Chapter Five - Coming of Age
I have given this chapter the title Coming of Age for two reasons, one because I reached 21 three years in to doing aikido. And about a year later I had another coming of age when I took my black belt grading.
But prior to both those events came a lot of training! I continued to make strides in the world of aikido in several ways. Obviously my knowledge and skills increased. I reached blue belt and then brown and was within sight of the coveted black belt. I continued to train with Irvine but also John and Ahmed and occasionally George and became good friends with all three.
I also started to attend the committee meetings which Irvine chaired and to which John was technical director. And I was given the post of licensing officer, acting as a liaison between our association and the Martial Arts Commission (MAC).
For those not old enough to remember the MAC I shall explain. The MAC was a body set up and sponsored by the government through the Sports Council. The idea was a good one, it just didn’t work too well in practice. Because there were so many martial arts being taught, and because martial arts can be dangerous as well as badly taught, and as there was no overall regulation, the MAC was invented to oversee all martial arts practiced in Britain.
For a few years the MAC did quite a good job. It vetted clubs, ensured a lot of pupils and virtually all instructors had personal liability and injury insurance. Got rid of a lot of the cowboys. And gave out official certification of rank and instructors certificates. It brought people together and it provided some good support with regard to best practice, sports injuries, first aid etc.
Had it not been for some big ego’s, mainly in the karate sector, it would have continued to provide a safeguard and support for martial arts in this country. But it was a voluntary body and when several associations pulled out it collapsed.
I still have my instructors certificate for aikido from the MAC, signed by Chairman Jim Elkin. Mr Elkin was then head of our aikido rivals the BAA. Interestingly enough that honour should almost certainly have gone to our President, Rex Benlow. I only met Rex on a few occasion’s, but he was everything you expected of a martial arts master. Well spoken, quite, intelligent, white hair, white beard, unassuming, you know like the old guy with the eyeballs out of ’Kung Fu’.
Rex had trained under the Japanese when they first brought aikido to this country in the 50’s. When Yamada, the main man, went back to Japan he sent a letter to Rex giving him permission to set up a governing body for Tomiki aikido. The letter never got to Rex, but some how fell in to the hands of Jim Elkin who then set up the British Aikido Association, using the letter as proof of his right to do so.
Rex would have nothing to do with the BAA and therefore along with some other senior figures set up the Aikido Development Society. This association still exists today and at the time of writing is run by Don Bishop, who will feature later in this narrative.
As luck would have it I came across a website for the ADS while researching for this book. It made quite interesting reading, especially the bit where the history of the ADS was totally rewritten by someone. There was no mention of Rex, Irvine, his brother Peter or any other number of people who ran it and ensured its continuance during the 70’s. In fact the site had it being founded about 20 years after it was and the two founders were named as Don Bishop and Ahmeed Saeed. As you will know by know, Ahmeed back then was a junior dan grade (he was still first dan when I met him, where as Rex was 3rd, as was Irvine and John and George both 2nd ) and Don had yet to turn up on the scene.
Anyway all that aside. In 1976 I turned 21!! So how did a responsible up and coming martial artist celebrate his coming of age. Dressed up like a turnip and went to a strip club of course! Well when I say a turnip, I don’t mean as in fancy dress, well that’s arguable. I went out in a three piece pinstripe suit with a Fedora hat. There were quite a few of us, Tony, Dave Murphy, Dave Miller, Phil, Jim, Loch, Grahame, Terry, Neil and a few more. Started in the pub in Victoria, The Talbot. And ended up in a club in Soho.
The club was interesting for a few reasons, for a start it was seedy in the extreme, you could bunk in the back door, so we didn’t pay and it didn’t have a dance license......Umm.yep you did hear right, no dance license and it was a strip club. They got round it by having a small stage with a curtain. The stripper would come on clothed and strike a pose, which she would then hold for about a minute. The curtain would come down and when it went back up she would have moved and removed a bit of clothing too! It was almost as bad as watching paint dry. But we all sat down the front and while she was holding her pose we struck up a conversation with her, which didn’t make the management too happy.
Needless to say got home very drunk, woke up with a hang over and yet another promise to never drink again, which lasted to that evening. And life rolled on.
By this time Dave Miller and Sue had been going out for some time and the day came when I was reading out the telegrams as best man at their wedding. It was one of those occasions when everyone seemed to be there. Dave's mum and dad had come down from Scotland, a great couple. When I had stayed at their home in Edinburgh Dave's dad, Sandy, had spent two weeks verbally abusing me, in good jest of course. A real funny guy but a pretty hard man too.. But , at the end of the day, the man I considered one of my best friends was now a married man!
In those early days my life was not totally dedicated to aikido, believe it or not. In amongst the boozing and aikido I also manage to fit in Tae Kwon Do and later on a bit of Iaido and Jodo and a little bit of Spirit Combat.
Phil started to go to a Tae Kwon Do club in South London and I tagged along. This was back in the days when men were men (well some), and doing very silly things wasn't frowned on. So we did things like run circuits of the church hall where we trained. Easy you may think, not when its a gravel car park outside and you are in bare feet though. It's also not so funny when you do press ups on your knuckles and discover there is broken glass amongst the gravel too.
