BUDOKWAI CONFIDENTIAL

DO YOU WANT TO RESTORE THE CLUB TO ITS FORMER GLORY? -

This member does ... ...

Gunji Koizumi     RIP

Gunji Koizumi 8^th Dan founded the Budokwai in 1918. It was probably the first judo club in Europe and the UK. He founded it as an amateur association run by the members for the members and owned by them. It was originally a club run strictly by the martial arts (Budo) ethic of integrity, honour, sacrifice, simplicity,  thrift and fighting spirit. (In the 1950s when Koizumi caught an instructor in flagrante delicto in the dojo he was instantly banned from the club. His Dojo rules began…”The Dojo is a shrine…” which gives a good indication of his attitude.) From that early start Koizumi was   instrumental in creating the British Judo Association and  the European Judo Union which eventually led on to the formation of the International Judo Federation. Clearly the Budokwai occupies an important place in world judo history.

The British Judo Association was formed in 1948 with Koizumi as its first President.  Up to this point the Budokwai headed an organization of about one hundred affiliated clubs and ran the national team selections and grading system.  It also held annual shows at the Royal Albert Hall and produced a quarterly magazine. When the BJA was formed the Budokwai turned its affiliated clubs over to the BJA which then went on to grow to about one thousand clubs.  Gunji Koizumi died in 1965 and Trevor Leggett 8^th Dan took over as the leading light for a few more years and kept the judo vision going.   

In the early days of the BJA, Budokwai members such as Charles Palmer 10^th Dan occupied key positions.  Palmer was BJA chairman, British Olympic Association chairman and International Judo Federation president for many years and as you would expect Budokwai members filled up the national and Olympic teams winning many international medals for a long time.

The golden days of the Budokwai as Britain’s top club petered out  after 1992 when club member Ray Stevens won a silver medal in the Barcelona Olympics. Since then the best any British male has done is place 5^th  (Winston Gordon of Wandsworth Lightning club).  In fact the decline can be more closely dated to 1984 when Neil Adams retired when the Wolverhampton judo club became the strongest club in the BJA. In the 1984 Olympics Wolverhampton had three members in the team and the Budokwai had two and by the 1988 Olympics Wolverhampton had four and the Budokwai only one. Currently in terms of club members in the national squad the Budokwai ranks only 8^th in the UK with just three members. A number of clubs have ten or more. The focus of British judo moved decisively out of London over twenty years ago.

However the seeds of the Budokwai’s decline were sown just a few years after the death of Koizumi.  The Budokwai at this point had survived for nearly half a century through difficult war times. Two things then happened.  The first was that the Budokwai  became martial arts club (as opposed to the dedicated judo club that it had been for most of its existence) when it introduced other martial arts into the club. 

There is no reason why the club should not have become a martial arts club – the Constitution allowed it - except that the premises that the club moved to in 1955 were too small to host more than one martial art especially Karate which soon became very popular. The club, which is still in the same place, has one main dojo 57’ x 27’ and a smaller one 15 x 25 which only takes a handful of people. The main dojo is not even a judo contest size area and is often too small for a large karate or judo class. For example it is unsafe to have more than eight couples doing randori at any one time. Main dojo prime-time is frequently split between judo and karate.

The reason for the introduction of Karate was simply money.  Money of course is always useful but there was no real urgent need for it as such – the judo was strong without a lot of it.  The problems of sharing the club with other martial arts could have been avoided by moving to bigger and better premises but the committee liked the affluent area the club was in and the rapidly increasing value of the property. Like the Kodokan in Tokyo, or the Racing Club in Paris or the New York Athletic Club  the Budokwai could have gone on to acquire bigger and better premises but the committee seemed to think this was as good as it gets and did nothing through lack of vision. In the process it missed  the chance to acquire bigger premises in the same area when prices for commercial properties were reasonable.

