By Tony Attwood
This series of articles traces the history of Arsenal FC from its earliest days in south London through to is move to the north of the city, and from it being a struggling league club to one that was highly successful.
The most recent articles in this story are
1909/10 Disaster as the Arsenal as the finances get worse
1910/11: the first inkling of the idea of moving Arsenal to north London
Planning the revolution: Arsenal move from Plumstead to Highbury
Arsenal’s chairman announces the idea Arsenal’s possible move to north London
An index of the articles from the very start of the series is published here
We have now reached early 1913 in our history of Arsenal, and Sally Davis in her series posted on the internet, reported that on Monday 24 February 1913, a director from each of Tottenham and Clapton Orient, “went uninvited to the scheduled meeting of the Football League management committee to ask them to prevent any move by Woolwich Arsenal to north London from going ahead.” Whatever happened at that meeting, we have no indication either that there was a debate on this issue, or that it affected the evolution of the move of Woolwich Arsenal to Highbury. The most likely response, judging by the the way the committee behaved throughout this affair, was that the directors from the two clubs were told they could be observers, but could not speak.
In terms of what was said, it appears that as it had always done before when challenged in this way, the League committee stated that while its regulations allowed it to determine which league a club should play in, the committee had no control over where the clubs played their games. And that was that!
And indeed this was how it had to be. For if the League had to give permission as to where a club might play, that would have given the League (which is to say the rest of the clubs other than the club that was moving) the right to interfere with the very basics of a club’s approach to business – and its chance of making a profit (which then as now was a prime issue for football clubs). It would mean that a club might manage to find itself a really good new ground to use, but then have to put that before the League, at which time another club could come in and offer the owner or landlord more either to buy the land or rent it. It could have led to chaos – and everyone including the directors of both Clapton and Tottenham must have known this.
As it was there was only six miles between Clapton’s ground and White Hart Lane Did that mean that Arsenal could move within six miles of Tottenham? Of course such questions were nonsense – and Tottenham’s officials must have known it too. They were, I think, just trying to move public opinion on their side and show their fans that they were standing up against the league.
On Friday 28 February 1913 the Kentish Independent published Norris’ response to the paper’s suggestions, (which it had published a week before), that Woolwich Arsenal were on the move, although in reality by that time, the letter they published had been overtaken by events. Nonetheless the paper ran its piece, as it said that if the directors of Woolwich Arsenal were indeed to move the club to a more populated area of London (as Tottenham now alleged) they could scarcely be blamed for doing so with crowds at the Manor Ground in South London as low as they now were. (9000 had turned up for the previous home game against Oldham).
However in many ways, the Tottenham issue was something of a sideshow, for what was mostly on Norris’ mind, and in a most positive way, was the case of Chelsea. In the season 1909/10 Chelsea had been relegated to the second division, and there they stayed for the next two years. In 1912/13 they were back in the first division but had finished up in the league just one place above Notts County who went down to the second division with Woolwich Arsenal. But what fascinated Norris was the crowds Chelsea were able to gather, for throughout this era they were above 24,000.
This showed that although the crowds were influenced by success, that was not the only issue affecting the size of the gate. Chelsea were in fact the best supported club in the league, and they remained so, irrespective of their league position Londoners, it seemed, wanted league football – but they specifically wanted it in their part of London, and for the games to played at a ground that was easy to get to (and not at the end of a complex and demanding bus ride.) Chelsea’s ground was but a short walk from Fulham Broadway station.
The next event took place on to Friday 28 February 1913 in Glasgow, where the league committee gathered prior to the Scottish Football League v English Football League fixture. This time the issue of Arsenal was on the agenda, and as a result of the discussion, the League issued at statement on Saturday 1 March, saying that while it was recognised that for clubs to move was unusual (the last big move was Manchester United going to Old Trafford in 1910), it was not unheard of, and that it was not in their remit to approve or stop a move.
But there was more for, the implication of the ruling went beyond this. The League had nothing in its rules to control where a club might play – that was clearly established. But more than this, the League did not want to have such a provision in its rules, since it felt that this could stop ambitious clubs building new, bigger, and more readily accessible grounds. And that was very much what they wanted.
