250,000 Free Chess Sets for Schools in England

Just once in a lifetime, if you are very fortunate, something happens which is bigger than anything you ever imagined. To say that I am delighted to be actively involved with a chess opportunity which has arisen over the past 7 months or so would be an understatement.

It was back in May 2007 that I first heard from Fergus Christie, Sales Director of Holloid Plastics Ltd. in Basingstoke.

His son, Duncan, had been learning to play chess at school but they had only a handful of chess sets.

Fergus contacted me with the preliminary information that they were looking at a marketing opportunity which would see them manufacturing chess sets completely free of charge which could be distributed to schools throughout England. I have lost count of the number of e-mails and telephone calls between us since this began - all of them constructive and all of them moving the project forward.

The gathering, at the House of Commons on Monday 17th December, of many juniors who had recently represented England at various World events provided us with the opportunity to make a formal announcement that the "Chess sets in schools" project would be under way in early 2008 with some 250,000 sets and boards being produced during 2008. Gerry Walsh master-minded the whole event and it was good to see him on first-name terms with so many MPs. The Minister for Sport was presented with a set of prototype pieces by Holloid Plastics Limited.

We owe thanks to Gerry Walsh's Member of Parliament, Vera Baird MP, for making the facilities available and for giving her time to both support the project and meet many English Juniors face-to-face. The juniors attending are certainly a credit to themselves, their parents, schools and Country.

I am still somewhat shell-shocked at the extent of this project - and I thought I had seen everything having played chess from the age of 4. It is the most exciting chess project I have ever had the pleasure of being connected with and potentially could change the face of English chess for ever. It will provide the opportunity for very many tens of thousands more children to take up chess. Those MPs who attended cannot have been anything other than impressed by the juniors they met. We wanted a good advertisement for chess and chess-players and we certainly had just that !

The Member of Parliament for Hastings and Rye - Michael Foster - himself no stranger to the world of chess - has agreed to write to every Member of Parliament to tell them of the project and to seek their active support for chess. Other Members of Parliament who attended and voiced support for chess included Charles Clarke, Dennis Skinner and Dr. Evan Harris (who revealed that at one time he had been Liverpool Under 18 Champion).

Arrangements are being made for a number of haulage contractors to collect the sets in batches from the Basingstoke factory and transport them to various Counties throughout England - again at no cost to the ECF. Charles Wood will be co-ordinating this from his base in Bradford.

We plan to actively involve MPs at the time sets are delivered to schools in their constituencies and also to actively involve existing England junior players from those schools.

What we, the ECF, do require is a contact in each and every County who can work with us to get the sets into the schools in each County.

I would ask each County to advise the ECF Office of the name and contact details of a County Official who will be our point of reference once the sets start to roll off the production line.

We owe a very great vote of thanks to Holloid Limited's Sales Director Fergus Christie, Technical Director Keith Eliot (who designed the sets) and also their colleagues and suppliers who have worked with me for many months to make this project a reality.

With plastic chess sets and boards retailing at around £8 each what we have is an injection of some £2 Million into chess. I am not aware of anything of this scale being attempted anywhere and I take this opportunity to thank everyone involved with this exciting project.

Peter J B Wilson
ECF Director of Marketing