Club and chairman create bitter enemies
In 1922, the relationship between Arsenal and Spurs hit a new low. Ever since Norris’s stunt in 1919, officials from both clubs had used the local press to spit bile at each other, with Sir Henry himself happy to join in. As general manager Bob Wall later commented, “The roads and pubs outside Highbury and White Hart Lane could be dangerous places back then. Often the knives were out – quite literally – between fans before and after the match.”
In a disgustingly dirty match at White Hart Lane in September 1922 (Spurs had by then won promotion), the simmering contempt boiled over. Reg Boreham’s double pinched the points for Arsenal in a 2-1 win, but the behaviour of fans and players shocked the tabloid press of that era. Gunners defenders Frank Bradshaw and Arthur Hutchins’ shoulder-charges saw two Spurs players go off injured (there were no substitutes back then); Bradshaw and Hutchins were pelted with missiles from the crowd.
It’s a wonder that the game continued, yet
The Sportsman reported: “One could not help feeling impressed by the sledgehammer opposition of the Arsenal.” Here was another example of Spurs artistes being bullied out of it by “grim Arsenal”, according to
The Herald. The outraged reporter from the
Sunday Evening Telegraph reported that the game contained “the most disgusting scenes I have witnessed on any ground at any time. Players pulled the referee… fists were exchanged”.
In the event, the Commission of Enquiry found Spurs’ Bert Smith guilty of ‘filthy language’, and Arsenal’s Alec Graham of retaliation. Norris left his manager, Leslie Knighton, to face the music alone, while Norris disappeared to his bolt-hole in the French Riviera, as was his wont whenever a major problem arose.
But his nemesis was closing in.
By 1924, Norris was becoming a desperate man. He’d opted not to stand again as Tory candidate for Fulham East at the General Election after becoming embroiled in a damaging libel case. A rival Conservative MP, Charles Walmer, who took exception to Norris’s support for tariff reform, described him, among other things, as having a “minuscule intellect”. Sir Henry was furious, maintaining his rival had “slurred my name and character in the most offensive manner possible”. Norris won his case at the High Court, but there was far more to it than met the eye. Like Norris, Walmer was a leading light in the Masons, and was distraught when Sir Henry became Grand Deacon of the Grand Lodge of England, rather than him.
Norris was now among the elite. In his words, he’d “made it”. But being notoriously boastful, he couldn’t resist winding up his fellow MP at every opportunity. Both men sniped at one another in committee meetings, and to the astonishment of onlookers, the pair had to be separated in the corridors of power outside the House of Commons chamber. Walmer eventually snapped, libelling his rival. He came to regret the jibe, as it cost him a small fortune in damages, and he was forced to resign his seat as a result.
Although Norris felt vindicated by his victory, at this point he virtually withdrew from public life, putting all his energies into the Masonic lodge and Arsenal FC. Now in his late sixties, he grew more eccentric by the week, piling further pressure on poor Knighton.
Norris had owned the club for nigh on 15 years, yet still no trophies were forthcoming. Convinced that the team were literally pushovers, he announced in a board meeting that his manager must sign “no more small players. We must have big men”. Knighton’s unwillingness to abide by this diktat cost him his job. Harold ‘Midget’ Moffatt, an impish winger of 5ft 4in, arrived from Workington. Despite Moffatt looking a good prospect , a furious Norris barked at Knighton, “What is that dwarf doing here?” Moffatt quickly disappeared to Everton and Knighton, who was dismissed shortly before he was due a £4,000 bonus, vanished too.
Knighton later claimed that Sir Henry’s eccentricities had cost the club dear, one of his gripes being that he had been forbidden to spend over £1,000 for a player. Indeed, Norris, in his advertisement for a new manager, warned that “Those who pay exorbitant fees in players’ transfers need not apply.” When he appointed Huddersfield Town’s triple Championship-winning boss Herbert Chapman as manager in 1925, Norris finally met his match. The rotund, 5ft 6in Chapman, dubbed ‘Yorkshire’s Napoleon’ by
The Examiner newspaper, would in time clash headlong with Arsenal’s czar.
Chapman informed Norris that if he really wanted to see Arsenal win a trophy in his lifetime, he’d have to splash the cash: his main target, Sunderland’s brilliant striker, Charlie Buchan, was officially worth £5,000. Norris was horrified, but firing Chapman after only a few months wouldn’t be prudent, so he eked out a deal where he would pay £2,000 to Sunderland up front and £100 for every goal Buchan scored during the season. Buchan came to Highbury, but not before an unexplained, month-long delay in the deal. No one appeared to notice the delay, except for an inquisitive journalist on the
Daily Mail who fished around for exclusives and clung to his story for two years.
Exposed and ousted
In 1927, the
Mail finally ran a series of articles, under the headline ‘ SOCCER SENSATION’, alleging that Norris was guilty of making illegal payments to Charlie Buchan. Norris, they claimed, had given under-the-counter sums to Buchan to compensate for the loss of income he would incur from his move south – the player had to give up his business interests and buy an expensive house in London.
The FA was strict about payments made to players, even though everyone in football knew that sweeteners regularly lured players to big clubs. Payments on club houses, cookers, new-fangled washing machines and private schools for the kids were all used to tempt players to move on. But typically, Norris was simply too brazen about the whole thing, virtually shoving Buchan’s money into a brown envelope and handing it over. Norris had also personally ‘overseen’ the sale of the team bus in 1927 for £125, which somehow found its way into his wife’s bank account. And while it was well known that Sir Henry liked to be chauffeured around London while puffing on a cigar and quaffing brandy, he’d latterly decided to pay for the cost of this through an Arsenal expense account.
The revelations were sensational. Embezzlement? Brown envelopes? How could a high-profile member of the Conservative Party indulge in such financial malpractice? Norris challenged the
Daily Mail’s allegations in court two years later, but the charges were upheld by the judge. Norris argued that out of the £125,000-plus he’d pumped into the club, surely he was entitled to recoup £125. And why should he not treat himself to the occasional glass of Courvoisier? As for the illegal payments to Buchan, without them, he said, “We should not have got the player”.
There were even murkier stories doing the rounds. With Spurs fighting relegation in 1928, he was accused of telling the Arsenal team to take it easy against fellow strugglers Portsmouth and Manchester United. Nothing was proved, but an FA committee – convened in response to the
Mail’s allegations – believed they finally had enough dirt on Norris anyway. He was banned ‘indefinitely’ from football, and never returned to the game. With the old tyrant finally out of the way, Chapman was free to break all traditional managerial moulds. The days of club bosses being simply glorified office boys were over. He was fortunate that Samuel Hill-Wood was now the main mover and shaker on the Arsenal board.
When Arsenal finally won their major honours under Chapman in the ’30s, Norris could only watch in frustration from the stands. He was proud of their achievements, but without the daily challenge of being Arsenal chairman, he was also a broken man.
He felt increasingly bitter about being labelled as selfish and a bully throughout his business, political and football careers. His lawyer mentioned in the 1928 court case that Norris was a public figure who’d worked unstintingly in order to solve the housing problems of Belgian refugees after World War I.
To this day, the regulars over at White Hart Lane might beg to differ.
From the May 2004 issue of FourFourTwo. For more see Rebels for the Cause: The Alternative History of Arsenal Football Club, also by Jon Spurling.