Thus the argument became one in which it was said that if Arsenal wanted to move to North London because they felt could not survive financially in south London, then that was entirely a judgement for them. As far as the League felt, North London was perfectly able to support three football clubs, so even if they did have the power to intervene, they would not want to. And that statement certainly helped Arsenal, but it was also made in the interest of the plans and wishes of the Football League.
For by this time the point was being made by Henry Norris, and thus Arsenal, that the vast majority of teams were in the Midlands and the North of England, and they came to London to watch football by train. Having arrived at Kings Cross or Euston, as most did, they could now get an underground train straight to Gillespie Road instead of making a second long journey to Plumstead. Thus, rather skillfully (and as it turned out, in a typical Henry Norris move) Woolwich Arsenal suggested that although Tottenham might not like it, virtually every other team would find Arsenal being in north London a major improvement. Thus Norris argued, the wishes of one team (Tottenham) should not be allowed to stop the benefits that would accrue to every other team (and most importantly their supporters) through the move. In short, in one speech, Norris turned Tottenham Hotspur from being the injured party in the affair, into being the villain of the piece.
But really, Tottenham were always on shaky ground, for indeed as everyone was of course aware, Bradford had two league clubs, as did Sheffield, as did Birmingham. Indeed taking the matter further, Norris pointed out that Bradford had a population of under a quarter of a million at the time, and north London was about eight times that size. Tottenham’s argument that the area already had a league club, was poor to say the least.
Certainly the northern based Athletic News, which had in the past not been that friendly towards the growth of football in the south, firmly placed itself in Arsenal’s camp, recognising that crowds did not just follow success (a popular misconception often promoted by those who never went to league matches) but that they came because of the location of the ground and their empathy with the club. The magazine also now published the exact location of Arsenal’s new ground and Arsenal admitted the truth of the matter at a press briefing in Covent Garden on Tuesday 4 March,
In his arguments in favour of Arsenal’s freedom to move, Norris stated that Arsenal had been in the Football League for 20 years, and through this made the point that whereas at the start the footballing public stayed true to their local club, now with improvement of transport Arsenal’s local support were going to other grounds, rather than Plumstead (where local transport was particularly poor).
There was no debate. The Tottenham objections had been made and the clubs knew them perfectly well., and so a vote taken. The result was overwhelmingly in favour of Arsenal, as of course it had to be, because no matter what the result of the vote, the committee had already agreed that actually, it had no power to stop Arsenal moving.
The Times made an interesting point too in its reporting of the affair, saying that, “It has been the experience when professional football has been established in any quarter, that a new public has been created for the game. Chelsea is a case in point.
“It would be a thousand pities if a club like the Arsenal had to put up its shutters for lack of support, seeing that for twelve years they were the only members in town of the Football League, and most people will wish the Arsenal good luck in their plucky endeavour to keep the flag flying under the most disastrous conditions in recent years.”
Indeed that comment reflected the contemporary view that Woolwich Arsenal was to be praised for bringing professional football into London, while the Southern League clubs had resisted professionalism. Tottenham were thus seen as a club that had jumped from the Southern League to the Football League when it suited them, rather than a club that stuck by its beliefs in such matters as amateur vs professional football – wherein it had noticeably changed its position.
And yet despite these arguments overwhelmingly in favour not just of Arsenal’s right to move, but also giving Arsenal the moral high ground, Tottenham in an extraordinary move, would still not let go. For they then continued to argue that there should be an emergency general meeting of the League to discuss the issue.
There is no doubt that they also encouraged either the setting up of, or the development of, the Highbury Defence Committee which was formed by local residents to oppose the move of Arsenal from Plumstead to Highbury. The Committee launched a petition, and did manage to persuade a majority of members on Islington Council to oppose the development of the ground that became “Highbury”. But Islington Council itself had limited powers in the affair, and there was never any chance that they could have an effect on developments, no matter how much noise local councillors now made.
But so strong were the anti-football claims that came out of the Highbury Defence Committee that football fans from across the country began to take note of what was happening in North London, for the campaign against Arsenal’s move had by this time turned into a vitriolic portrayal of football supporters as people that no self-respecting citizen would wish to have in his area.
As it happened, this argument turned out to be not just another day’s headline, but one that gained a huge amount of publicity. For one club objecting to another club moving nearby was one thing, but this line of argument was a direct attack on the morals and decency of a whole section of the population. Indeed it seemed almost to be criticising not just Arsenal’s fans who might be drawn to north London, but Tottenham’s and Orient’s fans who were already there. It was in fact equating football fans with the lowest of the criminal classes.
