Soccer & SocietyAquatic Insects

Vol. 12, No. 4, July 2011, 510522

Moonbeams and baying dogs: football and Liverpool politics

David Kennedy*

Crosby, Merseyside

To understand the extreme circumstances that brought about the split of the newly
crowned English League title holders, it is important to recognize how events out-
side the club framed the dispute and intensied matters internally to breaking
point. The club dispute occurred during a period when a bitter battle raged for
political control of the north end of Liverpool. The early 1890s was a period of
upheaval in municipal affairs marked by robust Liberal and Tory clashes over mat-
ters more national than local in character clashes that were, incidentally, played
out in the local press between key gures of the Everton membership, more espe-
cially over the issue of temperance. The suspicion that temperance concerns
among the Everton club membership had an impact on the club dispute is long-
standing but has never been substantially explained. In this chapter esh is placed
on the bare bones of that belief. But the problems Houlding was experiencing
inside and outside the club were not conned to temperance affairs.

Crucially in terms of the split, the period was also marked by the rst forays of class-
based political organizations contesting the citys suburban wards. Men such as Ever-
ton president John Houlding, the Tory Alderman for Everton and Kirkdale, heavily
reliant on the support of the working man at the ballot box for their council seats,
could no longer count on that support in the face of a challenge from trade-union-
sponsored candidates. In Houldings particular case his reliance on his position as
president of the local football club to garner political support complicated matters.
Challengers for his council ward seat adeptly exploited the problems he was having
within the football club concerning accusations of nancial exploitation and dictatorial
control. What had previously been Houldings jewel in the crown was quickly turning
into his poisoned chalice. Through the medium of the local press, his opponents por-
trayal of him as being out of touch with the mood of the working men of the district
greatly affected the way in which events within the club played out. In short, there
was a perfect storm brewing that an organization as important as Everton Football
Club the Good Old Club could not resist being drawn into the eye of.

The temperance crusade

At a national level, the last two decades of the nineteenth century saw the issue of
alcohol consumption and its effects on the population become an important social
question. Prior to this period, the crusade against the drink industry had largely

*Email: dkennedyd@hotmail.com

ISSN 1466-0970 print/ISSN 1743-9590 online

2011 Taylor & Francis
DOI: 10.1080/14660970.2011.593792
http://www.informaworld.com
 Soccer & Society 511

been conned to agitation carried out by religious groups. They advocated opposi-
tion to the drink industry via moral persuasion that is, the persuasion of their con-
gregations to reject alcohol and to take up a teetotal, or at least, temperate attitude
towards alcohol. However, as religious groups became aware of the deciencies in
their moral suasion approach, political action was being sought to bring greater
pressure to bear at the point of alcohol supply rather than just on those who con-
sumed it. This was a shift in strategy that laid the basis in the 1880s for a party
political division on the drink issue. Temperance campaigners had set up an organi-
zation, the United Kingdom Alliance, to bring about legislative change through the
petitioning of Parliament to curb what they saw as the drink industrys excessive
power. Ultimately, though, the lobbying strategy of the Temperance Party a term
used to denote all individuals or organizations willing to support anti-drink mea-
sures gave way to wholesale campaigning for prohibition and licensing reform
within the Liberal Party.1 One consequence of the alliance between the Liberals and
temperance campaigners was to push the drink trade more rmly than it had been
into the hands of the Conservative Party. Traditionally supported by the brewery
trade, the Conservatives were lobbied hard by the drink industry to protest its
rights. The drink industry donated large sums of money to the Conservative election
cause in order to facilitate this.2
During this period, then, Liberals and Conservatives were polarized on the drink
question. These connections were not only a phenomenon of national politics but
also, increasingly, of local politics. This was due, to a large degree, to the Liberal
Partys adopting the policy of the direct veto as part of its programme for reform.
Direct veto meant that local electors would have the power to vote directly, as in a
referendum, on the desirability of having licensed premises within their environ-
ment. As the prospect of local determination over the drink issue became ever more
possible, the previously mundane world of municipal politics more usually preoc-
cupied with battles over rates than issues reecting national concerns was trans-
formed by a sharpening conict between local Liberals and Conservatives.
In Liverpool, a vibrant temperance movement had developed in the latter dec-
ades of the nineteenth century.3 Vociferous in its attack on what it saw as decades
of Conservative misrule, the Liverpool temperance movement transformed the citys
social and political landscape in the 1880s. As in other parts of the country, reli-
gious gures from Nonconformity led the way in the assault on the Liverpool drink
industry. Perhaps the best known of the religious opponents of the drink trade
locally was the Unitarian minister Richard Acland Armstrong. His pamphlet The
Deadly Shame of Liverpool, published in 1890, articulated the links many thought
existed between the drink trade and the local state in Liverpool. Armstrongs work
drew the publics attention to the root cause of what he and others in the temper-
ance movement perceived to be the dire social consequences of uninhibited alcohol
consumption the knitting together of the wholesale liquor trade, of drunkenness,
and of prostitution on an enormous scale, in one vast, compact interest, and the
power which that interest has obtained within the governing bodies of Liverpool.4
The local Conservative Party dominated these governing bodies. Control of the
council chamber was traditionally the preserve of the citys Tories. Temperance
groups pointed to the incidence of high-prole Tory gures in the city connected
with the drink industry as the primary reason for the lamentable state of civic
affairs. The citys watch committee (an organization charged with overseeing law
and order as well as propriety in council affairs) and the licensing committee were,
512 D. Kennedy