For those reader's who are not familiar with Tae Kwon Do it is a Korean martial art, often called Korean karate. It originated in the 50's but its roots go back thousands of years. These days the difference between it and karate is minimal as they have both borrowed so much from each other. Primarily Tae Kwon Do ripped Karate off for its kata and Karate ripped off all the high kicks.
Many people, including many karateka, don't realise that back as recently as 50's and even 60's, the system didn't have many high kicks. Nearly all the more dynamic kicks used in karate now come from Tae Kwon Do.
More people may be aware of Tae Kwon Do now that it is part of the Olympics'. Sadly, like so many good martial arts, what you see at the Olympics’ is not really representative of what the art is really about. When you turn any martial art in to a sport you lose far more than you gain. Take boxing for instance. Up until the Marquis of Queensbury brought in his rules boxing was not a million miles away from many other martial arts. It had throw’s as well as punching applications and it could be used as a solid self defence method. But as soon as the rules came in and the restrictions on target areas and the use of punches only was enforced, it lost it’s effectiveness as a real combat system. Anyone trying to use boxing only as a basis for self defence would get a serious beating from any competent martial artist or street fighter.
The club I attended was not part of the organisation which supplies competitors at the Olympic games. And the sort of Tae Kwon Do they taught was more orientated to street fighting than impressing a judge. Hardly surprising, considering two out of the three instructors were ex army. And the club would eventually fold because army guys left for pastures new, in one case that included reenlisting as well!
I only did Tae Kwon Do for a year. But it did open my eye’s to the benefits of other martial arts and I was never totally happy with just Aikido after that, because, like most systems of combat, it was not complete.
As mentioned earlier John France practiced Jodo and Iaido as well as Aikido. I was lucky that he was prepared to instruct me in both, on a one to one basis, for about 18 months. Although I never went in for official gradings in either, he rated me as about a 1st kyu brown belt in both. And they certainly helped my Aikido practice, which, of course includes the bo ( a shorter version of the jo) and the sword.
One of the guys who attended class turned out to be a pupil of one Brian Dossett. For a lot of martial artists this name will be familiar, although it tends to get a mixed reaction!
Brian started his combat career as a prize fighter in a fair, taking on all comers. There is no denying the guy was hard and could take a punch as well as deliver one. He studied Karate and Ju Jutsu as well as other systems and attained several black belts. And at that point drove a very big wedge between certain sectors of the martial arts community. Some people think he is a genius while others look on him as a heretic. Why? Because he started his own martial art. These days it’s advertised as based on Ju Jutsu but incorporating elements from aikido, Kung Fu, boxing and Karate. But for many people back then it was a totally new martial art. I also think that some of his breaking exploits pissed a few people off, if not frightened them. He used to do things like take the top off of several free standing bottles with the edge of his hand, or head butt telegraph poles in half!
Today Brian is well accepted in some areas but still seen as having tinkered too much with traditional teachings by others. I can only speak as I found him back then. He was a nice guy, worked hard and was hard. I trained with him several times but due to my training for my black belt in Aikido I never took up Spirit Combat seriously.
In 1978 I finally got to go for the big prize, my first dan. By that time the set up in our little Aikido circle had changed a bit. Rex Benlow had taken a back seat and a few new instructors and clubs had joined the fold. One of the new instructors was Don Bishop.
Today Don runs the Aikido Development Society, back then he was just coming back in to the fold having been running his own independent club for some time. He was known to the likes of Irvine, and especially John France, as Don had been his original instructor. John was never the same after Don arrived, there was bad blood between them, and he marginalised himself more and more. He even went as far as moving to the practice of Yoshinkan Aikido, a different style and affiliating to a new instructor. Although the guy turned out to be a bit of a fraud which in turn soured John’s view of Aikido.
When Don arrived on the scene he was a 3rd dan. But with Irvine’s job keeping him from regular practice and John France stepping down as Technical Director, Don took over but convinced the board of dan grades that to do so he should be graded to 4th dan. Which they did by a vote.
Anyway, that aside, my black belt grading was arranged for a Thursday evening at the NCB club and it would be jointly overseen by Irvine and Don. It was a pretty big thing as in the previous fours years there had been only two or three other dan gradings. And of those people graded to black I would only be Irvine’s second pupil to get that far and by far the youngest too.
On the night all the usual faces were there, Dave Miller, Dave Murphy, Phil and Jim etc. Plus several students from other clubs attended. And, to my delight, my father!
It was not an easy grading! We did the warm up’s, break fall practice, movement practice. Bit of kata. Then I got called up to perform my first kata, I would get called up four times to perform kata, including the first 24 moves of the Dai San which included knife attacks. In total about 64 separate techniques with three or four different partners.
Intermixed amongst the kata was kakari geiko, the practice where one of you attacks and one defends and then you swap. Free movement, a sort of continuous relaxed sparring and then the biggie! I had to take on two of Don’s guys who got to attack me with knifes. It wasn’t expected and I was not going to take prisoners. I nearly broke one of the guys ankles when I threw him and they didn’t touch me at all!
After all that I had to pick a technique of my choice and teach it to the class, and that included the black belts grading me. We finished, as normal, with a warm down and meditation.
At the end of the session I was called out and Irvine tied my black belt around my waist. I have had few prouder moments. Everyone gathered around to shake my hand and pat me on the back and then I went to my father who was standing there with tears in his eyes. I don’t think he ever thought he would see the day, it was one of the few times I can remember him hugging me. Needless to say, after that we all went to the pub!
