Henry Norris and
the Fulham Conservatives Part Two: De-selection and Libel
Last
updated: August 2008
[ROGER THIS FOLLOWS
STRAIGHT ON FROM SLFUPOL]
In 1919 the signs of
coming political upheaval in Fulham had been there for a while, for those who
could read them. The local Labour Party
had been getting better organised, holding more political and social events,
getting more press coverage. And criticism
by the local press of the way in which Fulham borough was being run, had been
getting more strident. The long years
with no effective opposition and all local elections cancelled had been having
their inevitable effect on the Conservative majority on Fulham Council,
according to the Fulham Chronicle: Council meetings were short, some
lasting a matter of minutes; the recommendations of the standing committees
went through on the nod; there was virtually no debate, even on issues which
the man in the street and the Chronicle’s reporter thought needed
careful and informed consideration; and the councillors developed the habit of
ejecting the press from meetings at which sensitive issues were to be
discussed, the most sensitive being the bonuses given each year to Council
staff. Norris, as the mayor of Fulham,
bore a lot of the responsibility for this; he was extremely busy, especially
from 1915 to mid-1918, but as we can see under New Labour, democracy has to be
seen to be working in a meaningful and relevant way for people to believe in
it, it can’t just go through the motions, that generates cynicism and
apathy. My researches into Henry Norris
have been going on while Arsenal FC have been building their new stadium and it
has been an education to see in both cases how easily what are meant to be
democratic processes supposedly open to the participation and access of anyone
can be turned into the complete opposite.
Henry Norris and many
of his old councillor acquaintances didn’t stand for election in October
1919. In Norris’ case, as MP for Fulham
East already, he was moving on. Some of
them retired from active politics: men like George Keen, Job Walborn and Arthur
Cook had been serving as elected representatives on Fulham Vestry in the 1890s
and probably felt that enough was enough.
Others, though, thought they could see it coming - a big and humiliating
defeat. A few bravely chose to stand
anyway, and lost their seats; one or two stood and hung onto their seats but
found themselves in unknown country - in the minority party. Though the Liberals did equally badly, that
was no consolation to the Fulham Conservatives: Labour gained a majority on
Fulham Council so for most of Norris’ time as MP - November 1919 to October
1922 - his local party was out of power in the borough, something they were not
at all used to. Rates rose; of
course. The chances are they would have
had to go up even if the Conservatives had been in power, but as they weren’t,
they blamed the party that was, and the Coalition Government; bringing us back
to Norris, who as their MP in Fulham East they expected to do something about
it at the national level. He did what he
could; but as I’ve said in my files on Norris as an MP, that was precious little.
The retirement of so
many councillors in November 1919, and the success of Labour in Fulham, led to
new men coming forward in Fulham’s Conservative Party. I say new men, but they weren’t all younger
than Henry Norris. Two of the most
important, William Waldron and Edward Reed Armfield, were of Norris’ own
generation; but they had not played any significant role in the Party during
Norris’ time as councillor and mayor.
During Norris’ time as MP they moved into the limelight. They were joined there by others who do seem
to have been younger: Frederick Bellenger who by 1922 was the secretary of
Fulham Conservative Club; Frederick Flew; a man called Isaac Jacobs who in 1922
Henry Norris mentioned specifically, implying that the man was less than
enthusiastic about Norris as MP; and a second such man, a Mr Holmes. Many of the new men in Fulham Conservatism
were members of Fulham or of West Kensington tradesmen’s associations, two
groups that in the early 1920s were well-organised and active in exactly the
way Norris thought the Conservative Party in his constituency ought to be but
wasn’t. They were helped to prominence
in Conservative party circles in Fulham by the deaths of two of its stalwarts,
George Adams and James William Webb, in the early months of 1922, just after the
Conservative Party in Fulham East had asked Henry Norris to increase his
subsidy and he had refused. At the
meeting at Mr Flew’s house designed to resolve the situation, Norris was
therefore confronted by people whom he didn’t know well, some of whom did not
bother to conceal their view that he was not the right man for the job.
