Martial Arts Freedom
Just recently I met up with an old Judo mate who I had not seen for well over 20 years, reminiscing over a couple glasses of wine (things have changed he remarked they used to be pints) he reminded me of my bolshie’s day’s with regard to the Martial Arts establishment. He hinted that I had become part of the system, I soon pointed out that I only belong to one UK Sports governing body that was the British Sombo Federation which I helped form. I said those dark days of the seventies and early eighties where a little band of dictators who wanted to see every one under the auspices of one body ie Martial Arts Commission, British Judo Association, rather like a communist politburo had long past. Now there were a multitude of different Martial Arts and Combat Disciplines all enjoying their own individual freedom, the MAC was now defunct (thank god their last chairman David Passmore still owes the IBF £900) the BJA have got rid of most of their old Politburo style committee members and now have a vibrant organisation, which allow other organisations to affiliate to them, who would have thought in the 70’s that the British Judo Council and BJA could work in harmony. I suppose why I was such a troublemaker was that I believed in the individual having the democratic right to choose. He then congratulated me on mellowing with age; my retort was that might be the case with Martial Arts but not with life as whole. My latest challenge I explained was to make people aware that the biggest threat to our freedom was the European Union and the forthcoming United States of Europe constitution, he put his head in his hands and said what has that got to with Martial Arts? That I said is the typical answer of a Martial Artist who seems to think they live in isolation to the rest of the world. The proposed constitution wants to ban all political parties who do not agree to a United States of Europe, if they are prepared to do that it will not be very difficult to create a European wide Martial Arts Commission with draconian powers back to the bad old days of the Politburo, remember in the early eighties the MAC tried to enforce all educational and sporting establishments to accept MAC clubs, which they very successful in doing, so be warned!
After this rather heavy debate we returned to our reminiscing and done what all Martial Artists/grapplers are good at that is exaggerating the truth, by the time the evening had finished there was no one we could not have beaten if it was not for this injury, girlfriend, bad luck, travel fatigue etc.
As I am with fellow Martial Artist can I bring to your attention what the great Chinese General Sun Tzu (circa 500BC) wrote “Those who make peaceful revolution impossible, make violent revolution inevitable” maybe some thing our politicians should remember.