In the early decades of the 20th century, sports such as tennis became crucial for the creation of Anglo-Jewish identity.
But as the popularity of tennis in the Jewish community increased, so Jewish players found their applications for membership at private tennis clubs increasingly refused.
In 1925, the Yorkshire Post claimed Jews would always remain ostracised by certain tennis clubs no matter how anglicised they were. In 1928, the Daily Mirror reported that Jewish tennis players in north London were “complaining bitterly of their inability to get into the best lawn tennis clubs”. In 1936, Hazelwood tennis club in Winchmore Hill refused four applications from Jews to become members.
In Britain between the wars, many Jewish men and women who wanted to play tennis were forced to abandon assimilation and create institutions of their own.
In 1922, a Jewish Tennis Club was formed in Liverpool, soon to be followed by clubs in Tottenham, Glasgow, Newcastle and two in North-West London which both had substantial Jewish membership and continue to prosper today — Chandos in Golders Green and The Drive in Edgware.
In 1927, the Waterpark Club in North Manchester was founded by Alfred Cassel, a Jewish builder, after the daughters of a friend were refused entry to other tennis clubs in the city. In the following decade, the Waterpark played an active part in the Northern Jewish Tennis Association, along with the Three Courts, another Manchester Jewish club, the Greenwood Club in Sheffield and the Argosy Club in Southport.
On December 17, 1925, a dinner dance took place at the Carlton Hotel in Belfast to raise money for a “social tennis club aimed at younger members of the Jewish community”. Two hundred people turned up, probably about a third of Northern Ireland’s Jewish population at the time. They dined and danced away to the accompaniment of “excellent music from Miss M. Cres’s talented orchestra” and an “exhibition of ballroom dancing by Mr Jack Everard”. Enough funds were made on the night for the Belfast Jewish Tennis Club to open the following summer with its own courts at the back of Ashfield Gardens, a cul-de-sac off the Antrim Road. For the next dozen years the club prospered. In 1929, the Northern Whig, a non-sectarian Belfast newspaper of the time, carried a report about a successful home match in Ashfield Gardens against the Glasgow Jewish Tennis Club. Six years later, it printed a photograph of the smiling participants of an “American” mixed doubles tournament at the club, where players were paired at random — a key role of the Belfast Jewish Tennis Club and the couple of dozen or so other Jewish tennis clubs dotted around the UK during the years between the wars was to enable young Jewish men and women to meet each other.
Jews continued to experience discrimination in British tennis after the war, although it was more patchy. Potential Jewish members of the Argyle Club in Southport, one of the top tennis clubs in the North West, were still turned down. “Let them build their own clubs,” said one Argyle member, “they certainly have the money don’t they?”
Jews interested in joining the tennis club in north London where I am a member were told there was a club called Chandos just down the road in Golders Green which was “more suitable” for them. These experiences of exclusion were, however, becoming less common. By the end of the 1960s, Jewish players in my club were not just welcome as members but active participants in teams and committees. Most other tennis clubs in north London were similarly grateful to their Jewish members. Most but not all.
Angela Buxton was born in Liverpool in 1934 where her father, Harry Buxton, was a successful businessman. At boarding school in North Wales in the late 1940s, the young Angela showed a natural aptitude for tennis. When she was 17, she moved to London to aid her sporting development. She settled in Hampstead and applied to join Cumberland Lawn Tennis Club, one of the top clubs in the country. She filled in a form which included her name, address, phone number and religion and waited for her membership card to come through. It never did. When she asked one of the Cumberland coaches why, he told her she would never be allowed into the club because “you’re Jewish. We don’t take Jews here.”
Buxton made no complaint about this or about other discrimination she experienced at the time.
She was never a crusader for Jewish rights and, if asked about it by journalists, said simply that it made her more determined to succeed. In 1956, she reached the women’s singles final at Wimbledon and won the doubles. It was — and is — customary for the All England Club to reward British success at Wimbledon by offering life membership of the club. Despite Buxton’s achievements, she was put on a waiting list for membership, even though other British players who were less successful than her, before and since, were offered full membership. Sixty years later, she is still waiting.
Buxton’s experience in the late 1950s, however, does seem to have been uncommon. A more typical story is that of Albert Lester who first came to Britain in the Kindertransport and has played tennis here for over 75 years. The first club Lester joined in the 1950s was the West London Tennis Club near Boston Manor station, now long gone. “It was an entirely Jewish club,” Lester remembers, ‘with three courts and a nice club house. I used to drive out there in my red MG. The standard wasn’t high but that suited me because I was never very good.” Subsequently Lester played in non-Jewish clubs in London and Leeds and he never had any problem joining, nor did he witness any antisemitism, though “anyone who didn’t know I was Jewish must have been blind, deaf and dumb”.
Lester’s experience is heartening and indeed none of the other couple of dozen elderly Jewish players I have talked to over the past few years researching my book, A People’s History of Tennis, reported any problem playing tennis in Britain. I started wondering whether antisemitism in British tennis really had died out in the 1960s until I came across another example which occurred more recently.
Whitecraigs Lawn Tennis Club is in the affluent suburb of Giffnock, south Glasgow. Its parkland setting, extensive grounds and high playing standard make it a desirable place to play, the Scottish equivalent of London’s Cumberland club.
There is another similarity too. Whitecraigs also refused entry to a woman because she was Jewish, although this time not in the late 1950s but the late 1980s. Leonie Goodman, who lived just a few hundred yards from the club, applied to join in 1988 and 1990 but was refused membership without explanation, although she knew from friends that other applicants had been admitted and so the club was not full.
She took Whitecraigs to court and the club admitted racial discrimination. They offered free membership for her and her family, paid all her legal costs and donated £1,000 to a local Jewish youth club. Her solicitor said she felt justice had been done and the Commission for Racial Equality claimed her victory was “an important win in this current climate of antisemitism which is sweeping Europe”.
Justice has also been done to the memory of the Liverpool Jewish Tennis Club. After changing the court surface from shale to artificial grass in the 1990s, the club had a successful couple of decades, often hosting other events, such as a talk about Jews in English literature in November 2011, attended by 40 people. The interest in tennis, though, dwindled — and in 2013 the club closed.
It seemed likely the courts would be built over but a couple of years ago, a new club, the Carmel Sports Club, took them on and today offers football, dance and Pilates to juniors and adults, as well as a full tennis programme. It is open on Saturdays and only one in 10 members is Jewish, but in respect to its predecessor, the last Jewish tennis club in Britain, Carmel is still closed on two occasions a year, Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur.
David Berry is the author of ‘A People’s History of Tennis’ which has just been published by Pluto Press (£14.99)