in theory, the means by which concern over the conduct of the council regarding
the drink trades inuence could be aired. Temperance campaigners, though, viewed
them as mere tools in the control of the ruling Conservatives.
The Liberal Party in Liverpool was traditionally weak for a number of social,
economic and political reasons, not the least of which was its unpopular support of
the Union government in the American Civil War. The Port of Liverpools trade in
cotton was adversely affected by the outcome of the Civil War and the Liberals paid
the electoral price for what was perceived to be their anti-civic policies. Also, the
Unitarian-dominated Liberal leaderships support for Roman Catholic rights regard-
ing the freedom to worship provoked the anger of the growing number of Protestant
working-class voters. They feared the inux of cheap labour into Liverpool from Ire-
land that would result from a growing accommodation with the Catholic Irish.
However, its embrace of temperance politics revitalized the fortune of the Liver-
pool Liberal Party. During the late 1880s the Liberal Party in the city successfully
linked temperance campaigners concern over the citys moral condition (and the
Tories overseeing of this state of affairs) with the concerns of many middle-class
voters who feared the breakdown of social relations. The Port of Liverpools trade
had slumped during the 1880s. The hard times brought with them, on the one hand,
a sullen resignation5 among the towns workforce and, on the other hand, an
increase in the move towards independent forms of political expression based solely
upon the working class. Middle-class condence was further undermined by the risk
to communal health from unemployment and poverty phenomena that the temper-
ance campaigners argued were being exacerbated by the proliferation of alcohol
consumption. As the Liverpool Medical Ofcer of Health wrote:

There is a large and growing class among us who almost appear to be beyond the pale
of enlightenment they are left to themselves and forgotten; but disease, fostered by
their habits, is apt to break through the boundaries of the unhealthy districts and
spread its lethal shadow far and wide. The public should bear in mind that as the
strength of a chain is that of its weakest link so the health of the community is of its
weakest member.6

Under these circumstances the Liberals were able to break the stranglehold the Tor-
ies had on municipal control. The damaging splits within the local Liberal Party
between Liberal Unionists and Gladstonian Liberals over the issue of Home Rule
for Ireland were overcome to bring the Liberals to power in the city in 1892 for the
rst time in four decades.

The success of the temperance movements Purity Campaign in dictating the

moral climate in Liverpool during the early 1890s had ramications also for the
struggle for control of Everton FC and adds a clear political dimension to the split
of 1892. There is a denite sense of the power struggle in the football club being
drawn into the sharpening drink trade/temperance conict. The factional struggle
for control of the club became entangled in its later stages with a moral concern
over the development of the organization that drew the clubs problems into the
orbit of the wider social conict between drink trade and temperance reformers.
In the social climate outlined above it can perhaps be easily appreciated how
the drink trade connections of John Houlding and his principal allies in the club
were a matter of considerable embarrassment for many members of the football
club. Not only was Houlding a brewer and the owner of a number of public houses,
 Soccer & Society 513

