THE Gladiator Club in East Oxford is a private club, but don’t think it is for the elite or for those who drink gin and tonic and sip Martinis.

This is a social club for the salt of the earth – lorry drivers, factory workers, retired school teachers, housewives, postmen – a racially diverse and community-spirited group that has been around since 1947, with annual membership fees which are no more than three pints of beer.

The Cowley Fathers started it as a charity. Now the board of that charity – six individuals – want to sell the buildings and close up a club which benefits more than 460 members – the elderly, those that have nowhere else to go for fun and community. And they are doing this for a purpose that no one understands. I have been a member for a scant two years; my friend Bedford joined up in the 1960s. The members are fighting madly against the closure, but they feel powerless.

They do not have the money for lawyers or the funds to buy the club.

And yet their battle is a battle for all of Oxford – a battle for diversity, for having a place that stands tall to help even those who are not of the educational elite.

The city of Oxford and the people of Oxford should demand that the board of this charity do the right thing – that they stop the threats to sell this valuable community asset out from under the feet of those the Cowley Fathers wanted to help in perpetuity.

John Hammock (Member of the Gladiator Club and St Mary and St John’s Parish, Cowley)
Headington