Chapter 2
It’s difficult to understand the developments in Dutch Aikido without understanding the structure of Dutch sport. Around 1990 I had a simple image in mind: Dutch government had two top-structures:
– NSF (Dutch Sport Federation) which was the NGO to promote sport in the Netherlands
– NOC which was the national Olympic Committee
The organization was in fact called NOC/NSF at the time, expressing the strong link between the two bodies.
The goal of any government would be to have one organization per sport: for soccer, judo, swimming, karate, etc. So, to be recognized by the government you would need to be somehow recognized by NSF. And since the FOG was affiliated to the NSF, Aikido was recognized as a sport through that membership.
When the FOG evicted Aikido as member, but there was a government report stating that Aikido should be within the FOG, we were briefly lost for direction. However, it turned out that my understanding of the structure was flawed.
A remnant from Dutch post-war politics was something called ‘columns’. The religious parts of society were in a catholic and a protestant column. The socialist and communist political parts of society were in columns of their own. And sport appeared to be structured in the same way. So, beside the NOC/NSF there appeared to exist a catholic sportorganization, a protestant sportorganization and a socialist sportorganization. These columns had lost their meaning in society, but the organizations were still there. And next to NOC/NSF there was an organization called the NCS (Dutch Cultural Sportorganization). They were aimed at the working class and to express that, they had chosed the word Cultural in their name.
The NCAF, that had just been expelled from the FOG was interested in becoming a member of any other organization. The NCS was all too pleased with a new member sport. So, we got off on a good footing. The NCS turned out to be a very pleasant organization, with friendly and supporting staff.
In fact, the formula turned out to be so succesful that an increasing number of Aikido organizations joined it. From being a section by itself, the NCAF was joined by virtually all Aikido organizations except the Aikido-department of the JBN.
And in fact the first recognized instructors course for Aikido was establised within the NCS, in harmonious cooperation between the main participating organizations.
Unfortunately the happy years within the NCS were not to last. The government had other ideas for the world of sport, which we will discuss in the next chapter.
