Rowing Against the Tide - A career in sport and politics

by Brandon-Bravo, Martin

  There are countless stories of how civilians coped during those years of the Blitz, and dad who by then was too old to sign up, became an ARP warden and used to stand up against a single brick wall at the end of road. One night he heard a crash just behind him, for an incendiary bomb had landed on the top of the wall and fallen on the other side. It was a narrow escape by the width of a brick, and without thinking told my mother. It had been a very stressful week with the blitz, and she became hysterical. Dad had to slap her to bring her round, and she had a quiet sob in his arms as she recovered her composure. He’d done the right thing, and it was the first and only time he ever raised his hands to her. There had been a block of flats in Hammersmith that had received a direct hit, and during the rescue an old man was heard laughing and was found still in bed when he was rescued. His laughter was because he had been sleeping on the top floor, and was still in bed when found at ground level.

  All of my generation will have stories of the war and its ending, but I will certainly never forget the joy and relief at the broadcast that the war in Europe was over. My father and I promptly went up to the West End of London and to the Marble Arch, where the scenes of jubilation were fantastic. The flat concrete roofed air-raid shelters provided ideal stages for dancing and public displays, and I recall servicemen stripped to the waist, cavorting around on top of one of these shelters close to the Arch. Where the food and booze had come from for those festivities was a secret I never discovered. One of those secrets was the appearance of chicken on restaurant and café menus. Today chicken is the most plentiful and cheapest of meats, back then it was a rare delicacy, but there it was at the announcement of peace in Europe mysteriously available to the celebrating crowd.

  Like youngsters of my age, my pocket money had to be earned, and I delivered papers for a small newsagent, Nixons, on the Stamford Brook Rd. Latymer’s headmaster did not approve of this kind of work before school, so I hid my school cap until the round was finished. He tried once more to raise the image of the school, by requesting that from the Fifth Form upwards, we should wear straw boaters. Too many pupils lived in Shepherds Bush, and after a few had their boaters trashed by the local lads, the scheme was scrapped.

  At the War’s end and still a slow reader, I absorbed the headlines, and I recall my bewilderment when seeing the headlines in 1945 – LABOUR LANDSLIDE. Winston Churchill by then was my idol, and even today I can listen to recordings of his speeches and experience the same emotion that they generated all those years ago. I just could not understand why he had been rejected, but looking back many years later I realised that many recalled how the “land fit for heroes” had not been fulfilled back in 1919, and the only alternative to the recognised Conservative establishment, was the Labour Party under Clement Attlee.

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  Chapter 2

  School Days

  Those who had passed the eleven plus, had a few months at the nearby Secondary Modern School whilst waiting for the results of the entrance exams to the “Grammars” in West London. There were three, St Pauls, already a member of the elite group, Latymer Upper who’s governors chose, rightly as it turned out, to become a direct grant school outside the control of the LCC, and St Clement Danes who chose to join the general run of LCC schools. I was lucky to win a place at Latymer and within five years, Latymer was challenging St Pauls, whilst St Clement Danes had sunk into obscurity. That cemented what had been a growing conviction that whilst we might not have been of the “traditional conservative class”, theirs was the right way, and however well meaning the Socialist/Labour movement was, their philosophy in practice simply did not work. Certainly the opportunity to go to a great school that my parents could never have afforded, was the one thing the then labour Government under Clement Attlee did not scrap, and it was left to Harold Wilson to shamefully abolish that Direct Grant System that gave me and thousands of working class children, the chance to aim for the sky. That help for working class youngsters was not regained until the Assisted Places Scheme was reintroduced, only to be scrapped again by the second Wilson/Callaghan Government. To me it smacked of a philosophy of “if everyone can’t have something, nobody can”. That too entrenched my belief in the politics of the centre-right.