The club bought its own premises about 1972 for £18,000 when the owner died. The price was low because Koizumi had shrewdly negotiated a 50yr lease at a fixed rent of £750 pa. When the landlord died it had thirty two years left to run. Not long after acquiring the freehold the Sports Council gave a grant to the club for £12,000 which virtually cleared the small mortgage. Overheads were not great. As an Olympic sport club it enjoyed various tax breaks and had access to government grants as noted.

The second thing that happened was a direct consequence of the shift to becoming a martial arts club.  The number of Karate members at the club began to exceed the judo members and it was feared that (1) the Karate could take over the club or that (2) some unscrupulous individual could manipulate the membership in order to acquire the premises which were rapidly becoming valuable because of their location in Chelsea.

So the club constitution was changed about 1970 and the controlling Full Membership of the club was restricted to no more than 35 Judo Full Members.  There was no mechanism for applying for Full Membership as such. It was and still is up to the committee to invite who they want to be a Full Member. (Subsequently other safeguards to stop the building falling into wrong hands were put in place). Before that the voting Full Membership of the club was unlimited and ranged between 60 and 120 members in any year and the progression to Full membership was virtually automatic after one year’s association with the club and the endorsement of two existing Full Members. Very rarely was any application turned down.

This constitutional change was later to prove very damaging for the club since in effect it allowed a small number of judo Full Members to create a self-perpetuating group that has gone on to run the show for over thirty five years.  Democracy and the well of potential committee talent dried up a long time ago.

About 1970 a 1^st Dan called Brian Davies,  became chairman of the committee which position he has occupied till today except for one recent two year break (33 years!).  However certain things came to light in 1997 when it was discovered that the club had not held a number of AGMs, which of course meant no annual accounts nor annual elections to the committee and that the Full Membership had shrunk to only 12 people which included some paid instructors. Why the Full Membership should have shrunk so much was never explained – there were sufficient judo members who could have been made Full Members. Maybe there was an ulterior reason for the shrinkage or perhaps it was simply a greed for control and power. The full extent of the missed AGMs was never discovered since the relevant club minute books had disappeared as had printed Constitutions although a copy was later found and reprinted.

Indignation and agitation  forced an Emergency Meeting in 1997 attended by many past and present members and a Steering Committee was temporarily put in charge of the club. Soon after that the voting Full Membership was restored to 35 (but still chosen by and consisting mostly of those friendly to the controlling group). A couple of years later this limit was raised to 45 but a subsequent AGM attempt to raise it to 55 was defeated. The Steering Group made a few small changes but the committee which re-formed was much the same as before although two new faces on it pushed through a number of modernizing  measures such as proper membership records which substantially increased the income of the club.

However no real headway could be made on democratising the club. As long as the number of Full Members remained small and controllable the club cheque book wielded by the committee  (many paid instructors are Full Members)  plus some interconnecting business links (and possibly Freemason ones as well) ensured that most stayed on-side and proposals to change the constitution to make it more democratic were always defeated.  Note that the judo Full Members only account for less than 10% of the people using the club – the vast majority are disenfranchised.

Following severe criticism Davies declared he would resign from the committee at the end of his term as a committee member (the committee picks its own chairman) which he did at the AGM in 2001. In his ‘parting speech’ he admitted some mistakes but said he had contributed to the club by saving it from “bankruptcy” in 1970 (not so -  Kaplan did), that he had negotiated a massive VAT rebate (not so – it was automatic) and that he had kept the club going through the depression around 1990 which since the club owned its own premises was not that difficult. However  by a bizarre quirk he was able to carry on attending committee meetings composed almost entirely of his formerly appointed committee members as a new Vice-president. This right of attendance was given to two Vice-presidents (Bowen & Lewis) as a protective measure during the Emergency Meetings of 1997. 

