But the story is more than just football – it is a story about [...]]]> MAKING THE ARSENAL is a novel – the diary of a football journalist in 1910 who is given the job of covering the story of the collapse of Woolwich Arsenal, its take-over by Fulham and its re-birth as a new club.

But the story is more than just football – it is a story about life 100 years ago, centred around real people and real events.

And this weekend the Guardian started a series called 100 YEARS OF GREAT  PRESS PHOTOGRAPHS which includes in the first edition (published yesterday, 7 November)  two pictures that relate directly to the MAKING THE ARSENAL novel.

First there is the Houndsditch jewelery robbery and the Sidney Street masacre.  The Guardian gives the classic story, “Three heavily armed Latvians have killed two policemen during a raid on a jeweller’s shop in Houndsditch.  They hole up in a Sidney Street house where they are discovered on 2 January.

“The police call in help from the Scots Guards.  Winston Churchill, then home secretary, arrives to watch what goes down in history as the siege of Sidney Street.  One more policeman dies, the house catches fire, and two bodies are found.  The third man is never captured.”

That’s the official line.  But in researching MAKING THE ARSENAL I found some other facts that begin to cast severe doubt as to what went on, over that period, and indeed how it related to Woolwich Arsenal.  It marks the conclusion of the novel and is a new interpretation of the events.

The other picture of interest is Bill Tillett, the union leader, addressing a crowd at Tower Hill.   As the commentary says, “In 1910, a hat was just about compulsory.  It was essential for being properly dressed – part of the fabric and more of soceity, likie going to church….

“There are actually three differnt styles of hat pictured: flat caps, boaters, and bowlers.   Now there is a perception in the south of Englandd tha tthe flat cap is northern, but back then it was just seen as a rural or working class thing, and was just as common in London where the men in the picture are.

“That’s why it was considered so outrageous when Edward VII started to wear plus fours and flat caps….

“The boaters meanwhile would have been worn by the spivs… The equivalent of wearing a boater today would be wearing diamond earrings.”

Now, if you have your copy of MAKING THE ARSENAL turn to the very first page of the story – the initial extract from Jacko Jones first article – which is all about the hats being worn at the football match.  It gives you the context, and I hope, heightens the joke.

If you haven’t yet got your copy of Making the Arsenal, just click here and you can read a short article all about it, and if you so wish, place an order.

Tony Attwood 2009

The run up to 1909.

This charts the history of Arsenal 100 years ago – leading up to the take over of the club by Henry (later Sir Henry) Norris in 1910.

Today: the league history of the club up to this point.

The run up to 1909.

This charts the history of Arsenal 100 years ago – leading up to the take over of the club by Henry (later Sir Henry) Norris in 1910.

Today: the league history of the club up to this point.

Woolwich Arsenal spent 11 not very eventful years in Football League Division II (that is two out of two – there were only two divisions).  For the first eight years they came in a variety of positions from 5^th to 10^th.

Then came the seasons from 1901/2, to 1903/4 in which the club came 4^th, 3^rd and then a magnificent 2^nd, and thus gaining promotion.

Throughout all these years in the second division Woolwich Arsenal had a superb home record – and it is not hard to find out why.  Visits to Arsenal by northern teams were hated – they called it their visit to Hell.

Elsewhere in the League most journeys to away grounds were short.  Arsenal was the exception.  Not only did the clubs have to get to London, they had to get across London and out to Greenwich – which meant a difficult tram journey on top of the rail journey and the underground journey.

Given that overnight stops were not normally on the agenda, clubs often tried to make do with a very early start – hardly the ideal preparation for a kick off at 3pm.  Throughout the second division years the number of home defeats per season ranged from four in their first season down to none in the promotion year.  The home results that year in fact were won 15, drew 2, lost 0.  Scored 67, against 5.  An average of 4-0 per game.  Sadly the away form rarely kept up with this and even in the promotion season Arsenal won just six of their 17 away games, scoring just 24 goals.

First division teams were obviously more able to travel – and quite possibly able to afford a cheap hotel in London on the Friday night before the game, and it became more common for the club to knock up just nine wins instead of 14 or 15.  With no advance in away form life was tough, but in the years that followed Arsenal came 10^th, 12^th, 7^th, 14^th, and 6^th.