but he and his closest allies in the club were conspicuous gures in drink trade
defence associations in Liverpool. Houlding and club accountant, Simon Jude, were
chairman and secretary, respectively, of the Liverpool and District Incorporated
Brewers and Wine Spirits Merchants Association.7 Club vice-president Edwin
Berry, was solicitor to the Liverpool Licensed Victuallers Association, and Simon
Jude its secretary.8 Solicitor Edwin Berry, Houldings principal ally in the club and
a man employed by many of the large breweries in Liverpool, was described as
the most prominent advocate of the drink trafc in our licensing courts by Alexan-
der Guthrie, a leading gure in the Liverpool temperance movement and executive
member of the United Kingdom Alliance.9 In fact Guthrie openly attacked Houl-
ding also during the course of the football club dispute: His [Houldings] position
is perfectly clear. He stands before the community as the very embodiment of the
drink interest precisely that interest against whose domination Liverpool has at
last begun to rise in revolt.10
Leading opponents of the Houlding group among the Everton membership took
up an uncompromising stance against this inuence within the club. William Cuff,
a central gure in the dispute, and a man who would become a long-standing chair-
man of the club in the early decades of the twentieth century11 held a rather lofty
view of the clubs wider role and signicance, believing football to be the greatest
teetotal agency in the world (the irony of which will not be lost on the millions of
fans of many modern-day English League football clubs sponsored by breweries).12
George Mahon was, perhaps, John Houldings most dogged opponent in the club
dispute. Most able of all Houldings critics in articulating the memberships fears
that their president and his associates sought to incorporate the club in order to
open it up to the control of businessmen, Mahon made it plain throughout the dis-
pute that he and his colleagues were determined to ensure that the drink trades
advances would be checked under a new regime set up away from the president
and his aides. Speaking at a club subcommittee meeting, Mahon assured the
friends of the club and outsiders that they vowed not to sell intoxicating liquors
on the [new] ground, and emphasized to the membership that in the new company
brewers would not be nancing the club.13 Another opponent of Houlding was Dr
William Whitford. A surgeon and justice of the peace, Whitford gave frequent lec-
tures on the proliferation of the drink trade interest in Liverpool and its danger to
the community.14 For his consistent attacks on the failure of the Liverpool police
and licensing bench to crack down on publicans operating outside the law, the Liv-
erpool Review dubbed Whitford the elect hero of the re and sword teetotallers15
(another city journal less atteringly called him a crank in the eternal liquor ques-
tion!16). Joining Cuff, Mahon and Whitford in this ideological struggle against
Houlding within the football club was William R. Clayton. As we have seen
already, his voice was prominent in opposition to the club president within the club
committee. Claytons temperance credentials are underlined by the weekly lectures
he gave to the Formby Congregational Band of Hope. The Band of Hope societies
were set up to give guidance, more especially to children, on morality and the
building of what was termed good character to teach them the perils of alcohol
and to encourage them to sign a pledge of total abstinence from liquor.
A number of critical letters published in the local press bear testimony to the fact
that these concerns were mirrored among some of the Everton membership. For
example, a Mr J.G. Allen wrote to the Liverpool Courier during the course of the
club dispute reminding its readers that Everton was a public institution, respected
514 D. Kennedy

from the Clyde to the Thames the type of institution Mr Allan believed could not
and should not be nanced by brewers.17 Moreover, the stand made against Houl-
ding and his allies found support from gures outside the club. Financial support for
Houldings opponents came from two industrialists: William Pickles Hartley, the fruit
preserve manufacturer, and Robert William Hudson, the son of soap manufacturer
Robert Spiers Hudson, who had assumed control of his deceased fathers company.
Along with Houldings opponents on the Everton club committee, these two men
agreed to act as nancial guarantors of the new football company to be based away
from Holdings Aneld Road site. Hartley was a staunch Liberal in politics, repre-
senting the Liberal Party in the city council chamber, a leading Primitive Methodist
layman and vice-president of the Liverpool Temperance and Band of Hope Society.
Hudson was also from a Nonconformist background (Unitarian) and, like his father
Robert Spiers Hudson, was a Liberal in politics: Hudson was Dr Whitfords prede-
cessor as chairman of the Kirkdale Liberal Association.18
Throughout the course of the dispute the Liberal and temperance-leaning Liver-
pool Daily Post and its sister paper, the Liverpool Echo, consistently intervened to
pass judgement on Houlding. After the decision of the majority of club members in
March 1892 to expel Houlding and remove the club to Goodison Park the Post was
unable to contain its satisfaction:

Messers Mahon and Clayton . . . took upon themselves a big task in trying to rid the
Everton Club of an inuence that had apparently grown stronger year after year. . . .
This independent action of Mr Mahon and his friends might be said to have produced
the chaos the club found itself in, but having shaken off the incubus their action is
now clear and dened . . . and it was gratifying to nd that neither publicans nor mon-
eylenders had been appealed to for assistance.19

On the other hand, the Tory-supporting Liverpool Courier and Liverpool Evening
Express, owned by Conservative MP for Everton, James A.Willox (a future Liver-
pool FC shareholder, and trustee of the Licensed Victuallers and Brewers Associa-
tion) consistently took the side of Houlding and his associates in the club dispute.
The Courier was at pains to reveal what it saw as the wire-pulling of Houldings
radical opponents in the Liberal press that lay behind the opposition to him in the
club. From the autumn of 1891 to the spring of 1892, the Courier published letters
from members of the club (usually written anonymously) critical of those in the
club opposed to Houlding. This press partisanship was an important facet of the
dispute and one identied by the Liverpool Review. The Review registered its bewil-
derment at the involvement of Radical and Tory organs in the clubs troubles:

[C]harges were made by a Radical organ, and, apparently, its Tory contemporary felt
itself in honour bound to give the other and another version. . . . Hitherto, simple nov-
ices in football have understood that the grand national winter game had about as
much to do with questions of Home Rule and the pitch-forking of aldermen as the
moon has to do with cold custard. Local football lights, however, would seem to think
otherwise. As there is supposed to be a connection between moonbeams and baying
dogs so they seem to make the connection with Liverpool football and politics.20

There was, then, an unquestionable temperance/drink trade dimension to the split.

