Rowing Against the Tide - A career in sport and politics
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Authors: Martin Brandon-Bravo
Rowing Against the Tide
by
Martin M. Brandon-Bravo
To my wife Sally and my two sons Paul and Joel who at home ran what they called the Department of Realism
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Published by Bretwalda Books
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First Published 2013
Copyright © Martin Brandon Bravo 2013
Martin Brandon Bravo asserts his rights to be recognised as the author of this work.
ISBN 978-1-909698-16-1
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Contents
Chapter Three National Service
Chapter Six A Holme Pierrepont Story
Chapter Seven A Caversham Story
Chapter Eight Life in Politics
Chapter Nine The Closing Years
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Growing up in North London and the East End might not auger well for a successful and satisfying career, but whether by good luck or good fortune, I’ve had by any yardstick, an interesting life. Writing now at the age of eighty, I’m looking back in the knowledge that I cannot expect to be around for many more years. Three major cancer operations in 2010 was quite a wakeup call, particularly to someone who apart from breaking his nose three times, had hardly ever been ill.
So putting pen to paper, or rather tapping away on a lap-top, I look back on my childhood in Stoke Newington and Hammersmith, National Service in the Royal Artillery, thirty years in the manufacturing textile industry with overlapping forty years in Local and National Politics, plus a lifetime involved in the sport of Rowing.
Through forty eight of those years I’ve had the love and support of my wife Sally, the joy of two great sons, Paul and Joel, and the pleasure of wonderful grandchildren. I readily acknowledge that without Sally’s support I doubt I would have made it to the House of Commons, and would not have had so successful a career in my sport which culminated in being elected President of the Amateur Rowing Association, now rebranded as British Rowing. In every aspect of my career, Sally has been there, prodding and encouraging me, and I owe her more thanks than I could ever repay.
Over those years, business, sport, and politics, have given me the chance to see the world, making friends and acquaintances across the globe, though sadly with many it’s now only an exchange of Christmas Cards.
It was all topped off by the award in December 2001 of the OBE, for services to my sport, and nothing whatever to do with my life in politics. Retiring from Local Government in 2009, both the County and City of Nottinghamshire granted me the honour of Aldermanship, a more than satisfying way to end and put my feet up.
Martin B-B
Yours truly
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The Early Days
Number 68 Belgrade Road Stoke Newington, North London, was a typical soundly built, comfortable, terraced house, but not perhaps the most auspicious of starting places for what turned out, fortuitously for me, to have been a varied and interesting life. I was born at No 3 but we moved to No 68 within weeks of my birth. I had an older brother Michael, and would have had an even older brother, who was always referred to as poor Harry boy, who died at the age of three with peritonitis. My mother and father were married in the first purpose built Synagogue in England, Bevis Marks, in St Mary le Bow near the Baltic exchange. At around 1650 Cromwell had in practical terms allowed us back into England after a four hundred year exclusion, but it was King Charles II who granted the newly approved return of the Jewish community to build that first synagogue. It’s a record I cannot definitely confirm, but it is believed my family donated seven and sixpence to the fundraising at that time. The land was leased in 1698 and the Synagogue completed in 1703. Today it stands just as if time has stood still, and is a fascinating place to visit, with its wooden benches and chandeliers lit with real candles !
When we arrived in England has not been truly established, but as our name implies, we may have been kicked out from Spain in the expulsions of the late 1400s, and then from Portugal no later than 1595. The Brandon bit may have been Brandao in Spain, with both spellings found in Portugal, for always when we have holidayed there and presented our credit card, we have been greeted by – “ah so your Portuguese?”, followed by my “no, we left a few hundred years ago, and its too long a story” ! I’ve often said to enquiring friends that we may have been illegal immigrants before then, but don’t tell the Home Office.