So that was the key: home form.  It kept the club in the League, and eventually won them promotion in 1904.

You can read the full story of 1910 – the year that saw the making of the modern Arsenal in the book MAKING THE ARSENAL.   For details please visit www.emiratesstadium.info

This is an extract from the novel, MAKING THE ARSENAL which records the history of the takeover of Woolwich Arsenal by Henry (later Sir Henry) Norris of Fulham.

At this point in the story, Jacko Jones, the journalist, is trying to piece together Norris’ past activities in football. [...]]]>

This is an extract from the novel, MAKING THE ARSENAL which records the history of the takeover of Woolwich Arsenal by Henry (later Sir Henry) Norris of Fulham.

At this point in the story, Jacko Jones, the journalist, is trying to piece together Norris’ past activities in football.  And he hits on a rather odd fact…  Teams in the Southern League played “Test Matches” (play-offs) to find out who went up.  But in one particular season it seems that the loser was promoted…

If you would like to read more about MAKING THE ARSENAL please pop along to www.shop.firstandbest.co.uk – you’ll see the book as the top one in the central section.  Just choose your part of the world, and you can read a full summary of the book.  Now, here’s the extract…

In May 1903 Fulham got elected to the Southern League Division 1 from Division 2 – despite having lost 7-2 to Brentford in the Test Match. Which is odd, because as Brentford won and won so handsomely, they should have gone up. This was exactly the moment that Norris appeared on the scene – and it looked like a total fix. Did Norris bribe the Southern League, or Brentford, or both? No evidence at all, of course.

In fact our notes in the office said the vote for election to the Southern League Division I was held twice, and even after the second ballot there was a row and a half – and, according to Bob Kendrick who was seemingly our man on the spot at the time, a fight broke out in the offices of the FA.

Then Fulham get the nod, and guess who got up to make a vote of thanks: Norris. Now why did he do that?

By June he was club chairman – which is probably not surprising given what he had delivered in just a couple of months.

There was one other detail I found on Norris. In January 1903 he had left the Fulham Lodge of the Masons Society. Did they kick him out? I don’t mix with the Masons (obviously!), but from what I know they never expel you unless you have hurt another Mason. It is some kind of band of brothers.

I also found a note that Norris used Archie Leitch later on to work on the new stands at Fulham – which is interesting because, as I now know, Leitch also built the stand at Woolwich and never got paid. I can’t quite see how this fits but it is another link to somewhere. I just wish I knew where.

Back in football, in July 1903 having become chairman of Fulham Norris then seems to have got into negotiation with the Ecclesiastical Commissioners who apparently own the Fulham ground at Craven Cottage – in order to get a longer lease on better terms.

I got stuck at that point, until I asked one of the runners if there was anything else on Fulham – and he said, “Only the programmes and yearbook.” Of course. We are all required to bring back and file the official club programme, and Athletic News publish their helpful yearbook once a year. Obviously.

Norris had indulged himself in writing in the programme from the start. And here’s the thing – Norris made all sorts of comments about Fulham leaving their ground and looking for better accommodation if the church won’t play ball and cut the rent.

And how I love archivists – right there with the AN yearbook were the minutes of the first Fulham Ltd Annual General Meeting in which he made the top dog speech and said he was about to leave the club – he’d done as much as he could, the ground wasn’t right – time for another to take over.

But he didn’t carry out the threat because there is another note – undated – which has him saying that he was trying to fix up a deal to move Fulham to Stamford Bridge before Chelsea moved in. The crafty bugger.

Edward turned up with his pictures – which I have to say were very good – especially the crowd scenes. He’d already given copies to Mr Holloway who didn’t shout at him. I told Edward that was top praise. Then Edward joined in the research, and he proved to be good at that bit too. (If he can write, I’m going to be seriously worried.)

In September 1904 the LCC started legal proceedings against Fulham FC over a grandstand. The argument was odd: if it was a building the LCC had control and wanted it down, if it was a “structure” then Fulham’s local council (which Norris controlled) would decide. Norris, with Leitch in tow like a little puppy dog, argued it was a structure, and won.

Moving on to December 1904 we found the first reference in the Chronicle to a “new professional club” to play at Stamford Bridge. The point here was that Fulham were still trying to get promotion to the Football League, and the new club were just going to jump over them, without ever having played a game.