The vulnerability of Houldings position on the drink question at this point, and the
connection between events inside and outside the football club, was pointed out by
a Liverpool Echo editorial:
 Soccer & Society 515

Mr Houlding is an aspirant for the honour of representing Everton in Parliament, and

he is too shrewd a man to choose such a move [his conict with the club committee
over tenancy rights at the club ground] for displaying any uncalled for harshness in
his treatment of an institution so popular within the limits of his hoped for constitu-
ency as the Everton Football Club. . . . In the contrary event, however, we cannot but
believe that the club will benet by being cut-loose from its public house connec-
tions.21

The football club dispute of 18912 clearly exacerbated Houldings political difcul-
ties in the district of Everton. At a point when temperance concerns among his con-
stituency were gathering pace, Houlding could ill afford to be cast in the light of a
brewer exploiting his connections with what was viewed as a local cultural asset.

War to the knife: Houldings ght for his political life

Houldings political problems, however, did not stop at his drink trade connections.
The emergence of both independent Protestant and labour politics in the north end
districts of Liverpool meant that his position as an inuential member of the gov-
erning body of Liverpool Conservatism: the Constitutional Association, also made
him vulnerable to political attack. As we shall now see, this became another dimen-
sion in the split of Everton Football Club as his political opponents within it were
quick to seize on his vulnerability.
At this time grassroots Tories were critical of the failure of what they perceived
to be an out of touch and dictatorial Conservative Party leadership to recognize Dis-
trict Associations rights to hold some degree of control over district party affairs.
Everton Tories, in particular, were disgruntled over the long running imposition by
the citys Villa Tory leadership of municipal and parliamentary candidates for the
district. As with the political debate surrounding temperance reform, the dispute
over the control of Everton FC became drawn into this political arena as the Tory
Party machine attempted to ght off both this threat and the incursion of labour-
socialist politics which looked set to erode its electoral dominance in Everton and
other north end districts.
There had existed an uneasy relationship between the citys Conservative Party
and the district associations in working-class areas such as Everton. Liverpools
Tory Party hierarchy had traditionally played on the emotions of the Protestant
working class of the city by appealing beyond their class interests to their religious
identity. As the party viewed by many as the political representation of the ties
between church and state, the Tories, in a city such as Liverpool with its deep reli-
gious divisions between Catholic and Protestant communities, enjoyed a fruitful
relationship with the Protestant majority among the electorate.22 The Tory leader-
ship in Liverpool was rewarded with the deference shown to it by the Protestant
working class in return for its close identication with the values and institutions
held in esteem by this social group. But Protestant working-class support for the
Conservative Party came at a material price also, and when the port trades faced a
severe downturn in their fortunes during the trade depression of the 1880s, reducing
skilled men to an employment pattern similar to that of the casualism of the
docks,23 the Protestant working class found the local state wanting in its reaction
to their plight. Evidence from Parliamentary Papers shows that skilled workers,
such as boilermakers, carpenters and engineers, suffered increased levels of eco-
nomic distress during the 1880s.24 Applications for charity relief in the the borough
516 D. Kennedy

