by Tom Bower
Over the previous four years, all three panellists had assumed that they would agree to a unanimous report. In the final weeks, Parry, Reid and Coppell could agree that ‘several witnesses have attempted deliberately to mislead the Inquiry in their evidence’ which confirmed a ‘cult of dishonesty’. But at the last moment there was a disagreement between them about the ‘bung’ for Sheringham’s transfer. After Reid and Parry had written the report, concluding that McLintock had given the £58,000 to Fenton in the car park, they awaited Steve Coppell’s agreement. To their surprise, Coppell decided to ‘back off’, asserting that the evidence was inconclusive. Reid was incensed; he admitted that much of the evidence was unpublishable and there was widespread criticism of George Graham’s sentence, but that did not explain Coppell’s stubbornness. With Parry and Reid, Coppell had been through drafts of the report, drawing out the evidence and the chronology. ‘We all know which way it’s pointing,’ agreed Parry.
To secure Coppell’s agreement, Reid drove to south London for a two-hour conversation in ‘a tatty office in a single-storey building’. Together, Reid and Coppell reviewed the evidence. ‘There’s a consistency of lies,’ said Reid, surprised by the change in Coppell’s demeanour. ‘We haven’t got the evidence,’ the football manager replied, adamantly refusing to sign the report. Reid, a distinguished QC, was puzzled; the evidence was clear, both to the lawyer and to Rick Parry, an experienced accountant and football executive. Both were shocked that Coppell should have difficulty with what key witnesses had admitted. Inevitably the cynics would suggest that Coppell’s rebuff was ‘a closing of ranks in the football fraternity’. Others were more blunt: ‘He’s been got at by football.’
The report – a frustrating conclusion to unfinished business – was passed to Kelly at the FA. ‘A damp squib,’ he said scathingly, uninterested why Coppell had not signed. ‘After a lot of leaks and false starts about their conclusions, they passed the buck back to the FA to take disciplinary action without committing themselves. It meant yet more delay after so many years. Just dumped it on our desk after a simple fact-finding operation.’ That damnation reflected the FA’s antagonism towards regulating football.
The critics’ headline after the delayed publication of the report in January 1998 would be ‘whitewash’. Brian Clough, charged by the FA with misconduct, had retired due to ‘deteriorating health’. Ronnie Fenton had moved to Malta. Rune Hauge’s ban had expired. In the meantime agents had been legalized by the FA. ‘Football is monster, monster clean,’ smirked the agent Eric Hall in his distorted version of the report. And Terry Venables celebrated: ‘I’ve been cleared . . . I knew I was innocent . . . but there was a concerted effort to destroy me, to jail me if possible.’ Privately, his self-vindication was supported by Rick Parry. ‘I don’t think Terry is a villain,’ he told a friend. ‘He just surrounded himself with undesirables like Ashby. He’s not fundamentally bent, just misguided. Terry lied because he was in a corner, to blur the truth. In the Sheringham transfer, Terry acted for Tottenham’s benefit, not for his personal profit.’ The four year inquiry had produced a lot of smoke, some token punishment and a commitment within the FA never to undertake a similar destabilizing investigation. Traditionalists, reformers and critics could no longer rely on the FA and Graham Kelly.
Graham Kelly was not regarded as a reformer but as ‘a pawn’, appointed by Bert Millichip to allow the chairman to enjoy the limelight without any challengers. The atmosphere did not change after Keith Wiseman’s election to replace Millichip as chairman. Wiseman’s ambition was to bring the World Cup to England in 2006 and to be elected to FIFA, a comfortable posting for life. Both those objectives precluded any desire by the FA to supervise the commercial activities of the Premier League’s clubs. Kelly and Wiseman were proud of their idea to desist from interference in ‘private’ enterprises. Over the previous twenty years, Kelly complained, ‘I’ve called for more financial monitoring and failed.’ He recognized that his bureaucratic organization found difficulty in controlling a showbiz operation owned by rich individuals and partisan shareholders. Inactivity, he decided, was the only option, trusting tradition rather than intervention. He conceded: ‘Bungs are a problem but there’s no willingness by football to self-regulate its financial affairs.’
