2012 London to London

It was not long before his ability in organisation
and administration were recognised
and he became first a member
of the committee and later the Secretary,
a post he continued to hold, with some
interruptions owing to illness, until his
death in 1950. In 1936 he was elected
English Language Secretary of the International
Table Tennis Federation, a
post he held until 1950. He was the ideal
complement to Ivor Montagu and their
relationship was in many ways similar
to that established later in the International
Table Tennis Federation between
Roy Evans and Bill Vint. Ivor Montagu
had the ideas, Bill Pope put them into
practice; together they accomplished far
more than either could have achieved
without the other.
Bill Pope’s first task was to persuade the
committee that the Association should
be reorganised so that it more truly represented
national interests rather than
those of an elite few. Ivor Montagu
later admitted that he had not initially
seen the need for such a change but he
accepted it and later came to realise
that it was an essential step in the establishment
of the English Table Tennis Association.
Thus in 1925 a sub-committee
was set up to draft a new constitution,
with Montagu as Chairman and Pope
as Secretary. On Wednesday 26th August
of the following year the Executive
Committee Minutes record that:
all documents finance etc. Signed: Percy
Bromfield (Chairman).”
The sub-committee was re-titled the
Provisional Committee of the English
Table Tennis Association and from that
time it operated as the controlling body
of English table tennis, although the
formal establishment of the English Table
Tennis Association was delayed until
1927. There were more pressing matters
to address and it was at this point that
the affairs of the English Table Tennis
Association and the International Table
Tennis Federation became closely related,
owing to the central part played in
the foundation of both organisations by
same man, Ivor Montagu.
In the summer of 1925 Dr Georg Lehmann,
Chairman of the German Ping Pong Association,
invited Pranash Nanda, an
Indian student living in London, to be
the first international guest player in
the German Championships. Earlier
that year Nanda had won the English
Open Championships and he repeated
London, the Home of Table Tennis
“It was decided at a meeting held at St
Bride’s this evening that the Executive
Committee should resign and hand over
the management of the Table Tennis
Association to the Hon I. G. S. Montagu,
representing the four Leagues (London,
London Business Houses, Civil Service
and Luton) who intend to form a new
Association, and Mr G W Decker (Secretary)
is hereby empowered to hand over
Ivor Montagu
Photo: ETTA Archives
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