Oral Histories: David

I was born in the West End of London in Soho, myself and three other brothers. I left the West End of London when I was approaching sixteen, seventeen, something like that, when I met my wife. We got married in the Catholic church opposite York Hall in 1965. With her family being… I live in Wanstead now so we never moved very far but her family all being round here, they showed me what the traditional way of life was in the East End: a lot of drinking, football and boxing.

I took over being the Vice Chairman in 1988. I became the Chairman in 1990. I felt here they was a nice crowd of East London fellas but I felt they was a bit naïve to their future. I said to them like “you’re paying money to some spivs down the road”, you should try and get this. So I made very good friends with Albert [Jacobs - a Jewish “working class lad” from Brick Lane]. Did you ever meet Albert? Lovely old boy. So I went down and told Albert the story and he said “No David, you need to be more secure. We’re trying to get you a lease.” Well the new owners came in and renovated there, and they wanted this obviously. But because we were a landmark of boxing history in the area they had great difficulty. So eventually I got my own way and we got a thousand year lease. We can open up seven days a week. So we’re quite secure, we haven’t got to worry about this year or the year after or when I disappear from this earth that the boys of Bethnal Green… cause look only about ten per cent of our membership is from the area now. When I was first came here I’d say about seventy per cent came from round here. But you see the East End since I was first came to it in the Sixties has changed immensely. From bottom Brick Lane right the way through was a very Jewish area and then from up here where most of the local Cockneys lived up where my wife lived. Everyone used to mix together and train together but we’ve had various changes in the East End of London.

Where I’m based up in Colombia Road, we call it the “yuppie pubs”. You go in there and it’s £6.50 a pint of beer. But that’s to keep out the local people they don’t want in there. Cause the local people mostly joined working men’s clubs around here, haven’t they?

Well back in… around twelve years ago the floor you see out here was absolutely decayed, rotten, concrete falling everywhere. So I shifted around to try and get some grant money here, there and everywhere and it was very difficult. I got in touch with Paraday Foundation who helped get me some funding. They said you’ll get some money coming in from the Marathon Trust, which is also part of the Lottery money. They came down and looked around and went “you got a problem here.” I went “what’s that?”. They said “there’s no women here”. I said “oh”. They said “Read that. Equality. You might have black, white, asian [boys] and all that but you ain’t got no women here. So you gotta sort that out.”

So very quickly I organised this girl called Kelly and she got a little group of girls together, about six girls. At the moment, we’ve got four. It’s growing the girls in boxing. It is growing and the girls we’ve got here they’re top good, they’re very good. They’ve won titles. They’re very dedicated. They wanna be part of Repton so we don’t have a problem with them at all.

As new trainees come from other clubs, we try to get their thinking pattern in the way the Repton are, and how we want them to be. It takes about a full season to get them moulded the way we are. I come in here, the lads call me Mr. Chairman. The thing is when they’re not conforming, or doing what they’re expected to do, we don’t want them here anyway. You’ve got to give 100%. If you don’t give 100% you’ll be the loser. You’ll let yourself down, your family down, you let your club down, let me down. You can tell from some of the Traveller lads, and some of the black lads, who haven’t got fathers, they got that no cate attitude about them so we’ll soon knock it into them. I let them know “I’m the boss here. You behave yourself.”

Then you find out they ain’t never seen their father for years or their father left them. And you are trying to replace something that’s missing in their life. My dad left me and my brothers when we were very, very young so I can relate to it quite a bit, you know quite a bit, how they must feel. They come at night and they want their dad to buy them a bit of boxing equipment and they struggle, though we do help them out with equipment. Like we charge £140 a year for a junior, £160 a year for a senior and they’ve got this three nights a week. Plus we provide the equipment and everything else that goes with it. So we do look after them cause to come here it’s about £1.50 a night innit?

When I was a young lad in the West End of London me and my brothers went to a boxing club called the Rosary Club. But the thing was that my father was a very heavy drinker so my mother never got any money off him so we couldn’t afford the equipment so me and my brothers went there now and again and we had to pay a penny on the door but i couldn’t afford it so I didn’t bother. My home life sorted itself out a bit but not that much. My mother couldn’t handle my drunken dad and things got worse and this that and the other so I started coming round the East End of London and like when I met my wife she took me home and made me dinner every night! Otherwise I wouldn’t have ate. That’s how bad it really was in them days. And my brothers, there was no things like… what you got now, they go to the food banks don’t they? Them days we had what you call soup kitchens round various areas of the West End. Me and my brothers would go to the soup kitchens and get a bit of food. Cause we were born just after the war, I was born in 1946. The war has just ended. The West End was very… there weren’t a lot of street lighting. We used to get things called The Fogs - you couldn’t see anything. What used to happen, there would be a lot of soldiers who returned from the war, had very little money, and they’d smash the jewellery shops up and take all the jewellery… and it was all a bit mad. Looking back I think the West End was more dangerous after the war than the East End. And I found more friendship and that over here.

I’m only a little bit older than my wife. She had solid parents which I didn’t have. So she said “look don’t be silly, you eat around my mum and dad’s house tonight. You have a meal in ya”.

In the West End, with the Italian area, the Maltese area, was all separate; you really couldn’t go into those areas after you come outta school. Whereas here, all the pubs from there onwards through Brick Lane, a lot of the Jewish community used to drink down there so my father in law knew all the communities round there and used to take me round to meet the communities round there.

We had a few Jewish boxers here, I’m trying to think of the last lad who came here…what happened is a lot of boxers, they change their names when they become boxers, you know that don’t you? So a lot of Jewish boxers here, they’ll find someone’s name who was boxer round here years ago and they’ll register as that. So when we go abroad, we go “what’s your real name son? Because we’re taking you to so and so. I need to know what your passport says.” So they may have on their medical card a traditional English name, but it won’t necessarily be their name. So you don’t know what it is now.

But it makes no difference here. You know the junior squad, I’d say 40% of the boys there are Travellers, from the travelling community. They’re good fighters. They’ve had a hard buck. All got about 25 brothers and sisters! They’re all good as gold, all behave themselves.

I think a lot of kids out there, who have been involved in gangs and drugs and whatever, I don’t think the probation officer or school people can really communicate the way we communicate with them, and I think that’s a lot of the problem. You sit a lad down go “right you’re fourteen, been to courts twice for this, that and the other. I say what do you wanna do? You wanna spend your life in prison or do you want a nice life? Stay here for three or four years boxing, you don’t know where you’re gonna end up. I said you’ll meet someone who’ll find a job for you. It opens up their eyes to what’s going on. You know on these council estates round Hackney, they’re just mixing in an environment where it’s a drug culture, stabbings and, you know, one of our lads got stabbed last year in South End. Lovely lad yeah?

And they take a knife out, get in a fight, they’ll use it. Simple as that. It won’t be like punching each other and just getting a split lip.. They will use it. They be fighting, so they’ll use it…

[A short verse written by David Robinson for the boxers of Repton Club:]

When thing go wrong as they sometimes will,

When the road you’re travelling seems all uphill,

When the funds are low, and the devs are high,

And you wanna smile but have to sigh.

Life is often queer with its twists and turns.

And every one of us sometimes learns.

And you can never tell how close you are,

Maybe when it comes too far,

You must stick to the fight when you’re hardest hit,

It’s when things get the worst, that you must not quit.