Similarly, Keith Wiseman preferred inertia to avoid antagonizing his critics. He repeated the reasons for the Premier League clubs’ rejection of regulation: ‘We don’t want Big Brother looking over us.’ According to Wiseman, football clubs were autonomous, free businesses without limits on expenditure. Lies, dishonesty and conflicts of interest were tolerated because some managers of clubs derided regulation. ‘We don’t want teams of lawyers and accountants poring over our records. Nor do we want the cost of that additional bureaucracy.’ The clubs, he argued, were already subject to parliament’s laws and many regulations. If the clubs were being ripped off, or exposed to Inland Revenue investigation, that was an issue for the clubs, not the FA. That was an opinion endorsed by Ken Bates. The senior status in the FA achieved by Ken Bates reflected the integrity of English football. ‘I didn’t bother to read the Reid report,’ Bates proudly admitted. ‘What for?’ Ken Bates typified the attitude and character of the majority of English club chairmen.
4
THE CHAIRMAN: KEN BATES
The champagne and smoked salmon meal that Ken Bates shared with Rupert Murdoch in 1992 ranks among Bates’s proudest moments. After a history of minimizing his taxes and encountering insolvent companies Bates was seated in the Australian’s penthouse flat in St James’s overlooking Green Park. Momentarily, Bates could forget his own grubby commercial history and enjoy the extravaganza of ranking as a player in the tycoon’s constellation. ‘I’ll give you the Premier League for £50 million,’ Bates offered, describing a deal which he would subsequently squeal to Murdoch was ‘a marriage made in heaven’. In Bates’s version of his life, brokering that marriage transformed English football, and he deserved the credit.
Ken Bates’s extra delight was to have undermined David Dein, the vice-chairman of Arsenal, for the second time. In 1988, Dein had been party to a secret understanding with ITV worth £44 million to forge the then Big Five clubs into a Super League. Dein’s collaborator Greg Dyke, the football fan and chairman of ITV’s sports committee, had promised £1 million to each of the Big Five clubs – Manchester United, Arsenal, Tottenham, Everton and Liverpool – if ITV were granted the exclusive rights. ITV won the competition. In self-congratulation, Dein recalled that in 1965, a bygone age, BBC TV had paid £5,000 for the rights to highlights on Match of the Day, distributed as £50 to each club. In 1983, the television rights earned £5.2 million, but in 1985 the fees fell to £1.3 million. The casualties of the new contract would be the Second Division clubs who benefited from the FA’s proposed agreement with the BBC. ‘You tore to shreds a good deal for all of football,’ Graham Kelly told David Dein in a tone of bewildered anger. The Lancastrian, although a modernizer, was irritated by the interlopers’ partisanship. ‘They’re brash, rich and prepared,’ Kelly grumbled about Dein and his supporters. His only sanction was to support Dein’s removal on 18 October 1988 from the Football League’s management committee in punishment for a conflict of interest. Bates relished Dein’s embarrassment when he was criticized, albeit ludicrously, as an insider trader by no less than Robert Maxwell. ‘All I wanted,’ pleaded Dein in self-defence, ‘was to get the best deal for football.’
In 1991, First Division clubs were earning £1.8 million for allowing televised broadcasts of their matches. More adventurous chairmen of the star clubs had vowed to terminate ‘free’ football on television and seek an agreement favouring themselves and excluding the other clubs. ‘We’re knocking on an open door,’ reported David Dein, after presenting Graham Kelly with his plan for a Premier League. Kelly invited the BBC, ITV and the new Sky channel to bid for the television rights of the league of twenty-two clubs (soon reduced to twenty) to start in 1992.
Once again D
ein forged an alliance with Martin Edwards of Manchester United, Philip Carter of Everton, Irving Scholar of Tottenham and especially Peter Robinson of Liverpool to support ITV. Ken Bates was not consulted. Bluster, threats and Greg Dyke of ITV Dein hoped would persuade Rick Parry, the Premier League’s first chief executive, to side with ITV against Ken Bates and Sky. In a posture of bravado, Dyke told Parry: ‘We’ll be calling the shots. We’ve got twelve votes in our pocket.’ That threat proved to be misconceived and counter-productive. Dyke, an uncouth populist, lacked the intellect and guile of Rupert Murdoch and Sam Chisholm, Sky’s chief executive. Dyke had also lost Tottenham’s vote; Alan Sugar, the new chairman, was contracted to supply Sky’s satellite dish.