When talking to the Fulham
Chronicle in September 1922, Norris still felt hurt and bitter towards his
constituency party. By then he wasn’t
the only man to have been messed around by them, however - Fulham East
Conservative Party had been through two more candidates and was on a
third. The first was a local man, Percy
Gates, who may have got as far as being officially selected, but may only have
been widely rumoured to be the next candidate in Fulham East. I couldn’t find out when or why he bit the
dust, but in August 1922 Fulham East Conservatives officially adopted Harry
Greer as their candidate, who was already an MP but wanted a constituency
nearer London. Within a couple of months
of being officially adopted in Fulham East, Greer had dropped out too, through
ill-health, and Fulham East had had to apply a second time to the Party central
office to get yet another potential candidate sent to them, Kenyon Vaughan
Morgan. The occasion of Norris’
interview in September 1922 with the man from the Fulham Chronicle was
an approach made to him by his ex-constituents, asking for a public statement
of his support for their latest candidate; and after a great deal of
heart-searching and talking it over with Edith, he had refused. Talking to the Fulham Chronicle gave
him a chance to explain that it was nothing personal, to put his side of the
whole messy business, and to tell the readers that he and his wife would be
taking no further part in Fulham life.
The tale did not end
there, though. The interview with Henry
Norris appeared in Fulham Chronicle just as all local parties were
getting prepared for the local elections.
Norris allowed the Fulham Chronicle to print extracts from
letters written by him and by his constituency party. He also named names. Amongst those who read it, there were a lot
of people in Fulham Conservative Party who were wondering whether the timing of
the interview had been a deliberate attempt by Norris to sabotage their
chances. The mutual dislike did not die
down in time, either; it reared its head again when there was another general
election a year later.
I’ve mentioned William
Waldron and Edward Reed Armfield as two of the new men in Fulham Conservative
Party in the early 1920s. As I’ve said,
neither were young, they were just new to senior positions in the Party. Edward Reed Armfield and Henry Norris had
known each other since the late 1890s, when Armfield was running the Fulham Road
branch of his family’s dry cleaning business.
In the years in between he’d diversified into carrying out plumbing,
building and decorating; though he wasn’t a builder on anything like the scale
of Allen and Norris. Although his
politics had always been Conservative, he was better known in Fulham during
Norris’ time as a tireless campaigner on the single issue of rates increases;
and as a member of Fulham Tradesmen’s Association. Armfield had been elected to Fulham Vestry in
the 1890s but he hadn’t stood in the elections of 1900 and didn’t stand again
until November 1922 when Fulham Tradesmen’s Association put up a lot of
Conservative candidates; so he and Norris had never coincided at Fulham
Council. William Waldron had been a
councillor during the Norris era but he hadn’t been one of the clique (or inner
circle if you want to be more polite) that decided things. Both he and Armfield were involved in the
saga of Norris’ de-selection as MP for Fulham East, however, because by August
of 1922 if not before, Waldron was the President and Armfield was the chairman
of Fulham East Conservative Party.
As the presidency of
the constituency party was not an active role, as chairman it was Armfield’s
job to do the work of getting a candidate to replace Henry Norris in Fulham
East; and I presume he approached the Conservative Party central office. Armfield seems to have asked to be sent men
of a particular political view on free trade, because I note from coverage of
them in the local papers that unlike Norris, both Harry Greer and Kenyon
Vaughan Morgan were unequivocal in their support of import duties to protect
British products and jobs.
Although ousted from
Fulham Conservative circles, Henry Norris was still viewed as an important
figure in Fulham politics. Just after
the collapse of the Coalition Government, on Monday 30 October 1922, Armfield
went with Vaughan Morgan to visit Norris, hoping to persuade him to endorse
Vaughan Morgan as his successor. They
weren’t successful. Although he had
nothing against Vaughan Morgan personally (as far as I know he barely knew
him), Norris was still too resentful of the way in which the constituency party
had behaved towards him to endorse the man who would be fighting the general
election in Fulham East instead of him.