increased from 11,549 in 18823 to 30,042 by 18856.25 The Tory-controlled muni-

cipal corporation, however, remained solid in its refusal to undertake employment
schemes to absorb any of the higher than normal seasonally unemployed a situa-
tion addressed in principle from the mid-1890s with the corporations creation of
relief works and an unemployment registry to coordinate supply and demand of
labour.
This turn of events placed a strain on traditional political relationships and pro-
vided a boon for the attempts by rank-and-le Conservatives working within the
district associations to wrest control over local affairs from the partys ruling body,
the Constitutional Association. Specically, this centred around the ability of the
Constitutional Association to select candidates for municipal and parliamentary
ofce. For its part, the Constitutional Association was resolutely against any surren-
dering of its powers to the working men of the partys district associations. This
developing struggle, moreover, had an unmistakable class element to it.26
The convivial populism,27 which had stood the Tories in good stead in Liver-
pool for decade, came under severe pressure. The Tories ability, over and above
the efforts of the Liverpool Liberals, to facilitate ready interaction between the
classes via an interlocking associational network28 was increasingly challenged
by both independent Protestant politics and specically class-based labour politics.
The working-class electorate of Liverpools artisan districts by the end of the 1880s
had begun to cast around for an alternative which would represent both interests of
class and sectarianism [or one which would at least act as] a lever with which to
exert pressure on Conservatives.29 In John Houldings area of inuence, Everton,
the threat from both independent Protestant and labour organizations was especially
acute. This was a particularly serious state of affairs for the party in a constituency
the citys Conservative leader, Arthur B. Forwood, described as Liverpools pre-
mier seat: the district of Everton being variously described as the Gibraltar of
Toryism, and a bastion of No Surrender Conservatism.30
In an Everton ward by-election in February 1892 the Orange Order, an organiza-
tion afliated to the Constitutional Association, sponsored Thomas McCracken, in
his independent challenge to the ofcial Conservative candidate, ship-owner Ralph
W. Leyland. McCrackens supporters portrayed his campaign as a struggle against
those blocking greater democracy within the Conservative Party.31 John Houlding
trod a very careful path during the campaign, siding with the Constitutional Associ-
ation, but publicly declaring his admiration for McCracken his friend of twenty to
twenty ve years standing. Houlding, to no avail, appealed to McCracken to with-
draw his candidacy from the Everton contest. McCracken was subsequently beaten
in a closely fought contest by 4,712 votes to 3,288 and he and a number of other
Orangemen were expelled from the Conservative Party. The affair left Houldings
reputation badly dented.32
Besides the threat from independent Protestant-based politics, from 1888
onwards there was a growth in the number of working-class candidates ghting on
class issues in the north end of Liverpool, at rst in school board elections and then
for council seats. This opened up yet another front against the Tories. On occasion,
this challenge was carried out independently of the Liberal Party through the Liver-
pool Trades Council, and on other occasions in conjunction with the Liberals.33
The rise of trade union candidates had become a problem for the Conservatives,
more especially in traditional artisan districts such as Everton and Kirkdale. The
slump in the local economy in the 1880s had laid the basis for the rise of class
 Soccer & Society 517

politics in Liverpool, and as the Conservative Partys most prominent gure in the
north end of Liverpool it was John Houldings task to attempt to meet head on the
growth in labour politics there. Evidence suggests, however, that his increasingly
antagonistic relationship with the members of Everton FC compromised his ability
to lead the Tory ghtback in Everton.
The Liverpool Trades Council had rst placed a candidate in Everton Ward in
1890 to challenge one of the retiring Conservative councillors forced under council
rules to stand for re-election.34 The Trades Council candidate fared well, but could
not quite carry the day. Emboldened, the following year they tried again in Everton,
and John Houlding faced a challenge of his own from a Lib-Lab candidate: William
Nicholson, leader of the Liverpool branch of the Sailors and Firemens Union.
Nicholson was a Trade Council-sponsored candidate but was backed by the Liberal
Party machinery in Everton. Nicholsons campaign was run as a personal attack on
his opponents outside interests as much as on ideological issues. Nicholson and his
sponsors stressed to the electorate both Houldings occupation as a brewer and
picking up on the internal struggle occurring within local Conservative ranks
what they argued to be his autocratic behaviour as councillor for the ward.35 On
this last point concerning Houldings apparent autocratic political style, this also
struck a chord with the many protestations of the Everton FC membership that were
being aired in public during this time in the ongoing dispute over the control of the
club. Club members had utilized the local press in order to denounce Houldings
authoritarian attitude towards them of his attempt to conduct a one man govern-
ment of the club.36 For instance, one club member in a letter to the Liverpool
Courier appealed to his colleagues in the club to

rally-round Messrs Clayton and Mahon and the other members of the committee who
have the pluck to ght manfully in the interests of the members [and] put an end to a
one-man policy and to stamp out the autocratic, overbearing and domineering way the
good old club has had to quietly coincide with in the past.37

Houldings political opponents eagerly seized upon these sentiments. In a letter to the
Liverpool Daily Post, James W. McGovern, the local branch secretary of the Sailors
and Firemens Union, responded to an attack made on their candidate, William Nich-
olson, by John Houlding at an Orange Institution meeting held in the latters support.
Houlding had compared the sound running of the Carters Union (a union not afli-
ated to the Liverpool Trades Council, of which he was the president) with what he
saw as the mismanaged Sailors and Firemens Union. McGovern hit back:

What Mr Houlding is going to do for the labouring classes is something on a par, I

presume, with his football generosity, and should the electors be foolish enough to put
the King in power another three years his interest in them will last as long as he can
use them as he has the footballists, a la The Merchant of Venice.38

From this moment on, Houlding and his supporters within and outside the club
openly accused his critics in Everton FC of both being complicit in the attacks on
the president by his political opponents and of importing the struggle for civic
power into the affairs of the club. Houlding accused George Mahon, in particular,
of assisting Lib-Lab candidate Nicholson in his municipal campaign against him.
This was a charge fuelled by the publication of an editorial comment in the Liver-
pool Athletic News denouncing members of the club who had tried to make capital
518 D. Kennedy

out of the subject [the club dispute] from his [Houldings] candidature for municipal
honours.39 For his part, George Mahon denied the charge. In a letter to the Liver-
pool Courier during the municipal election campaign Mahon stated: I dont know
Mr Nicholson, Mr Houldings opponent, nor have I ever offered to assist Mr Nich-
olsons candidature. . . . The introduction of political elements into municipal mat-
ters is a curse and not a blessing to the well being of any district or community.40
It must be said, however, that Mahons protestations concerning the mixing of
politics and local affairs ring a little hollow. Mahon was present on the committee
of the Walton Liberal Association a year earlier in 1890, when the expressed aim of
that body was to

do all we can to establish the Liberal Party in the council. At the present time that
body was simply a great party machine in the hands of the Tories . . . we will never
get Liberal representatives to parliament until we destroy the power of the Conserva-
tives in the city council.41

