‘I am here  to meet all comers’: the story of Len Johnson, Manchester’s Uncrowned Boxing Champion and Communist, by Michael Herbert.

‘Anything that I have and anything that I am, I owe unconditionally to the booth. The booth with its work, its careful living and, above all, its frame of mind… I am here to meet all comers and all comers I must meet,’ so said Len Johnson. In ‘I am here to meet all comers’, independent historian Michael Herbert tells the story of Leonard Benker Johnson (1902-74), born in Manchester, whose mother was Manchester Irish and whose father was West African.

Johnson was one of the most successful middleweight boxers of the 1920s, defeating  leading  boxers such as Ted Lewis, Roland Tood, and Len Harvey,  but was barred by the British Boxing Board of Control from a chance at a British title because he was not white. In December 1929 he defeated Michele Bonaglia, the European light-heavyweight champion, in a non-title fight in Manchester. 

After retiring from the ring in 1933 Johnson toured the country with his boxing booth until 1939. During the Second World War he worked in Civil Defence. 

In 1945 he joined the Communist Party and was an active member, speaking at public  meetings and standing for the council in Moss Side. He attended the Pan African Congress in Manchester in 1945 and was a co-founder of the New International Society in Moss Side which campaigned against the colour bar and racial discrimination at home and abroad in the late 1940s.

This book draws on Len Johnson’s unpublished autobiography, newspapers reports of his boxing career and political campaigns, and interviews with people who knew him.

Michael Herbert is a freelance historian who has lived in Manchester  since 1973. His  previous published work includes ‘The Wearing of the Green’; a political history of the Irish in Manchester;  For the sake of the women who are to come after: Manchester Radical Women: 1914 to 1945; and  ‘Things are not always what they seem’ : the writing and politics of Malcolm Hulke.

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