  My time at Latymer was a reasonably happy one, for though my dyslecsia meant I started in the C stream of a four stream intake, we had exams each year, and by the time I reached the Upper Fifth, I had made the A stream, so perhaps my poor spelling had not set me back too far. That limitation was nearly my undoing, for matriculation at that time demanded five good credits, of which one was a modern language. If my spelling in English left much to be desired, you should have seen my French. However lady luck shone on me, for having on advice, written a letter to an imaginary boy in France, I had it checked for spelling. Low and behold that was one of the options in the exam.

  I did not take a particular interest in active politics, perhaps because my classmate was Peter Walker, later to become the MP for Worcester, subsequently a senior cabinet member, and then a life peer, for he seemed to know so much, that I just felt it would be beyond me. We jokingly used to feel that in any debate, Peter would quote chapter and verse, on what someone had said in the House on such and such a date, and that left the rest of us floundering. He and I had the same birthday, but he did not stay for the sixth form declaring that he needed to earn some money so that he could afford to enter Parliament. He wagered ten shillings with me that he would make it in ten years. Eleven years later when he won the by-election for Worcester, I wrote reminding him of the bet, and was duly invited to the Commons for lunch.

  My Patrol “The Owls” of Chiswick

  When the war ended my school decided to adopt and build a link with a school in Hamburg, and the school captain, David Price, was a brilliant guy who set about raising a collection to first send a group from our school, and then to bring a group from Hamburg to England. At that time, whilst I perhaps felt the same deep anger in regard to the conduct of Germany as most Britons, I had also come face to face with members of my faith who had survived the holocaust, and could not at that time feel any sympathy with the reports that came back of the flattened desolation of Hamburg. I’d seen great flattened areas in London, and was well aware of the tragedy of Coventry and other towns and cities in England, and just could not raise at that time any feelings of forgiveness or reconciliation. A family friend brought a young girl to our home, who they subsequently adopted, and who had survived the concentration camp only through the sacrifice of both her parents. The image of the tattoo on that young girl’s arm remains with me to this day. When David came collecting, he quietly said, Martin I understand, you don’t need to contribute. That association with my old school still exists, and looking back it was the right thing to do, for we cannot hold forever the sins of the fathers on the subsequent generations.

  At that time, I had no idea that the holocaust had touched my family, for certainly on my father’s side we had been here for hundreds of years, and on my mother’s for around a hundred and fifty. But following my election in 1983, a man wrote to me from Amsterdam, having seen the results on television, asking if I was related to the Dr Brandon-Bravo who had practiced there before the war, survived the Japanese prison camp, and briefly practiced again on his return to Holland. I replied that although I was unaware of that branch of the family, he was almost certainly related, since we had never found anyone with that name where we couldn’t find a link. When my brother Michael took early retirement as Vice Provost of the City of London University, he and his wife went to Holland to do some family research. He returned with a printout of that branch of our family who had lived both in Amsterdam and Den Haag. There in the list, jumping out at me was an unknown cousin, born as I was in 1932, but died in Auschwitz 1942. It leaves me cold to this day.

  My biggest problem at school was coping with the fact that along with just one other in my year group, I was Jewish, and anti Semitism was alive and well. Some of my faith becam
e hardened and strengthened by such taunts as you f****** Jew, but I have to admit at that time to lacking the confidence to cope. I couldn’t understand the jibes, since I knew I’d been British long before some of my accusers, and when told to go back to Palestine only made it harder to understand. Much as by then I understood the desire and need for the survivors of the holocaust to have a land of their own, and was delighted when the United Nations created the State of Israel, the terrible things that had happened in the run up to it’s creation, added to the anti Semitism, and that drove me further into my shell. The killing of the two British Soldiers in a reprisal to some offence by the army, and the bombing of the King David Hotel gave ample ammunition to those who, whatever the rights and wrongs in those last days of the Mandate, were only too happy to stoke the age old flames of anti-Semitism. In the first few years at Latymer I’d had a very good friend who suddenly said he couldn’t be friends or speak to me any more. His parents hearing I was Jewish banned him from having anything more to do with me. If I hadn’t been well below average height and about seven stone nothing, things might have been different and I might have reacted differently to what amounted to a form of bullying. However by the age of fourteen I was boxing at under eight stone, and just about holding my own. Being lousy at ball games, I took to athletics and rowing, and coxed the first boat in my last two years at school.