From the moment he found out Norris went crazy. Every week there were articles by him in the West London, the Fulham Evening, his programme notes, and even the letters page of the other papers (although not the Chronicle which he clearly thought was beneath him). Not to mention articles by a whole range of people writing under different nom de plumes who were all probably Norris.

I invited Edward to come to the pub tonight to listen to me play with the band, and on the way he offered a thought. “Getting henchmen to plant stories in newspapers supporting your point of view,” he said. “If I was running a spy ring, I’d do just that – most likely in order to deflect interest away from what I was really doing.”

Norris the spymaster. I do so love that.

Edward took photographs of the band. Everyone was very impressed with my new friend and his strange fancy dress.

If you have read any of my ramblings on the topic of the early days of Arsenal before, you’ll know that I believe the modern Arsenal was founded in 1910.

The reason for that is simple – in 1910 the existing owners of Woolwich Arsenal FC put the club [...]]]>

If you have read any of my ramblings on the topic of the early days of Arsenal before, you’ll know that I believe the modern Arsenal was founded in 1910.

The reason for that is simple – in 1910 the existing owners of Woolwich Arsenal FC put the club into liquidation, and ultimately sold the club to Henry Norris.

Norris then took a series of steps that founded the modern club, namely

He moved the club to Highbury in 1913

He gained us promotion to the first division in 1919

He brought in Herbert Chapman in 1925

To me there can be no doubt that Norris was the man who made the modern Arsenal.

But should we be calling him “Norris”.  Surely he is “Sir Henry Norris”.

Well, up to a point (and of course what follows is just my point of view).  Henry Norris was granted a knighthood after the First World War, an honour that was given to him in recognition of his work in running a recruitment office in Fulham, signing up young men to fight in the trenches before there was a general call-up.

This was obviously after the period that this site deals with – which is 100 years ago.  So in October 1909 he was very much “Henry Norris” and not “Sir Henry”.

But why do I go further and just call him “Norris” rather than “Mr Norris”?   I hadn’t thought about this until the note came in to the correspondence section of the site pointing out that Norris did get a knighthood.

The fact is, Henry Norris was not a nice man.  He was widely seen as a bully who would bulldoze his visions through, without reference to anyone else.  All the records that we have of him show that in meetings (for example) he would shout and rage until everyone else shut up and let him have his way.

Of course Arsenal benefited from him, but I don’t think we should hide his personality.  And in some curious way, knowing his personality makes me want to call him “Norris”, and not “Sir Henry” or “Mr Norris”.

Just me of course, but that’s how it is.

MAKING THE ARSENAL – the new book about Arsenal FC which tells the story of Henry Norris’ take-over of the club in 1910 – can now be ordered ahead of publication at the end of October.  For details of the book and to place an order just click on this link.

(c) Tony Attwood 2009

Making the Arsenal is a record of the diary of Jacko Jones, football reporter with the Daily Chronicle in Fleet Street. You can read more about it on this site – and the whole book will be published at the end of October 2009.

Meanwhile here is one day’s [...]]]>

Making the Arsenal is a record of the diary of Jacko Jones, football reporter with the Daily Chronicle in Fleet Street.   You can read more about it on this site – and the whole book will be published at the end of October 2009.

Meanwhile here is one day’s extract from the diary.

Saturday 5^th February

Cup day. I suppose they make so much fuss about it because they keep hoping one of the London old timer teams like Wanderers or Clapham Rovers will win it again. All we’ve had since the old days is one win by Tottenham Hotspur when they were in the Southern League. Worse, as far as I know Wanderers and Clapham are gone to a football graveyard.

(My dad goes to see the Corinthians sometimes – but of course they won’t enter for the FA Cup – it is against their charter to play competitively. Dad told me that he watched them play Dulwich and half way through the second half the Cors got a penalty and instead of shooting for goal just tapped it back to the Dulwich goalie. Corinthians never believe that a gentleman would deliberately commit a foul and so they wouldn’t take advantage. Can’t see that working against those Scots playing for Woolwich.)

The fact is that since they moved the final to the Crystal Palace it’s been mostly Midlands and Northern teams that get through – and anyone who thinks Woolwich is hard to get to gets a surprise with the Palace. True, Bristol City got to a final last year of course, but which self-respecting Londoner is going to go down to the Palace and see Manchester beat Bristol 1-0?

