The pong is over but the malady lingers on.  Boxing continues to take a bit of a bashing over the unseemly events in Munich, so I was half expecting to hear that the MP Paul Flynn, an ardent campaigner in Parliament to have the sport abolished, would be on his high-horse again. But not a peep from the member for Newport West.

I wonder. 

Could this have anything to do with that alleged affray in the House last week involving a fellow Labour MP who, apparently seemed to be taking over where those brainless British brawlers Chisora and Haye left off? The would-be abolitionists have been sucker-punched. After all, how else would drunken MPs be able to settle political differences in the Strangers' Bar after Prime Minister's Questions? Seconds out chaps!

No wonder Flynn and other politicians who want to KO legalised fisticuffs are staying schtum.


Even so, amid the current about the state of the now 'ignoble' art it was with some trepidation that I tuned into Radio Four where Clare Balding (pictured) had chosen boxing as the subject for one of the episodes of her excellent Sport and the British series.

Racing pundit Ms Balding and I have clashed in the past. She once described boxing as "dirty and corrupt", a view which seemed to be somewhat pots and kettles  from someone who champions a sport in which jockeys pull more horses than boxers ever do punches. So I feared the worst.

However, to say I was pleasantly surprised was an understatement. The programme was brilliant, well balanced and informative and she even had some good words to say about boxing's values for young people and its total absence of racism. These days no sport is more racially integrated than boxing, though athletics may come close.


Yet interestingly, the programme revealed that this was not always so. Did you know for instance, that the great libertarian, Winston Churchill once banned a prospective fight between white and black opponents? It happened in 1911 when Jack Johnson (pictured), the first black man ever to win the world heavyweight Championship was booked to come to London to defend his title against the British champion, Bombardier Billy Wells, then being built up as a great white hope. But such was the emphasis in the press on the racial elements of the bout, including letters to The Times (one of which from a clergyman suggested it could inflame the passions of the negro race 'which are constituted differently to our own'). So, under pressure from the Establishment, Churchill, then the Home Secretary, declared the fight illegal and it never took place.  Subsequently this was used as a precedent for banning any further fights between black and white boxers in this country. Effectively, a colour bar had been created, with no black boxers allowed to fight for the prized Lonsdale belt. It was even suggested, not least by Lord Lonsdale himself, that watching black boxers beat white boxers would cause many colonial subjects in places like South Africa, India and the West Indies, to rise up in revolt and bring about the downfall of the Empire.

The ban continued after the First World War and through the 1920s and 30s although many followers of the sport thought it outrageous.  It was not until 1948 that the Labour government, sensing a change of mood among the public and the media, led by the Daily Mirror's celebrated columnist Peter Wilson, forced the British Boxing Board of Control to lift the ban. As Balding pointed out, this was somewhat tardy as America, despite segregation in some states, had had a black boxing champion for ten years with the great Joe Louis.

That same year, Dick Turpin, from Leamington became the first black boxer to win a British title before a crowd of 40,000 at Villa Park. Boxing's colour bar had been in place for 37 years. It was Dick's younger brother Randolph, one of the most gifted boxers in British history who became the first black British world champion, defeating Sugar Ray Robinson at Earl's Court on 10 July 1951, having already acquired the British and European titles. Turpin, who sadly later committed suicide, had become a trailblazer for some of the great British black boxers that followed. Men like John Conteh, Lloyd Honeyghan, Frank Bruno, Chris Eubank, Nigel Benn, Lennox Lewis, Naseem Hamed, Amir Khan and latterly the Olympic champion James DeGale.


One of the most intriguing aspects of the racism that once infested boxing is that it was solely about skin colour and not ethnicity. While there were restrictions on black boxers, Jewish boxers like the illustrious Jack 'Kid' Berg and Ted 'Kid' Lewis flourished.  The history of Jewish boxing stretches back to the era of prize fighting between 1760 and 1820, when there were many Jewish pugilists, the most notable being Daniel Mendoza (pictured). Boxing gave Jewish people the opportunity to compete on level terms more than in any other sport – particularly middle class sports like tennis and golf where there was much anti-Semitism.

Ironically however, when after the Second World War, black participation in boxing escalated, the number of Jewish fighters rapidly declined. Today, in Britain, while over half licensed British professional boxers are black and amateur boxing clubs throughout the country are heavily populated by then ethnic minorities, there are no Jewish protagonists. The argument is that Jewish people no longer need to assert their identities through sport while other ethnic minorities do. Balding conducted a fascinating debate on this issue and concludes: "Boxing is dangerous.  It is controversial.

"But it makes a very prominent statement that an individual is willing to fight for his race, his religion and his country. And as the upcoming Olympics includes female boxing for the first time, the sport will give women the chance to make the same statement if they so choose."

I'll second that.

Alan Hubbard is an award-winning sports columnist for The Independent on Sunday, and a former sports editor of The Observer. He has covered a total of 16 Summer and Winter Olympics, 10 Commonwealth Games, several football World Cups and world title from Atlanta to Zaire.