  In those years leading to the end of the war, and to 1950 when I left, rationing made school dinners at times hard to stomach, but we were rightly reproached for any waste. However in the sixth form we were allowed to either go home for lunch, or as many of us preferred, to cross the road from the school where a greasy spoon style café put on great lunches. The atmosphere was fun and the layout was in cubicles with tables for four or six. The waitress would come to the table, ask what we wanted and would then turn and holler to the kitchen at the back – one meat pie and chips, one pie mash and peas, and one without peas. I don’t ever remember her getting an order wrong, and the cost was no greater than the school dinner.

  I did not fancy the school cadet force, for shortly after coming to west London, my brother had made contact with a Scout Group, and at the age of eight, I with one other youngster, became the first members of the 3rd Chiswick Cub Pack, attached to the Scout and Rover Group. It was an unusual group, being completely open and unattached to any church, which was generally the norm at that time. The Scout Master was known only as Colonel, and his wife Gray, became the cub mistress. They were a great pair, and I and hundreds of others, owe a great deal to them, and that’s why I stayed with the Scouts rather than join the cadets at school. The group had an excellent working relationship with a group of female Sea Cadets, and a couple of marriages sealed that relationship.

  The Rovers were a great bunch, and when they returned from their war service, some had some great stories to tell. One Ginger Cole, had been in the Far East as a driver, and told of the time when in India he was driving in the dark, and misjudged a roundabout on which a cow was sleeping. He recalled a bump when he hit the roundabout, another just after, and then one as he dropped down the other side. When they heard the following morning that a cow had been killed, he kept his head down and said nothing ! Another, Gerald Kosterlitz had been in the Eighth Army in North Africa, as a tank driver. His tank was hit, and he was the only survivor. His family had been refugees from Nazi Germany in the thirties, and his father had been in the Kaisers Army in the First World War His father said that they could withstand a straightforward bayonet charge from the Brits, didn’t mind when the bagpipes brought on the Scots, but the ones they really hated were the little brown men with a rag round one hand, and a kukri in the other. The Ghurkhas he said, would strike fear into anyone! Another, Charlie King, by then too old for active service, was the local butcher in Turnham Green, but any resemblance to Corporal Jones, the butcher from Dad’s Army, was a million miles from the guy that was Charlie.

  I enjoyed the open air life the Group encouraged, and we camped as often as possible. We had a regular camp site on a farm near Ruislip, and I remember with pain the struggle to cycle with a pack on a small bike, up the Great West Road from where we lived on the borders of Chiswick. On one of our badge challenges, I as patrol Leader, and my number two, Derek Gidney, did a weekend trek, and camped on an old golf course that was available to scouts. The weather was awful, and we pitched a small “Itizer” low lying circular tent, and bedded down for the night. The rain was torrential, and one of the resident scout staff came to see we were OK, for all the rest had either been washed or blown away. We survived a few more hours, but in the end realised we would have to gather as much as we could, and get to the safety of the main building. With all our gear over our heads we made a beeline for the building, and it was just as well there was a great flash of lightening, for we found ourselves standing on the edge of a large bunker. In the dark, who knows what might have been the outcome, but all ended well, and we got our badge!

  On one occasion we camped on a high bluff close to Branscombe in Devon. The winding road down through the village lead to a bakery half way down, where the smell of fresh baked bread was just too great to resist. One morning we scrambled down to the beach to meet the early returning fisherman, and I have to say that fresh mackerel cooked over a wood fire, with fresh crusty bread, tasted far better than any haut cuisine can ever achieve.