Sam Chisholm calculated that the key to success was to eschew the confrontational tactics of Dyke and Dein. ‘Sam played Rick Parry well,’ acknowledged a rival. Parry was invited to Sky’s ramshackle headquarters in Isleworth; he was seduced by Rupert Murdoch on the telephone; and he departed with ‘impressive pledges’ followed by a written bid. By contrast, Dyke offered Parry only more threats.
In that confrontation, Dyke ignored Parry’s opinion that a single broadcaster could not maximize football’s potential profits. Parry favoured Sky working in association with a terrestrial station – either ITV or BBC. Dyke, he believed, was ‘intransigent’ by insisting on ‘exclusivity’ and rejecting co-operation with Sky. ‘Dyke’s trying to frighten the chairmen into an agreement,’ judged Parry, encouraging Chisholm to finalize the ‘dream ticket’.
Fearing stagnation from earlier losses of £14 million every week, Sky needed to secure live Premier League football to survive. Chisholm’s target was Will Wyatt, the deputy managing director of BBC TV. Four years earlier the BBC had, embarrassingly, lost the rights of televising Football League matches to ITV. Chisholm offered the opportunity for revenge with the highlights of the new Premier League matches. ‘If you get football back on to BBC,’ joked Chisholm, ‘you’ll be made Lord Wyatt.’ Although he represented the world’s biggest broadcasting corporation, Wyatt lacked any real commercial experience. Thinking only of the short-term benefit, he accepted Rick Parry’s guidance that the BBC should join Sky’s bid. ‘That gave credibility to the Sky offer,’ rued a competitor later. ‘Wyatt’s agreement was vital.’ (In 2000, Wyatt received a CBE for ‘services to television’.) The competing bids – Sky versus ITV – were to be discussed by the Premier League chairmen on 18 May 1992.
‘I want an assurance from you,’ Dyke challenged Parry on the eve of the decision, ‘that you’ll recommend ITV or I’ll go to individual clubs.’ Parry was aghast. Encouraged by Dein, Dyke was constantly undermining ‘the spirit’ of the Premier League by pitting the clubs against each other. ‘I’m negotiating for all the clubs,’ replied Parry stoically. ‘Individual clubs have no say.’ Dyke, Parry believed, was damaging the process. The daily telephone calls which Parry received from David Dein, urging ITV’s cause, were further aggravation. Dein appeared to be oblivious to the imminent revolution in broadcasting. One relief was the other daily call from Ken Bates urging resistance against Dein. ‘There’s going to be no ITV stitch-up,’ warned Bates, an emerging player in the dispute. As stipulated, Sky delivered a sealed bid the night before the twenty chairmen met.
On the morning of 18 May 1992, adopting bizarre tactics, Greg Dyke’s representative stood in the lobby of the Royal Lancaster Hotel handing out envelopes to the arriving chairmen containing ITV’s bid of £262 million. Parry was incensed. Encouraged by Alan Sugar – who had already telephoned Chisholm urging Sky to ‘blow ’em out of the water’ – Parry also telephoned Chisholm and suggested, ‘Bid again against ITV.’ With gratitude, Sky outbid ITV and, thanks to Sugar’s casting vote, a slender majority of chairmen accepted Sky’s offer of £305 million for a five year contract. ‘You were appointed to sell the Premier League to ITV,’ Dein sniped at Parry. ‘Each club has one vote,’ replied Parry, sensitive that Dein had become an impassioned critic, but grateful for one vocal supporter. ‘Shut up,’ Bates snarled at Dein during the discussion among the members of the new Premier League. ‘You’ve finally lost!’
David Dein’s contemplation of revenge was brief. In the jungle of the new Premier League, it was dangerous to probe into the background of competitors, especially of Bates, a fearless pirate who habitually overwhelmed anyone daring to suggest an investigation of his financial activities. Selfish and vulgar, the chairman of Chelsea had cultivated a hint of aggression to conceal the secrets of his past and protect his current ventures. That manner had, in 1982, secured his ownership of Chelsea and subsequently saved the club from the consequences of insolvency. Bates’s commercial history before his purchase of Chelsea had not been examined by the FA. The Association renounced any judgement about the probity of club owners, even if, like Bates, they were elected as members of the FA’s executive committee. The world of football avoided judgements of its leaders, especially those who secured promotion to the Premier League.
