donations to foodbanks in Aberdeen and Peterhead with a value of £966.16. We estimate the total value of charitable giving by the Jesmond Gospel Trust and the Aberdeen branch of the Rapid Relief Team, to be in the region of £5,000. Considering the wealth of the companies, the trust and the families of the Aberdeen brethren community, this would be nothing more than 'loose change'.  In terms of the value of their charity status we would question if this really provides evidence of advancing religion for public benefit.

No change

The Aberdeen brethren are a typical Plymouth Brethren community.  They live and work in the community but play no active part unless their is a financial benefit for their business or their charity.  It is transparent that even in a small brethren community like Aberdeen, that there is a clear Hales brethren hierarchy of control.  This community of 120-150 people have a wealth possibly in the region of £50 million.  Though it is clear that the majority of that wealth lies with just a few selected  and trusted members. The majority will be coerced, scared, stuck in a life of fear. That is what Bruce Hales and his chosen few use to control, it is fear, nothing more, nothing less. This is not a church or an evangelical sect or a Christian group.  It is a commercial   operation for the benefit of the Hales and a few of his allies. It is ironic that after the J Taylor Jnr incident in 1970, that the few remaining members in Aberdeen today, still accept this coercive control from a leader just as brutal as Taylor Jnr.  

Thank you for reading and please share,  the fight to  give these good people freedom from coercion and control can only be achieved through growing awareness and  hopefully  will lead to governments to act.