I had taken my latest findings on Norris to the boss on Friday night. He wasn’t too impressed, but told me to keep going. He said my piece on spies was on the fifth floor and they were thinking about handing me over to the Tower of London, but they were very taken with Edward, and that meanwhile I should do a piece on the discovery of coal in the Outer Hebrides.

He then sent us to see Chelsea 0 Tottenham Hotspur 1 which was as boring as Hebridean coal and left me thinking I ought to have opted for a reserve game. Or something in the Southern League. Once again, however, Edward saved the day. At the turnaround I got him to take “photos” (I tried to say the word in inverted commas just for him) of the crowd in the stand. They looked at him in bemusement, and as a result the pictures were great.

Even the second half wasn’t totally useless – in fact there was much ribald laughter in the journalists’ section when there was a commotion on one of those huge terraces that Chelsea have. There was a lot of movement, and then a rush out of one section. When the dust settled, we could see that a whole chunk of terracing had sunk about three feet and become uneven rubble. No one seemed to be hurt, but it shows what a state the place is in. Edward hasn’t quite got the swing of all this because he sat their gawping for a bit until I virtually threw him out of the stand and told him to take pictures.

I’d finished my write-up back in the office by the time the news came through of Everton 5 Woolwich 0 – which will put a lot of extra pressure on the Woolwich Volunteers Committee – it’s not as if Everton are a semi-decent team.

Sometimes I wonder why we have a national league – certainly not for the benefit of London. Fulham were slaughtered by the Geordies 4-0. I then heard Norris that had not even bothered to go to watch his team.

Truth be told, once he gets out of streets that he has built he gets lost. (I doubt that I’ll ever get away with printing that but it is quite amusing).

The latest from the present day can be found on the UNTOLD ARSENAL blog, www.blog.emiratesstadium.info

In the 1909/1910 season which we celebrate here (100 years ago, in case I didn’t make that quite clear), Arsenal didn’t play the centre of all evil (Birmingham City FC) because they (Evil Birmingham) were in Division II.

In fact Birmingham were so bad that [...]]]>

In the 1909/1910 season which we celebrate here (100 years ago, in case I didn’t make that quite clear), Arsenal didn’t play the centre of all evil (Birmingham City FC) because they (Evil Birmingham) were in Division II.

In fact Birmingham were so bad that year that then ended up bottom of Division II.  They won eight, drew seven, and lost 23.

However despite coming bottom of the league Birmingham did not get relegated, although Grimsby, who finished one point above the Evil Empire, did get thrown out of the league to be replaced by Huddersfield Town.

But despite this lack of Arsenal / Birmingham contact, Birmingham City do get a mention in “Making the Arsenal” – the forthcoming book about Arsenal in 1910.

Here’s the diary entry of Jacko Jones (football reporter for the Chronicle) on 29^th January 1910.  In this extract Jacko reports on the match he and his photographer Edward cover.  Photography was a novelty at the time – particularly photography at football matches. 

At the time Henry Norris had shown an interest in Woolwich Arsenal, but had move no move.  Woolwich Arsenal were however heading towards liquidation.

* * * *

In the afternoon we dutifully did Fulham against Birmingham – and would you believe it, there were no goals.  The biggest centre of attention was Edward who dressed in a flared double-breasted sack coat with silk-faced lapels, looking either as if he was going to climb a mountain, or enter a night club in Pall Mall.  He surrounded himself with his equipment behind one goal and when a wayward shot hit his tripod the crowd roared. 

At half time I told him to stop taking photographs of the game and instead take them of the crowd.  The crowd cheered their approval and waved at him.  (Waved is the polite word).   I wrote Edward into my match report, pointing out that never again would the matches at the Cottage be dull because we now had the King of Photography working the games.

In fact, the match was so totally awful that when I wasn’t watching Edward’s antics I was able to spend quite a bit of time watching Norris’.  Interestingly he left well before the end of the game – but not before Edward had a photograph of his back. Highly symbolic.   

Woolwich beat Bolton two to nothing.  Maybe they are on the way up and won’t need a Norris story after all.

* * * *

So, one hundred years on, apart from having a reputation for unfathomable evil, Birmingham City seem not to have changed.