And though George Mahon denied any involvement in attempting to unseat Houl-
ding in Everton, there is clear evidence to suggest that the relationship between the
two key players in the club dispute was underscored by a long-standing political
grudge. As a Liberal candidate in the Walton Local Board election of 1887, Mahon
had narrowly defeated Houldings charge, Tory councillor, Dr John Utting.42 On
another occasion, in 1889, a Bootle Times report reveals that Mahon, in his capacity
as returning ofcer for the Walton Division of Lancashire County Council, had
incensed Houlding, the election agent for Tory candidate Sir David Radcliffe, by
rejecting Radcliffes nomination on a technicality. Houlding accused Mahon of
political sabotage, further complaining that bill posters bearing Mahons name had
been used to cover a large number of posters announcing Conservative Party meet-
ings in support of Radcliffe in Walton. Commenting on the incident, the Liberal-
leaning Bootle Times stated that Mahons decision to disqualify Sir David Radcliffe
would be lamented by the publicans and others inasmuch as it deprives them of a
man who would most likely maintain their interests.43
If there is some doubt over the sincerity of Mahons protest at being accused by
Houlding of favouring his municipal opponent in Everton and Kirkdale, then no
such doubt exists over the role played by Mahons club colleague, Dr William
Whitford, in Nicholsons election campaign. Dr Whitford was closely connected to
Nicholson. As chairman of the Everton and Kirkdale Liberal Association (effec-
tively, John Houldings political shadow in Everton), Whitford acted as Nicholsons
election agent. And in that capacity as chairman of the Liberal Association,
Whitford had specically targeted John Houldings iniquitous inuence as a
brewer in the district of Everton.44
Houlding counteracted what he perceived to be a concerted political campaign
against him from within the club by enlisting the support of the powerful Working
Mens Conservative Association (WMCA). The WMCA was an organization afli-
ated to the Constitutional Association and came to dominate Liverpool Conservatism
from the 1890s until the Second World War. Anti-Catholic and wholeheartedly com-
mitted to protectionism in trade and to interventionism within the local state, the
WMCA provided the Liverpool Conservative Party with the necessary link between
class and religious interests to ensure its continued political dominance (notwithstand-
ing a brief interlude of Liberal rule in the early 1890s). The WMCA threw its weight
 Soccer & Society 519

of opinion behind Houlding in the club dispute at a branch meeting in Everton called
in aid of Houldings candidature as ward councillor. Accusing Houldings opponents
within the club of using Everton FC as a lever in their efforts toward his [Houldings]
defeat, the WMCA declared the club dispute to be a political dodge, and pledged
its support to secure Houldings re-election to his Everton ward seat.45
In the event of the election Houlding survived the challenge from Nicholson:
Houlding polled 7,120 votes to Nicholsons 5,588 votes.46 But this was only after
the extraordinary level of support and intervention he received from local Conserva-
tive MPs, from the Liverpool Courier and the Evening Express (both owned by
soon-to-be Conservative MP for Everton, Sir John A. Willox), and, of course, from
the WMCA. As we will see in the following chapters, members of the latter organi-
zation would go on to loom large in the history of Liverpool FC.
Regarding the accusations of an important political dimension to the motives of
members of the club in their attempt to unseat Houlding, it can be said that if letters
published in the local press during the course of the dispute are any reliable guide
then, certainly, at least some members of the club would appear to have accepted
that dimension to the dispute as a fact. One member of the club wrote to the Liver-
pool Courier that

One of your correspondents suggests that Mr Houlding must have been dreaming
because he stated at a political meeting that persons had been using it [the dispute]
lately for political purposes. I would go further and say that it not only has been used,
but will be one of the mightiest weapons used against him when he seeks re-elec-
tion.47

Another club member recounted in his letter to the Liverpool Courier the occasion
of his attendance at a general meeting of the club and clearly believed extra-foot-
balling matters were providing an unwanted undercurrent to the club dispute:

I attended a meeting in Tithebarn Street, called for the purpose of promoting an ath-
letic meeting on Whit Monday next, but imagine my surprise when I got there (if one
may judge from the speeches), the real state of affairs is entirely due to political trick-
ery on the part of some of the members. I am a Conservative, and though I have acted
with these men in the past, believing them to be sincere, and having the welfare of
the Everton Football Club at heart, it is now plain that political rancour is at the bot-
tom of the movement, and I shall offer every resistance to any further development of
those plans [to leave the clubs Aneld Road ground].48

