Arsenal move to Highbury: the objections and how they were overcome

 

 

• Arsenal 1913/14 and when and we went back to the Plumstead ground
• How Tottenham worked to stop Arsenal moving to Highbury
• Arsenal’s chairman announces the idea Arsenal’s possible move to north London

By Tony Attwood

In the recent articles (see above) we have been looking at the build up to ARsenal’s move from Plumstead to Highbury.   And noting the fact that although there were arguments in favour of having two first division teams close to each other (for it had already happened in our cities), Tottenham’s initial response was to try to stop the move.

Thus on 23 February 1914, Tottenham Hotspur went on the attack, demanding that the Management Committee of the Football League would state that they would not approve the move of Woolwich Arsenal from Plumstead to Highbury.  We have covered this before in our anniversary files, but for completeness in this series, I’m going over it briefly once more.

Tottenham were aided in this by venture Clapton Orient and on one front it looked like they might have a case, since clearly the region already had two clubs.  Clapton Orient had joined the League in 1905, and Tottenham had joined the League in 1908 and the two clubs were only five miles apart.  A third club, four and a half miles from Tottenham’s ground, they argued, was too much.

But Norris was certainly not going to give up easily because he had experience of issues vis a vis public transport (although he never used it himself!)   Indeed public transport around Plumstead was particularly poor it was a major reason why Arsenal had struggled to fill the stadium on many occasions. 

And yet Norris had actually opposed the introduction of trams to Fulham as that was the Unionist party’s policy and he was the Unionist mayor of Fulham.   

But as Mayor he was fully aware that the days of the fan walking along a couple of streets to see his/her local team had gone.  Now fans were travelling by train, underground and bus.  Indeed an important part of Woolwich Arsenal’s support in Plumstead came from a group of fans in Rotherhithe – a journey that took an hour by public transport.

And indeed transport was very much part of his thinking. Gillespie Road had transport options ready-made: Finsbury Park rail and underground services were now fully operational as was Gillespie Road underground station which stood opposite where one of the main entrances to the new Arsenal stadium that Norris envisaged,  would actually be.

But more than anything, Henry Norris had risen up the political ladder by doing his homework, and he already knew that Tottenham Hotspur would not win a fight to determine where another club played.   And this was quite simply because Tottenham had been down this road before.

For when both Chelsea and Clapton Orient had applied for places in the Southern League in 1904 and 1905 respectively, Tottenham had objected on each occasion.  And certainly, the Southern League, having accepted Clapton in 1904, rejected Chelsea in 1905, in response to Tottenham’s pleading that it would mean too many football clubs in north and west London.

But then Clapton and Chelsea jointly applied to join the Football League and were accepted – the Football League being delighted to get one over on Tottenham who were seen to be currently causing them grief – and besides they could have no objections since they played in the Southern League until 1908.  When Tottenham joined the League in 1908 it was Clapton Orient who could have objected on the grounds of proximity, but they chose not to.  Orient knew what the rules said and how they were applied – once again, the authorities could say which league each club should play in but not where they should play.

And in fact we can see through this, that slowly, clubs were realising that having clubs near each other heightened rather that diminished general interest in football, and encouraged rivalry between fans.  Indeed such arguments had been rehearsed from 1910 onwards and Tottenham’s request for the League Management Committee to hear the case was immediately rejected, since the Management Committee were perfectly aware that their rules, which they had so carefully re-iterated in 1910.  

Sally Davis in earlier research posted on the internet, reported that on Monday 24 February, 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.”  The request was of course rejected.

On Friday 28 February the Kentish Independent published Norris’ response to the paper’s suggestions that Woolwich Arsenal were on the move although by that time the letter had been overtaken by events.  Nonetheless the paper ran its piece, as it said that if the directors of Woolwich Arsenal were to move the club to a more populated area of London they could scarcely be blamed for doing so with gates at the Manor Ground as low as they were.

However in many ways, the Tottenham issue was something of a sideshow, for what was mostly on Norris’ mind 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 came just one place above Notts County who went down with Woolwich Arsenal.  But their crowds throughout were above 24,000 – they were the best supported club in the league irrespective of their league position or their physical location.  Londoners, it seemed, wanted league football – and they wanted it in their part of London. That was all there was to it.

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 it was recognised the for clubs to move was unusual (they cited last big move as being Manchester Utd going to Old Trafford in 1910), but not unheard of, and that it was not in their remit to approve or stop a move.  They had not done so in the past and would not start now.

There was nothing new in that, but this time they went a lot further saying that if it was North London that Arsenal wanted to move to, then north London was perfectly able to support three football clubs.

That was quite a statement in itself, but there was still something else.  The point was made by Arsenal that the vast majority of teams were in the Midlands and the North of England, and they came to London 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) Arsenal suggested that although Tottenham might not like it, virtually every other team would find Arsenal in north London a major step forward, and so the wishes of one team (Tottenham) should not be allowed to stop the benefits that would accrue to every other team.

Indeed as everyone was of course aware, Bradford had two league clubs, as did Sheffield, as did Birmingham.  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 found itself in Arsenal’s camp, recognising that crowds did not just follow success (a popular misconception) 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 transport Arsenal’s local support were going to other grounds, rather than Plumstead.

There was no debate.  The Tottenham and Orient objections had been made by their clubs, and so a vote taken.  The result was overwhelmingly in favour of Arsenal as it had to be, because no matter what the result of the vote, the committee had no power to stop Arsenal moving, as they had already said.

The Times made an interesting point too, 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.”

Amazingly, Tottenham however would still not let go and 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.  The Committee launched a petition, and did manage to persuade a majority of members on Islington Council to oppose the development.  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 their opposition did sour the relationship between Arsenal and its local council for many years.

Further, so strong were the anti-football claims that came out of the Highbury Defence Committee that football fans from across the country began to respond to the accusations, and for some time Athletic News was full of denouncements, not of Arsenal, but 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 what it did do was ensure that Arsenal emerged looking like the heroes, defeating the backwoodsmen and ultra-conservatives.  Support for Arsenal rose, not just in London, but far beyond the capital as well.  The club became seen as the team representing those people who wanted to watch football.

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 the personal attitude of Tottenham’s board to Arsenal’s proposed move, and certainly no knowledge of them actively seeking to prevent the move.  But we do know that Norris was a consummate negotiator – a man used to dealing with property owners as he expanded his empire of houses that were rented and sold initially across Fulham, and now into other parts of London.

And Henry Norris would have known that objections from Tottenham Hotspur could at just possibly have delayed the move.   But it appears that by the end of the 1912/13 season Norris had identified where he wanted to take Arsenal, and it seems there were no objections from Tottenham once the move from south London was announced.

The most likely explanation of Tottenham’s reaction to Arsenal’s move north, ws that the majority at Tottenham knew that a) they could do nothing to stop the move, and b) the move could well generate more interest in football in north London.   But they had a few vociferous and powerful board members with an “over my dead body” attitude, and the rest of the board had to allow this minority to make their noises, secure in the knowledge that such noise would have no impact.   Arsenal were going to Highbury and that was that.