“Making the Arsenal” is published on October 30^th, price £12.99.  Details of how you can get the book through ordering on line will be published here shortly.  There’s more on Arsenal vs Birmingham City this weekend on www.blog.emiratesstadium.info

© Tony Attwood 2009

One of the great things about studying football history is that one keeps coming across little known oddities which give just a tiny insight into the world of Arsenal. The problem is that quite often they just don’t give enough information, and I am left desperately searching for a proper explanation.

One of the great things about studying football history is that one keeps coming across little known oddities which give just a tiny insight into the world of Arsenal.  The problem is that quite often they just don’t give enough information, and I am left desperately searching for a proper explanation.

Let me give one example.

On 26 January 1895 there was an “incident” in the Division II match between Woolwich Arsenal and Burton Wanderers.   The few reference books that mention this “incident” (which I suspect have each copied the information from each other) refer to it as something that involved the referee.

As a result the Woolwich Arsenal ground was closed for four weeks.  Not surprisingly, given that this was only the second season that Arsenal were in the league, it was the first time it had happened, although disturbances were not that uncommon – particularly in Scotland.  Given that at the time the Woolwich team was made up largely of Scottish players (as was the munitions factory made up of Scottish workers), it seems the fans may have brought their habits with them.

But that is supposition.  The fact is apart from the fact that the ground was closed for a month, and that the incident involved the ref, I know nothing.  (If you have a source, do let me know!)

Did the players attack the ref?  Did the fans attack the ref?  Did the Arsenal manager attack the ref?   Somewhere there must be a record of this event, but I can’t find it.

We do know that the crowd was 7,000 and that the match was a draw – and that as a consequence of the ban the records show Arsenal playing their next two home games at New Brompton and Leyton.  But that’s about it.

I don’t condone violence of course, but there is something inside me that is somehow rather pleased that the problems within football grounds that were around earlier in my football watching career were not just my generation having a punch up.  I don’t want to be seen to encouraging any kind of violence, but it does give me a deeper understanding of the whole history of football in the UK to know that in our second year in the League we managed to get the ground closed.

And of course we were not alone.  Ground closures were common as the old timers who ran the Football League and the toffs who ran the FA tried to keep things under control.

The book, “Making the Arsenal” which features the year 1910 will be available on October 30^th price £12.99 plus delivery.  Details will appear on this site shortly.  Meanwhile there are more details about Arsenal today on www.blog.emiratesstadium.info

Why did Arsenal go into liquidation?

Just over 100 years ago Arsenal FC (then known as Woolwich Arsenal) teetered on the brink, and toppled into administration. There were four separate buy-outs, the last of which saw the club purchased by Henry Norris, who also owned Fulham FC.

This site features and celebrates the football season 1909/1910 – one hundred years ago. Several articles about Arsenal during the season have already been put up and you can read these by going back through the site. We’re trying to put up a new piece each day, both on football and society at [...]]]>

This site features and celebrates the football season 1909/1910 – one hundred years ago.   Several articles about Arsenal during the season have already been put up and you can read these by going back through the site. We’re trying to put up a new piece each day, both on football and society at the time.

By way of summary, here are ten things you may not know about life in England in the 1909/1910 season.

1: While there was no radio or TV, there were however gramophones playing 78rpm records.  It was a new development, but spreading fast among the middle classes.  Many houses in London had mains supply of water and that was spreading fast.  Motor cars were seen on the roads, but they had brought with them one big problem, known as the “Dust problem.”  So big was the “Dust Problem” that it got a special mention in the budget of Lloyd George.

2: Women’s football was a major sport, having been established in 1895.  Crowds were huge compared with today (the largest was 53,00 for a game in 1920) and the sport continued to rival men’s football, until the FA banned women from playing on football league grounds in 1921 – a ban that was unforgivably not lifted until 1971 – the year Arsenal won their first double.  A third of degrees awarded by the University of London were to women in 1910, although women didn’t have the right to vote in parliamentary elections.

3: The prime form of entertainment for working class men and women was the Monkey Parade, in which everyone took to the streets.  It happened almost every night of the year – there being no entertainment indoors.  The streets were the entertainment – with every sixth house or so being a “public house”.  The West End of London however was a no-go area for most women, as any woman seen there was assumed to be a prostitute.

