Sep 27 R.I.P Karate

When I was a child in the 50’s, we never saw an oriental person, all we knew about the Japanese were horror stories from World War 2 and they were like an alien race to us. There was no internet, only the very formal BBC as a black and white television station, no video, no DVD, no one we knew travelled abroad (apart from to drop bombs on and kill people) and the only oriental people on film were usually portrayed by English actors in make up. Karate and Kung Fu were unheard of, we only knew of Judo with a mental picture of a small old man ‘using his opponent’s strength against him’….

When the first Japanese Karate Instructors landed on these shores it was as exotic as the aliens in the television programme ‘V’ arriving on Earth. They didn’t write, they drew mystical pictures and they were met by revulsion from all those that suffered in their hands in the still recent WW2 – and Karate became known as ‘dirty Jap fighting’ as Englishmen didn’t kick gouge or pull hair in a fight.

Despite all this I was drawn to those kanji pictograms and the excitement of these instructors breaking wooden boards with loud kiai’s and moving in such disciplined forms with so much unrepressed violence. I was hooked. With the advent of Bruce Lee and David Carradine in 1973, Karate and Kung Fu took England by Storm!

My involvement in Karate Politics started in the mid 1980’s representing Toru Takamizawa as Chairman of the Takamizawa Institute of Karate on the English Karate Council that held what was then the WUKO mandate and Sports Council recognition and contained the ‘breakaways’ from the old original groups who were in opposition with no official recognition on the English Karate Board. The EKC were also members of the Martial Arts Commission set up by the Government as the ‘watchdog’ of the Martial Arts. Over the years I took on many roles as Secretary, Chairman, Executive Committee Member and Director, I attended all the first meetings of the NVQ and Clubmark and when the Governing Body didn’t take them on, as a Club, I did. I eventually realised that I could do nothing to change the situation from the inside and focused my energies on my own group and eventually switched arts to Kung Fu as far more could be achieved.

Virtually the same people have been running English Karate from those days and the same old grievances, endless meaningless Governing Body qualifications, ever changing acronyms, missing money, secret society interventions, cover ups, bullying and all the crap that you would expect with thousands of people’s membership money and grant aid flowing around culminating with the subsequent bankruptcy of the last recognised, badly run Karate Governing Body having spent almost a million pounds and were £124,572 in debt to their creditors. Details of the debacle from the Times Online can be found by clicking here: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/sport/more_sport/article620824.ece#http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/sport/more_sport/article620824.ece

Karate has been left like a headless body without any leadership, direction, support, funding or quality standards. This has left a vacuum to be filled by the parasites, the high pressure sales and low standard traders with their outrageous ‘upgrades’ of up to 10 times the original price, they hook your children into the club and then keep selling until you are broke because you want to support your child. Clubs that spread like a virus with expensive ‘Instructor Training Programmes’ with worthless qualifications and franchise deals that tie franchisee only to them at expensive deals. Groups that proliferate using low grade Instructors that have only been training for a few weeks on the assumption that the more clubs they open the more money rolls into the pyramid style selling founder. The Mr 10% ‘Management Consultant’ companies that get low grade instructors to leave their associations and feed off them with their preformatted sales systems that turn low grade Instructors into ‘Masters’ and salesmen for them and forget about their Karate and continued development.

Most normal Karate Instructors have their head in the sand. They teach a handful of students in a Scout Hut or Church Hall and feel that nothing affects them and that ‘it’s always been the same’… This means that Karate is dying on vine, the rest of the world is moving on and Karate is known on the school gate, in coffee shops and gyms as a scam. Schools and charities consistently get their fingers burned by those that use their ‘buzz words’ to gain entrance with false documentation and qualifications and then cheat their students, teachers and members. Bullies, con artists, abusers and paedophiles get away with their nefarious deeds, as everybody else looks the other way or bury their head in the sand.

Everything may be okay in your club, but if you step back and look at the broader perspective, it’s a mess – and your inaction will eventually come back to haunt you as eventually no one will want to train in your art.

All other sports and clubs have common recognisable qualifications, Clubmark being top of the pile, you can’t get that if you practice Karate because there is no Sport England recognised Governing Body or resultant qualifications. Coaching is a standard level 2 NVQ or equally structured Governing Body qualification, Enhanced CRB disclosure, Safeguarding Children, Equity in Coaching, Club for All and First Aid are considered standard nowadays. Because other Sports have Leadership and direction from the top, standard recognisable qualifications and talk to Government Ministers, education leaders, charities and community leaders of all types, their clubs are an essential part of the community and deeply embedded whilst Karate Instructors roll in the gutter with villains and con artists and can only gaze through the window like one of Fagin’s minions whilst everyone else is getting on and building a structured society…

This is a shot across the bows to Karate, there is no-one else to tell you this, doors are already shut or closing to you, nothing remains the same and if you don’t move with the times you will rapidly become a dead art known only for your cheating arguing and corruption.

Steve Rowe

Steve Rowe is a highly successful Martial Arts instructor - an International Neigong, Qigong and Tai Chi Teacher and an 8th Dan Karate with many other senior dan grades in other martial disciplines.

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