Bates’s journey to fame was strewn with mystery, strife and brushes with bankrupt companies. In self-justification for his brash aggression, Bates had pleaded that his impoverished childhood had bred insecurity. Born on 4 December 1931, Bates’s account of his life suggested that at eighteen months his mother died and he was abandoned by his father to be cared for in a west London council flat by step-grandparents. In his late teens, he was reconciled with his father and, after abandoning an accountancy course, worked with his father in a quarry business near Manchester. At twenty-two, stocky and outspoken, he married Theresa, the daughter of a wealthy Irish country squire. Her family provided the money for his first Bentley, bought the year after his marriage. The quarry prospered and he began supplying ready-mix concrete to the growing building trade. Astutely, Bates became master of an unsentimental business, undercutting the established producers of concrete by locating his plants in the nursery towns close to Manchester rather than forty miles away, sharply reducing his transport costs. Bates lived near Blackburn, and his natural progression was to become a builder. His activity attracted Torquil Norman, an Old Etonian employed at Philip Hill, a City investment bank. Norman had been told about Bates by an acquaintance: ‘There’s this bright chap in the north called Bates you should meet.’ Norman was impressed by Bates’s humour, his Bentley and his concrete business which, boasted Bates, had produced £700,000 in profits. Norman introduced Bates to Philip Hill’s directors who agreed to invest through Mineral Separation Ltd in Batehill, a new company established to invest in land leasing in Scotland and manufacturers of carpets, uniforms, toys and marine equipment. ‘We were the first venture capital company,’ recalled Norman. ‘“Putting skates on business” was our motto.’
The City connection encouraged Bates’s ambitions. On 28 January 1965, he launched Howarth, a construction and property development company based in Burnley, on the Manchester stock exchange. In the same year, intent on fame, he used his new wealth to become chairman of Oldham Athletic FC. Football, he told his new audience, was a passion and only a club-foot had prevented his own professional career as a footballer. Howarth’s share price rose and Bates acquired a succession of property companies.
By 1967 Howarth was struggling. Bates’s expansion had proved to be unsustainable. In a statement to shareholders in March, he admitted, ‘The recent past has been an unpleasant one and the present situation is difficult’, but he was optimistic that, ‘we have put the worst of our troubles behind us.’ At the shareholders’ meeting, Bates promised, ‘I am not getting out. I am fully involved in the group.’ There was also a shadow over his management of Oldham Athletic. A newspaper reported in 1966 that Bates had summoned the police to investigate the club’s accounts and, in the following year, a director resigned complaining, ‘Bates believes in a committee of two, with one absent.’ His relationship with Torquil Norman was more amicable. Batehill had proved to be more profitable than construction and, through the company’s financial relationship with Britten Norman, the str
icken manufacturer of the small Islander aircraft, Bates had been introduced to the British Virgin Islands, a colony of 8,000 people.
During a business visit to the Virgin Islands in 1966, Bates met Norman Fowler, an American who had negotiated an unusual agreement with the British administrator of the colony. Development of the islands’ economy, explained Fowler, had been hampered by suspicious natives and the absence of flat land around Road Town, the capital of Tortola, a mountainous island with a population of 2,000. With the approval of the British government, Fowler planned to exploit the explosion of tourism across the region by reclaiming 2.5 acres of water between the capital and an islet at Wickham’s Cay. The new link would release 60 acres of land for the construction of houses, hotels and a marina. Fowler’s operation had, however, collapsed. Every day’s successful dredging was reversed during the night as the sea crept back over the reclaimed land. The fault, Bates realized, could be rectified by hiring a competent Dutch engineering company. A stark comparison appealed to Bates. Land in Road Town cost $3 to $4 per square foot, while in St Thomas, in the nearby US Virgin Islands, land values had risen to over $40 per square foot. The reclaimed land in Tortola, Bates believed, covered with a luxury holiday complex, would earn profits of possibly $50 million. Aged thirty-five, Bates saw an opportunity to earn money in a tax haven and avoid Britain’s 90 per cent rate of income tax. Telephoning Torquil Norman from the Treasure Isle Hotel, Bates bubbled excitedly about ‘earning enough in three years to retire for ever’.