4: The Home Secretary was Winston Churchill – at the start of his political career.  He had worked as a journalist in the Boer War, and returned to England to take up politics.  But by 1910 he was in the Liberal Party and was considered by most Conservatives (then commonly called Unionists, as they were in favour of the union of Great Britain and Ireland)  to be a traitor to his class and his country.  Churchill in fact plays a significant part in “Making the Arsenal” – the forthcoming novel about Woolwich Arsenal in 1910.

5: Men’s Football was the most popular game in England.  The prime attraction were the two divisions of the Football League (Woolwich Arsenal were in Division I), two divisions of the Southern League, the FA Cup, and the Amateur Cup.  Match fixing was commonplace.

6: London was in a very real sense the capital of the world, with around half of the world’s trade flowing through the port of London.  However with no social justice system (no unemployment funds, no pensions) there was a huge underclass known as the Vortex.  Once a person had fallen into the Vortex of unemployment it was thought to be impossible to escape.

7:  1910 was the end of Edwardian era.  The King was popularly known as Edward the Caresser, and it was said that courtiers had strict orders never to leave him alone with any woman of any class.   It was an era of liberation and experiment, wherein many of the attitudes were more consistent with those of Britain in the 1960s than of the Victorian era, which this period followed.   It was also the year of two general elections, both of which were tied between the Liberals and the Unionists.

8:  In 1910 the earth moved through the tail of Haleys Comet.  The comet could be seen through the daylight hours, and many predicted the end of the world.

9:  Throughout the year there was almost constant striking in the mines – which were privately owned.  The unrest culminated in a huge wave of strikes across South Wales in the latter part of the year.

10: This was the era of the Suffragettes.  The women’s movement was split in two – one constitutional, one acting outside the law.  The newspapers were against the Suffragettes until Black Friday, when a demonstration outside Parliament was attacked by the mob, while the police at best stood by, (or according to some reports joined in the attack on women).  There were deaths and injuries among the unarmed women, and overnight public perception of the women changed.

Making the Arsenal will be published in a few weeks time, and will be available from our on line shop.  More details soon.  Meanwhile there is a daily account of current footballing events from an Arsenal point of view on www.blog.emiratesstadium.info 

(c) Tony Attwood 2009

Below is an extract from MAKING THE ARSENAL, the diaries of Jacko Jones, of the Daily Chronicle. Jacko covered the story of the the demise and rebirth of Woolwich Arsenal in 1910.

In this extract, Jacko, a veteran of the Boer War turned football correspondent, has been ordered by [...]]]>

Below is an extract from MAKING THE ARSENAL, the diaries of Jacko Jones, of the Daily Chronicle.  Jacko covered the story of the the demise and rebirth of Woolwich Arsenal in 1910.

In this extract, Jacko, a veteran of the Boer War turned football correspondent, has been ordered by his editor to get himself into both a private shareholders meeting of Woolwich Arsenal FC, and a post-match public meeting.  Jacko also has to cover for a colleague who has spent several nights on the razzle and is in no fit state to write up a match report from the Manor  Ground. 

Saturday 22^nd January 1910

I found David at the Hen and Basket, just after half eleven, moaning into his beer that his brother had been injured in the defeat against Sunderland back in October and the calf muscle wouldn’t heal and so was on half pay. He was also offering the free tip that Woolwich would lose. I commiserated, told him my problem about getting into the meeting, and he said he knew where the share certificate was, and so I could go for his old man, if I cared to help a little with his drinking.

He did the deed. I gave him a shilling and took the omnibus into Woolwich to join the good and great at the Town Hall, waving my share cert as my bona fide on the way in. No one noticed – I may have had five proposals of marriage but no one actually knew what I looked like.

At the meeting George Leavey ran the show – turns out the club owes him a fortune – and he said the Woolwich were bust – which was news. The reason behind the problems, he said, was too many London clubs (Chelsea, Clapton, Fulham, Spurs and Woolwich Arsenal) in the league, with Millwall playing just across the river from Woolwich on the Isle of Dogs, and West Ham just along the way, plus all the other Southern League teams like Croydon, Brentford…). And all of them easier to get to than Plumstead – which I could verify yet again following my rotten ride out.