Such a development naturally created a response, and for some time to come Athletic News was full of denouncements not just of Tottenham Hotspur and its supporters but also of the residents of Islington. Whether Islington residents noticed this backlash or not is not recorded, but it certainly did nothing to raise the positive profile of the area.
But in terms of the main issue – the public’s view of Woolwich Arsenal Football Club – what it did do was ensure that Arsenal emerged looking like the heroes, defeating the backwoodsmen and (in London at least the very unpopular) ultra-conservatives, and supporting the right of the working man to have his saturday afternoon entertainment. Why should he not go to a football match on a saturday afternoon, it was asked, just as the middle class man and his family might go to a play or a classical music concert of a Saturday evening?
In short, support for Arsenal rose, not just in London, but far beyond the capital as well.
But although the general location of Arsenal’s would-be new ground was known by this time it was not until 22 February 1913 that Gillespie Road was formally cited in the press as the site of Arsenal’s new ground. Henry Norris did not plan to announce the location of the new ground at the time, but on that day local journalists tracked him down at St. John’s College of Divinity, and he had no choice but to admit – this was where the new Arsenal ground would be.
Of course Norris had known long before that date that the religious college which owned the site were keen to find a tenant because of their own declining financial situation, and as a result of this, Norris quickly obtained a 21-year lease on the playing fields. I don’t know for sure the exact date on which all sides agreed but it most certainly was shortly after the press leaked the location of Woolwich Arsenal’s new ground for the first time.
Now of course, with the benefit of hindsight we know exactly what Henry Norris had decided. And I think that, noting that Arsenal v Tottenham friendly in Europe, we can work out the moment he first told the chairman of Tottenham Hotspur the news: that Arsenal were going to move to a ground just four and a half miles away form Tottenham’s home in White Hart Lane.
I have no evidence of Tottenham’s reaction to Arsenal’s proposed move at that time, and certainly no knowledge of the directors of Tottenham Hotspur actively seeking to prevent the move. But we do know that Norris was a consummate negotiator – a man used to dealing with (for example) property and land owners in what became Fulham (who could be particularly belligerent). Indeed by this time he had expanded his empire of houses. He initially had built, rented and sold houses initially across Fulham, but by now he was operating in other parts of London as well..
Henry Norris’ concern in this matter was very unlikely to have been that Tottenham Hotspur could have stopped Arsenal moving into the grounds of the college in Highbury. But he would have known that objections from Tottenham Hotspur could at least have delayed the move, and that he most certainly did not want, for the crowds at Plumstead had been declining, and now with the club relegated, the losses could be quite catastrophic.
But what we see in this affair is that having identified where he wanted to take Arsenal, Henry Norris knew exactly how to play the game. By the time the move from its original home to north London was formally announced, the objections had stopped.
More than that, the objections from Tottenham Hotspur had played very much into the hands of Woolwich Arsenal, for the club moving from south to north London could have been seen by many as an intrusion, with Woolwich Arsenal not being seen as a north London club etc.
In fact, through the way in the which Norris handled the affair (and we must add, through the rather blunt approach of Tottenham which basically came down to a claim that “we were here first”) it was Arsenal who were seen in the media as the brave small club, seeking to carry on against impossible odds, while being harried by the imperious Tottenham Hotspur.
How much this affected local opinion is hard to say, but we can note one or two facts in this regard.
The first match of the 1912/13 season – the final season at Plumstead (although no one knew it at the time) drew a crowd of 8,724 – although it was played in the early evening of Monday 2 September against Manchester United. The first saturday home game was on 14 September and that got a crowd of 13,000. The highest home crowd of the season was for the derby game with Chelsea which attracted 20,000.
20,000 was also the crowd recorded for the first ever match at Highbury (at home to Leicester Fosse) – the number restricted because the ground was not completely built!
By 4 October for a not particularly special game against Bury FC, the crowd was recorded as 30,000. The end of the season derby game with Clapton Orient is recorded as attracting 35,000. (More precise, rather than rounded, attendance figures start to be recorded from 1925/6 onwards, by which time Herbert Chapman was in charge of the club.)
The series continues…