Other letters to the local press from those opposing Houlding in the club give fur-
ther credence to the belief that factors other than football lay behind the opposition
to the club president:

Mr Houlding can please himself whether he will exercise his legal rights at the cost
of the club or act the part of a generous landlord. [In the event that he didnt take
this latter option] probably the electors of Everton Ward will be asked to consider
whether they are satised with their present representative, and if not to take steps
to replace him. It will not be a question as between Mr Houlding and the club only,
but the thousands of regular visitors to the ground will have to be reckoned with
also.49

. . .we will have nothing more to do with him, and we will have war to the knife with
him when he dares come forward for public favour in the future50
520 D. Kennedy

The politicization of Everton FC in 18912 was not without precedent. It is clear

that the use of the club for political purposes had been established prior to the out-
break of factional hostilities. In 1885, when John Houlding had rst challenged for
municipal honours in Everton and Kirkdale ward, the players and members of the
club had been used to canvass support for their president. However, it seems
equally clear that in the intervening period factors such as the changing political
environment in the district of Everton, Houldings unpopularity among the member-
ship and an inux into the club of men politically opposed to Houlding had all con-
spired to transform the football clubs inuence within the district into a political
threat against him.
The split of Everton FC in 1892 has been viewed in previous accounts as being
caused by the souring and eventual breakdown of the relationship between the club
president, John Houlding, and the club membership due to Houldings exploitation
of the club for protable purposes. It has been shown here that, although there was
a belief among the club membership that their president viewed the club as an
exploitable asset, the concerns of the club membership regarding the presidents
commercial ambitions were integral to a wider factional struggle. There exists
strong evidence to suggest that internal disharmony within the club was the result
of a long-standing struggle between hostile factions regarding control of the club. It
has also been argued that there was an important social dimension to the factional-
ism that cannot be overlooked. The conict within the local state, characterized by
a shifting balance in social forces and the creation of new socio-political forces and
relations, enveloped, for a time, the affairs of the club and exacerbated the already
deep divisions between members over the direction their club should take. The
complexity of factors surrounding the split of Everton FC in 1892 tells us that the
club was clearly viewed by those inside and outside of it as having importance
beyond its more obvious role as a competitive sporting enterprise. The truly public
manner in which the dispute within Everton FC unfolded and then split the organi-
zation offers an insight into how identity within urban communities was bound up
in the early professional football club. It should be stressed, therefore, that the
importance of the split is not conned to football club affairs alone. The events at
Everton FC in 1891 and 1892 allow us to piece together a revealing picture of life
in late Victorian Liverpool. It was a moment when, for a short time at least, a foot-
ball club became a lightning rod for many of the preoccupations exercising the
minds of ordinary citizens.

Notes
1. Cook, A Short History of the Liberal Party; Gutzke, Protecting the Pub; Shiman, Cru-
sade Against Drink in Victorian England.
2. Gourvish and Wilson, The British Brewing Industry; Gutzke, Protecting the Pub.
3. Out of the 83 temperance organizations ofcially represented at the 1884 National Tem-
perance Congress, 23 were from Liverpool, encompassing a broad range of denomina-
tions and ethnic groups. In P.T. Winskills History of the Temperance Movement in
Liverpool and District, the author cites among other Liverpool organizations, the Catho-
lic League of the Cross, the Wesleyan Methodist Temperance Union, the Church of
England Total Abstinence Society, the Welsh Total Abstinence Society and the Hiber-
nian Total Abstinence Society. A copy of this book is held as part of the Joseph Live-
sey Collection, University of Central Lancashire, Preston.
4. Quoted by Waller, Democracy and Sectarianism, 106.
5. See Collins, Politics and Elections in Nineteenth Century Liverpool, 212.
 Soccer & Society 521