I did the regular: talked to everyone and got some background on Leavey. Turns out he ran a gents’ outfitters in town and he seemed well liked. Not one of your high-falutin’ top nobs, but just a local man who wanted to do the right thing for his local club. One of nature’s decent men, so the word went. Not his fault the club was in a muddle.

A couple of the girls from the pub were there – either they had lifted the share certificates from clients or the doorkeepers weren’t doing their job properly when a flash of leg was on offer. I couldn’t see a story in them, but I kept watching them all the same. Just in case.

Sadly for the club, the shareholders’ meeting had all the usual head-in-the-sand sugary speeches (if you can have sugar in the sand) that I had witnessed occasionally when captains in the army got together to discuss how the war should be won. In this case the talk was of not letting the factory boys down, the loyal workers of the Empire deserving their entertainment, the men who made the guns that beat the Boers, the significant help the club had given to the local flood relief fund last season, the Cup semi-finals two years running…

It had nothing to do with the club running out of money, but it made people feel good.

As a meeting it was getting boring, going nowhere, disintegrating shapelessly (good phrase that – disintegrating shapelessly) and I was not getting inside information, when one stout fella stood up and said, “I’ll tell you how bleedin’ good this bleedin’ club bleedin’ is, we’re worse than bleedin’ Millwall, and they ain’t even in the bleedin’ league. Bloody Isle of Dogs team, that’s what they is. And before that Hull beat us. Bleedin’Hull. I don’t even know where bleeding Hull bleedin’ is. Second division that’s what they is and that’s where we’re going.”

There was uproar. It was great; I couldn’t write it down fast enough. The old duffers at the top of the room were demanding that such language had no place in a civilised shareholders’ meeting, especially with ladies present, at which point someone shouted, “Then you bleeding well don’t go down the Manor Field do you squire!” and there was cheering, and one of the tarts said, “What ladies?” and they all laughed as if it were the greatest joke in the history of the Empire. Shouts too of, “Are you a shareholder, sir?” and the stout party waved his share certificate, so there was more cheering.

The top dogs protested that this was an outrage, an impossible situation, unacceptable, beyond the pale, and that nothing was being achieved. Several over-excited gentlemen who had themselves had a glass or two tried to get up on the stage, and the local bobby had to push them back down. And amidst all the carry-on I looked down to find that the stout party had dropped a document out of his pocket when he’d waved his share certificate. I went to hand it back to him but then hesitated.

OK, I shouldn’t have, but I’m a journalist, so I stuffed it in my pocket, and eased myself out as the meeting broke up. The paper contained quite a lot more information than had been revealed in the meeting including the really big news that the club still owed the firm of Archibald Leitch for the work they did on the grandstand ten years ago.

Is it possible that the board have failed to give the report to all the shareholders? That assumes the stout fellow had somehow got hold of a restricted document – and if it were true, I might just be on to something. Not giving full details to your shareholders is either ungentlemanly or a criminal offence. Either way it is suspicious.

David was having fun in the pub when I got back. I bought him another pint and left him to it, walking round the corner to the match, waving my press card in the flamboyant manner of hacks about to break a great tale.

Woolwich were actually much better than I had expected, winning three goals to none. I thought about Dick’s style – fluffy, lots of adjectives – they didn’t kick the ball high to avoid the mud, they kicked the brown ball very hard, into the leaden sky to avoid the sticky mud on the grassless field. I played with sticky brown mud and a soft brown ball, knowing that I was on the edge of taking the mickey out of Dick’s writing (which wasn’t the idea), but feeling the boss would cut the bits he didn’t like. Where I come from you never give up on your fellow travellers. Besides I liked Dick even if he was a fruit case. A perfect example of how to drink 10 pints and stay upright.

Middlesbrough were poor and looked to me to be fit for relegation, but I wrote (in the style of Dick) “Let’s give Woolwich A their joyful day and celebrate their great achievement for the brave souls on the ever-flowing Thames.”

“Even better for the attack minded Gunners,” (I added) “it is the second week running they’ve got three, having energetically knocked over a battling Watford team in the Cup the week before.” (The local support reported that Watford were awful too from all accounts, but I chose to ignore that.)