We were not an overly practicing Jewish family, for strict orthodoxy has never appealed, appearing to reject an ever changing world, in a way that Reform or Progressive Judaism has not done. Orthodoxy drew a line in the 1500s, and whilst Reform Judaism revised and then drew the line in the late 1800s, the Liberal and Progressive arm embraces new discoveries and adapts its ways more in keeping with the rabbinic oral traditions of biblical times. Never the less, my mother, Phoebe, kept a reasonable kosher home, and only broke from that tradition when the then Chief Rabbi gave dispensation as a result of the shortages that the war and rationing brought in. But as time has gone by, I have become ever more sceptical, noting that more people have died in the name of the Lord than for any other reason. I suppose I’m an agnostic, as indeed I find most, even practicing members, of my faith are, for its true that 10 Jews in a discussion will have 100 different views on every subject.
My father, Alf, who was eleven years old before he found his name was really Isaac, was a master cabinet maker, and most of the furniture in our home was built by him. The French polish had a depth of gloss that no furniture cream was ever allowed, or found necessary. It was a working class family, and so far as I knew they always voted Labour, as indeed most immigrant or minority communities did back then. In fact our end of London had the only Communist MP, and oddly enough when we were later effectively bombed out of the East End, we ended up in Hammersmith with the only other English Communist member D.N.Pritt MP
Just around the corner from Belgrave Rd was a small synagogue on Walford Rd, but somehow I never felt comfortable in what I found was an oppressive atmosphere. Our family being of Sephardic origin never spoke a word of Yiddish which perhaps added to my feeling of not quite belonging. Even so, our best non family friends were the Gees, whose name I discovered later was originally Gonski, so clearly of Central European origin. They were a great family of three unmarried but sublimely happy spinsters, and two brothers, one a fishmonger on Stamford Hill, and the other the purser on the Empress of Britain. The sisters’ great interest and activity covered, cards – mostly bridge – horse racing, and buying and selling shares. The latter activity bore little reference to the advice in financial papers, for they would only buy shares valued in pence ( old money ) and could therefore get a lot of shares for their modest outlay. When Butlins Holiday Camps took a knock when an overseas project did not work out, their shares crashed to around a dozen pence, and they bought, for them, quite a holding. I laughed and said that’s no way to invest, but when those shares rose first to two and sixpence, I joined in for the ride, and as I recall we bailed out at over a pound a share. I never questioned my “aunts” investment policy again.
In those war years, and shortly after, when rationing was still in place, there were a few amusing anomalies, and one involving those “aunties”. They always took my brother and me out for a treat on a date close to our birthdays, Michael’s in February, and mine in March, and probably close to the war end, we were treated to supper in the West End at a restaurant called Iso’s. At that time restaurants were only allowed to charge a maximum of five shillings (25 pence in today’s money) per person, to meet rationing rules. However at this restaurant when you arrived you were asked, “How many are you?” We were five, but one of the sisters would say seven or eight, and the meal and the bill set accordingly. As ever there are always ways round the best of intentions in rules and regulations.
Some years later whilst umpiring at the Docklands Regatta in East London, I found myself chatting away with a distinguished Steward of the Royal Regatta, Fred Smallbone, who it turned out, had as a young boy, delivered fresh fish on his bicycle for my “uncle” Ernie Gee, whose shop was on Stamford Hill. Much to the consternation and puzzlement of two officials from London Rowing Club, our conversation rattled on about those old days, with my accent becoming more and more like Ken Livingstone by the minute.
Those seven years leading up to the second World War, were happy ones, for whilst we had nothing special, the only toys I recall were a three wheel bike, which at the age of about three I crashed into a garden wall and broke my nose for the first time of three. The other was a wondrous spinning top for a Christmas present – we celebrated everything – which I found at the bottom of my parents bed one Christmas morning.
I do recall the street party at the coronation of King George V1, and suffered the indignity of being dressed as some sort of clown. I remember too the Walls ice-cream vendor on his three wheeled bicycle coming round each week, and of course the coal merchant and his giant shire horse. Apparently there was a bit of a fallout with some neighbours, when my father first took a week’s holiday with the family to Margate. Back then most could not afford such a holiday, and took objection to a family of Jews who could! One of those neighbours must have called my mother a f****** Jew, and she got a thumping from mums handbag, and mum was bound over to keep the peace by the local magistrate.