  On an earlier camp when I was perhaps eleven or twelve, we found a site in a field alongside the rail track in Llandogo in Herefordshire. Two things from that camp remain in my memory forever. On the far side of the track was a steep well wooded hill, and a group of us set out to climb to the top, either to see if there was anything there, a house perhaps, but if not to see a wider view of the valley and town. When we reached the top, there was indeed a house, hidden away amongst the bushes and trees, and it had a run down but mysterious air about it. This mystery was heightened when an old lady came out to meet us, and I for one began to get the creeps, and thoughts of Hansel and Gretel ran through a few of our minds. She invited us in, and with much trepidation we followed her to find a home, dark, and to our young minds, quite foreboding, with a wide range of Chinese and other oriental collectables adding to the air of mystery. Frankly when she struck the giant brass gong in the main hall, I wasn’t the only one feeling the s****. In truth she welcomed our visit, for I suspect few in the village ever went up to see her, so we did get out alive. On returning to camp, the recounting of our brave climb sounded much braver and more entertaining than the reality had been.

  The other incident of that camp, applied to a border collie, and a bad attempt by one of the group to cook a meal from tinned meat and heaven knows what else. The dog always knew when the train was coming, and long before we did. He used to go to the far corner of the field away from the station, and as the train approached, he would race it to the station. On the night of the disastrous meal which no-one could eat, the “cook” scraped it onto a large plate and gave it all to the dog. Whilst he appeared to enjoy eating it, it did not agree with him, any more than it had with the rest of us, for it was two or three days before the dog tried to race the train again.

  This incident came to light again over forty years later when a group of colleagues went to Herefordshire to assist in the Monmouth By-election in the eighties. By happy chance I and a couple of other MPs were sent to Llandogo for a spot of canvassing, and we arranged to be picked up later that afternoon at a café overlooking that same field, and where the railway had run all those years ago. Chatting to a local over a cup of tea, I recalled the story of the Border Collie, and to my delight the locals remembered his regular racing of the train, though of course he had long gone to join his doggie mates wherever they go after this life !

  In preparation for the World Scout Jamboree in 1947, the Indian contingent stayed with us at our headquarters, for apart from the building, we were lucky enough to own a triangular field formed between two roads, and the path leading to Stamford Brook Underground Station
. They were a great crowd, but sadly it coincided with the partition of India, and the creation of Pakistan, for many were unable to return home, either having being told their families had been killed, or they just could not obtain information as to their family’s whereabouts. We particularly befriended one Indian who came to our home for supper, and asked us to keep a secret, for he was the only Christian in the contingent. There was a spot of bother over the attempt to arrange a slaughter that would provide acceptable meat for the Muslim scouts, but was the first time many of us, apart from the Rovers like Ginger Cole, had ever had curry, and having a meal with them was something quite new. Apart from the troubles faced by my own people, this was the first time I realised the troubles that existed between the Moslems, the Hindus, the Sikhs and the Christians on the subcontinent. Sadly it is still the same now in the 21st century.

  I was at home with the sciences, with practical chemistry as my favourite. I don’t recall our chemistry master’s proper name, for we only knew him as Dogsbody. I was persuaded at one stage, to produce a stink bomb for friends, and concocted a mixture that produced phenol/iso/cyanide, which cleared the place. Realising that it could be poisonous, and was an extremely stupid thing to have done, I owned up to the Head and was suspended for three days. I could not face my parents with what I’d done, so I duly packed my things as usual on each of those days, and took myself up to the West End of London, to while away the time until returning home at the usual time.

  The school rowing club at that time, was run on a proverbial shoestring, for the one fine eight we used, had more shellac and sticky tape holding it together, than it had cedar in it’s skin. The school rented racks at the West End Amateur Boat Club, but when that closed we were adopted by the Furnivall Club and stayed with them until many years later the school was able to provide the present splendid boathouse adjacent to the school. Our Captain of Boats was Michael Phelps, the first amateur in his family, for his father was the boatman at Thames Rowing Club. So at the time, we were all made honorary members of Thames Rowing Club, and one of their oldest and most distinguished members, Berry, took pity on us and donated an old but excellent boat, duly named Berry, in which we rowed during my last two years at school.