6. Ibid., 213.
7. Liverpool Brewers and Spirit Merchants Association, Liverpool Daily Post (hereafter
LDP), 17 Nov. 1891 7.
8. Liverpool Licensed Victuallers and Brewers Journal, 10 Jan. 1891.
9. Municipal Election Meetings: Breckeld Ward Liberalism, LDP, 1 Nov. 1898 6; Wal-
ler, Democracy and Sectarianism, 419.
10. Mr John Houlding and the Everton Ward (letter from A. Guthrie), LDP, 29 Oct. 1891,
6.
11. See Cuffs obituary notice, Fifty years a Leader in Soccer, LDP, 7 Feb. 1949, 3.
12. From Cuffs memoirs, Dont Stop Sunday Play, LDP, 19 Feb. 1949, 3.
13. See Everton Committee Meeting report and letter to editor in Everton Football Club,
LDP, 3 March 1892, 7, and The Difculties of the Everton Football Club, L|DP, 16
March 1892, 6.
14. Royal Commission on Liquor Licensing Laws, Parliamentary Papers, XXXVI 26450.
15. Diogenes, Open Letter to Dr Whitford, Liverpool Review (hereafter LR), 7 Nov.
1896.
16. People Who are Talked About: Dr William Whitford, Porcupine, 26 Dec. 1896.
17. Everton Football Club (letter from Joseph G Allan), Liverpool Courier (hereafter LC),
7 March 1892.
18. The Difculties of the Everton Football Club, LDP, 16 March 1892, 6; Death of Sir
W.P. Hartley, Obituary notice, LC, 26 Oct. 1922, 7; Jeremy, Dictionary of Business
Biographies, Vol. 3. Hartley was vice-president of the Primitive Methodist Conference
in 1892 (LC, 7 Aug. 1884; see Waller, Democracy and Sectarianism, 69 and 383n. Let-
ters from R.W. Hudson in his capacity as Kirkdale Liberal Association chairman give
his address as the soap works on Bankhall, Kirkdale, Liverpool.
19. The Everton Club, LDP, 19 March 1892, 7.
20. Houldings Bust Football, LR, 28 May 1892.
21. Liverpool Echo leader comment, LE, 26 Jan. 1892, 3.
22. See Brady, T.P. OConnor and Liverpool Politics; Collins, Politics and Elections;
Davies, Liverpool Labour; Clarke, Lancashire and the New Liberalism; Ingram, Sectar-
ianism in the North West of England; Waller, Democracy and Sectarianism.
23. Belchem, Merseypride, 173.
24. Evidence in Parliamentary Papers taken from Waller, Democracy and Sectarianism,
391, n.17.
25. Liverpool Central Relief and Charity Organisation, annual reports, quoted by Waller,
Democracy and Sectarianism, 391, n.17.
26. Waller, Democracy and Sectarianism, 607. Also LR, Jan. and Feb. 1892.
27. Phrase used by Belchem, Merseypride, 174.
28. Ibid.
29. Ingram, Sectarianism in the North West of England.
30. Quoted in Waller, Democracy and Sectarianism, 124; The Parliamentary Vacancy in
Everton, LDP, 2 Feb. 1892 4; Waller, Democracy and Sectarianism, 74.
31. The McCracken Municipal Candidacy, leader comment, LR, 6 Feb. 1892 . Dale Street
being the location of the Constitutional Associations headquarters.
32. LC, 13 Jan. 1892; The Tory Differences in Everton, LDP, 20 Feb. 1892 5; The Late
Contest in the Everton Ward, LDP, 24 Feb. 1892, 4.
33. Collins, Politics and Elections, 2067; Waller, Democracy and Sectarianism,1002.
34. Councillors had to retire every three years for re-election.
35. Waller, Democracy and Sectarianism,1201.
36. The Everton Club, LDP, 19 March 1892, 7.
37. Everton Football Club (letter from Joseph G Allan), LC, 19 Feb. 1892, 7.
38. Waller, Democracy and Sectarianism, 121; The Everton Election (letter by J.W.
McGovern), LDP, 20 Oct. 1891, 3.
39. Liverpool Athletic News, 8 Nov. 1891, 4 and 9.
40. Mr Houlding and the Everton Football Club, LC, 21 Oct. 1891, 7.
41. Meeting of Walton Liberals, Bootle Times, 1 March 1890, 8.
42. Local Board Elections, LDP, 7 April 1887, 6.
522 D. Kennedy

43. Sir David Radcliffe Disqualied, Bootle Times, 12 Jan. 1889, 5. Also Walton Whis-
pers, ibid., 5.
44. Municipal Elections: Mr Nicholsons Candidature, LC, 24 Oct. 1891 7; The Liberal
Campaign in Everton, LDP, 13 April 1892, 6.
45. Mr John Houlding and His Supporters: The Everton Football Club Dispute, LC, 20
Oct. 1891, 6; Mr John Houlding and the Everton Football Club: Defence of His
Actions, LDP, 21 Oct. 1891, 3.
46. Mr John Houlding and His Supporters: The Everton Football Club Dispute, LC, 20
Oct. 1891, 6; Mr John Houlding and the Everton Football Club: Defence of His
Actions, LDP, 21 Oct. 1891, 3.
47. Mr Houlding and the Everton Football Club (letter from club member, CMM), LC, 26
Oct. 1891, 6.
48. The Everton Football Club: Mr Mahon and Mr Houlding (letter from Another Mem-
ber), LC, 4 March 1892, 7.
49. Mr John Houlding and the Everton Football Club, LDP, 19 Sept. 1891, 7.
50. Everton Football Club (letter from club member), LDP, 14 Feb. 1892, 7.

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