Free Rowing Against the Tide - A career in sport and politics by Martin Brandon-Bravo

reservations he must have had, knowing his background as a refugee from Germany in the thirties.
    So it turned out by the time I left the group to enter Parliament following the election in 1983, that nest egg from my share stake allowed me to take a drop of 50% in income, and just about get by with two boys in private day school and a mortgage still to pay. Following the failed 1979 election, the boundaries were adjusted, for the old Nottingham East had, as indicated, been a tiny Labour fiefdom, and the changes made the three Nottingham seats broadly equal. By 1983 the tide which had earlier already begun to turn in Margaret Thatcher’s favour, was boosted by the outcome of the Falklands War, and turned what might have been a small chance of success for me, into a clean sweep of all three City seats, for Michael Knowles in East, Richard Ottaway in North, and myself in what had been renamed South. That seat, the old West Nottingham, not the South that had been won by Norman Fowler in 1970, had only once before in living memory, been won by a Conservative back in1959 when the now Sir Peter Tapsell won it narrowly over a senior trade unionist by a couple of hundred votes. It was said that this unlikely result was down to the fact that Peter was a good looking piece of male cheesecake, and all the women fell for him claiming that the narrow victory was down to them. Certainly the Nottingham hairdressers did well out of that election.
    I stayed on as a consultant to the group for a couple of years, in order to ensure the smoothest transition, but the new MD appointed by the main board chairman, only underlined the chairman’s lack of business acumen and knowhow, for the new MD only made losses. It was sad, for in all the thirty years I had been with Rick Stump, and subsequently working with his daughter Wendy who was sales director, we had never failed to make a decent profit.
    After I left Parliament in 1992 I did not want to return to work in the manufacturing textile industry, for there was in any case not a lot left in the mass production side of the industry. However I was offered a part time role by some good friends Maurice and Lesley Sananas in their business which included the GB sales side of the French company NAF NAF. My role was as an expert witness in cases of the counterfeiting of their products, and though not a lawyer, thoroughly enjoyed my time giving evidence, explaining how and why the goods that had been seized were counterfeit. Their family had lived for many years in Egypt and ran a successful textile business there. Following the 1956 Suez crisis, they found their business confiscated, and they had to leave Egypt along with a forced exodus of the large Jewish community who had lived there for many generations, and counted themselves as Jewish Egyptians. A few families stayed on, but as restrictions and pressures grew, they too had to leave, often with little but the clothes on their backs, and dependent on Jewish charities to help them find a country that would offer them sanctuary. It is those expulsions from Egypt and other countries in the Middle East, that underline the refusal by the current Israeli Government, to refuse to accept the right of Palestinians to return to their old homes in what is now Israel.
    Being part time, it allowed me to return to Local Government, but also to accept the appointment as President of the Amateur Rowing Association, now re-branded as British Rowing. Fortuitously it also allowed Sally and me to buy a tiny cottage in Henley which turned out to be a boon for all our family. That purchase is a tale in itself, for as long as I can remember, I, and then Sally, always expressed wonderment at the crazy prices of property in that delightful town. As President I found myself driving to Henley for meetings in addition to the regattas we had always enjoyed attending. Staying overnight at either Leander Club or in a hotel was not cheap, so when we went out for a curry on the