Syd Hoare 8^th Dan who joined the club in 1954 took over as chairman of the committee in 2001. However he quit after two years. It is not clear why he did so but reading between the lines it seems fairly obvious that Davies was still running the show. It also became clear that Syd could make no headway on democratising the club.  His proposal to up the Full Membership quota to 55 and the attempt to introduce a conflict of interest clause for AGMs were both defeated. The crunch for him probably came when following the 2003 AGM he represented himself for re-election to the chair at the next committee meeting and was asked to leave the room (nobody else put their name forward).  On his return he was told not to stick his nose into the management of the club! (His inquisitiveness earlier in the year had detected £25,000 of the clubs money paid into a completely wrong account). Syd must have decided that they were trying to hide something.   Unfortunately for the club he resigned before a series of  legal actions taken against the club (see the Update at the end). If he had stayed in place he might have dealt with them fairly and promptly as he did with a sexual harassment case against a member of staff a few months earlier when he followed the advice of the clubs solicitors all the way through.

In 2003 Davies resumed his chairmanship. The committee apparently neither contained anyone else capable of chairing it or was too lazy to do the job.  The old group was back in charge, still ignoring the Constitution (in 2005 no calling notices for the October AGM were sent out), failing to inform all the committee members about meetings and still handpicking new Full Members.

Currently the club has a semblance of strength on the mat but this is made up of visiting foreigners, aging ex-competitors, the odd strong British visitor and the occasional top Japanese competitor temporarily over in the UK to learn English - who is rarely used properly.  There is no young talent coming through and very little team activity.  As an excuse for its lack of dynamism the committee likes to portray the club as ‘a National Dojo’. In effect they are saying here we are come and use us – we don’t need to do anything. Unfortunately it is far too small to be used in this way and there is no proven need for such a dojo anyway. The Budokwai is nowhere near the powerhouse it was.

Fortunately there is a model for the club.  Not very far away there is the Leander Rowing Club which aims at and consistently produces Olympic players and Olympic medals to this day. The committee though does not like to be reminded of this.  All it can do is wring its hands and bleat that judo is much tougher nowadays – as if it was ever easy. (Just think of the great judo names of the 60s, 70s & 80s). In reality the club has become nothing more than a cash cow that supports a number of aging instructors who do not want to rock the boat or produce anyone who might want their jobs. It has also become a social club for the old boys who want a gentle pull around.

To rise again club now needs to dedicate itself to judo again and take all the time and space it needs at the club or find bigger premises. It needs a new  committee with vision, energy and ability, a new manager and new chief instructor (the present one has been in position about fifteen years) to drive the judo at the club. It currently has a healthy income from its junior section and can afford to lose the Karate, Yoga, Pilates etc etc that clutter up the timetable. Why should these activities restrict the Judo?  The Karate section has enough members to run its own dojo elsewhere.

More importantly it needs to restore democracy  and transparency to the club.  To do this it needs to revert to the old system of Full-membership whereby a virtually unlimited pool of judo Full Members could provide some decent talent to run the committee and where no one person could reasonably expect to serve as chairman for more than a limited period or control the club. Just think what it says about an organization that has had the same chairman for 33 years (and its poor judo results of the last fifteen years!).  It also needs to update the Constitution which has become so out of date as to permit anything – most of the  checks and balances in it have been eroded. This way transparency and democracy could be restored to this fine old club and its judo could rise again. The Budokwai is too historically important to world judo to be left to the present committee. It is Gunji Koizumi’s club and deserves better than this. 

Update

Currently named members of the committee, senior officers and an instructor  are being sued by three members for sexual harassment, sexual discrimination, and harassment. In the Budokwai defence papers the instructor denies sexual harassment but claims to have had consensual sex in the dojo with the main complainant after hours but has neither been censured by the club nor the BJA. The dojo is apparently no longer a shrine. The matter is also being investigated by the police

The committee did not see fit to inform  the voting Full membership of this legal situation till over a year after the claims were first lodged. The courts of course will decide whether there is a case to answer but in the meantime those named on the committee are spending lots of the club’s money defending themselves. It never seems to occur to any of them that they should temporarily step aside till the matter is sorted out and that the best course of action for the club is always to be squeaky clean.

Keeping things quiet and sweeping everything under the carpet seems to be the hallmarks of this regime. What ever happened to the Budo ethic?   Gunji Koizumi must be turning in his grave – his shrine has been desecrated.