After the game I checked David Mc, who was now in the King’s Head next door to the Hen and B doing his piss and vinegar stunt with a woman on his lap. He was probably doing more than that, and he was offering to share, and the woman seemed happy to oblige, but I left him to it, tucking the shareholder certificate in his jacket pocket – but he said no, keep it for next time. I did. Someone else would take David home – he only lived around the corner.

I ambled back into town for the full blown public meeting, reckoning that with the shareholders’ gathering turning into a riot they’d have taken extra precautions when letting the plebeians in.

The meeting in fact was so disorganised that I struggled to think how to write it up. “Everyone screams, no one can hear a word” was a possible headline but it didn’t really convey what I wanted to say. My main point was that the board of Woolwich Arsenal who had actually called the meeting must be meandering with Jules Verne if they thought they could use their middle class accents plus stiff collars and upper lips to get everyone to think they should put 6d in the cap for the club.

First off, they had made the stupid mistake of booking the same room for the whole afternoon. It was fine for the shareholders, but woefully inadequate for an open meeting, and people were standing in the aisles, with a lot of pushing and shoving even before the meeting began.

As I had learned, Leavey really had put a lot of his life savings into Woolwich A and he loved the club, had a deep feeling for the men in the factories, and this financial mess hurt him. An officer and gent, as we say, as honest and decent a man as you could meet. But I’d met officers like that, and being a gent did not necessarily make you able to take the right decisions on the field of war. They were the ones who put all the women and children in the Free State into the concentration camps, and then had no idea what to do when the cholera started. Jolly decent fellows – a total menace to the human race.

Being a gent didn’t make you able to work in a crisis, and didn’t make you a financial wizard or a politician on the stump – and what was needed here was both of those. Even after the crazy shareholders’ meeting he still seemed to believe that he could just stand up and say his piece and everyone would take his cap off and say, “Thank you Mr L, your lordship, sir, your highness, you done us proud, I won’t buy another pint, you have my money instead.”

And it don’t work like that Mr Leavey, no it don’t. It is just possible that it might have done before South Africa – but it don’t work now. Too many of the men who work in the arsenal were soldiers in Africa and saw how we treated the natives and the Boers and they thought, “That’s the way you do it. We could do it to them in Africa – so how about a bit of that medicine to the toffs?”

Leavey is not a toff, and quite possibly he did have the measure of working men in the last century when the old Queen was still with us, but he doesn’t know that he hasn’t got the feel of the men now.

But he was decent – and I determined not to take the easy road by making fun of him. I decided to stay with the shouting and screaming, and the comments from a group of girls who wanted the police officers to put on footballer’s shorts so they could see their knees. They were touting for business, and it was the girls who made sure there would be no real meeting. Woolwich was getting to be like the West End only without the accent. Another little point to note.

To the main concern: London’s oldest professional club is bust, and its major creditor was not going to put a single shilling more into the club. So (I ask myself)… is Woolwich an isolated case? Woolwich crowds are not huge – but they are not the lowest I have seen.

There’s also the fact that we know that the Football Association has always hated Woolwich for turning professional, and in the early days they ordered their clubs not to play Woolwich.

I tried an idea: Woolwich Arsenal has been deserted by the men of Woolwich because for some reason the armaments factory is cutting jobs just when (as we all knew) there were spies everywhere.

I wrote it and liked it. I called it “Woolwich and the Spies.”

I even found space for a mention of a certain Dr Clarke who emerged as a central man for running a new Volunteer Committee which had the aim of racking up £1000 with film shows, a whist drive or two and something that I couldn’t quite hear amid the uproar, but which involved the Theatre Royal.

I thought of the people there – the girls moving around sitting on men’s laps, the hardened ex-military who now worked in the arsenal, the shop-keepers and tradesmen whose lives depended on the life in the backstreets of Plumstead and Woolwich, and who got their profit every time Woolwich played a home game, and thought, “A whist-drive???”

I added a postscript saying that what was needed was a real leader, someone who understood working men, football and finances. “If he is around, would he please make himself known to the directors of Woolwich Arsenal FC, because they have dire need of him.”

Then I went across the road to the Pie and Pig.

MAKING THE ARSENAL by Tony Attwood is published later this month, and will be available for purchase via our on-line shop.  Meanwhile, there’s news and information on Arsenal in the present day on UNTOLD ARSENAL.  Full details of the availability of”Making the Arsenal” will be published on both web sites.