Vaughan Morgan was
elected anyway and when another general election was called in November 1923,
he was fighting it as the incumbent MP.
Vaughan Morgan described himself to the Fulham Chronicle as “no
hybrid Conservative” and as a supporter of the new Conservative Party leader
Stanley Baldwin. In his very first
campaign speech he declared that free trade could no longer be considered an
option for Britain now so many foreign markets were closed to imports of
British goods. Vaughan Morgan’s opponent
R C Hawkin on the other hand was described by the Fulham Chronicle and
by the Times as well as not only a Liberal Party member but a “Free
Trade candidate”. There was also a
Labour Party candidate, John Palmer, one of the borough’s aldermen, but both the
Fulham Chronicle and the Times felt that Labour were not likely
to make much impact in Fulham in a campaign in which (according to the Times)
“the economic question is prominent”.
Henry Norris might
have felt that he was well out of a general election campaign in which the
economy was the major debating point, because his views on free trade were not
orthodox Conservatism like Vaughan Morgan’s were; they were more akin to
Hawkin’s. And therein lay the
trouble. Although doing no overt campaigning
in Fulham, on 27 November 1923 Norris wrote to R C Hawkin a letter in which he
expressed his hostility towards Baldwin’s economic policies. Hawkin’s must then have passed it on to the Times
as a good bit of propaganda on his side, following the Times’ piece on
the campaign in Fulham. The Times duly
quoted it at length on 28 November.
Norris had obviously studied Baldwin’s economic proposals with care,
because he criticised them on several grounds, making his clearest statement on
why he believed free trade was important for the good of Britain’s
economy. He thought that they lacked
detail, particularly about what imports were and what were not going to be
subject to duty. Norris stated that to
put forward import duties as a cure for all unemployment was “absurd”; this was
a view he had held for many years. He
thought it was possible that they might protect jobs in some trades; but this
would be offset by the loss of jobs in others.
He then stated that the basis of his belief in free trade was his view
that free trade kept prices down; if the government instituted an economic
policy of applying duty to foreign imports, prices would “go up as surely as
night follows day”. And he ended his
letter to Hawkin by saying that Prime Minister Baldwin was trying to hustle the
public into making a decision on free trade v import duty without giving them
all the information they needed on this most complex and difficult issue.
On Friday 30 November
1923, Fulham Chronicle took up Norris’ letter in the Times under
the headline “Sir Henry Norris supports free trade: bomb-shell for East Fulham
Conservatives”. It quoted from the
letter at length and printed with it a response from Fulham East Conservative
Party signed by Edward Armfield as chairman of its election committee. That was fair enough and a good contribution
to local debate on the issue. However in
the Chronicle’s ‘Out and About’ news and gossip column, it described the
publication of Norris’ letter to Hawkin as “a shattering blow” to Fulham’s Conservatives,
and having been referred to at a recent Liberal Party campaign meeting in
Fulham East as “an incentive to Liberal and Conservative Free Traders
throughout the country”. By the end of
the following week, Hawking was quoting Norris’ letter in a campaign
leaflet. As a result, the Fulham
Chronicle said, there had been unleashed “a torrent of wrath” towards
Norris amongst the Fulham Conservatives.
It quoted someone whom it didn’t name as having described Norris to them
as “a disgruntled and embittered man” actuated by “personal malice”. On Monday 3 December 1923 lawyers for Henry
Norris obtained a writ for libel and an injunction forbidding any further
repetition of the words quoted in the Fulham Chronicle; and naming the
man who had so indiscreetly said them as Edward Armfield of Fulham East
Conservative Party.
If there was any
attempt at achieving an out-of-court settlement in the case, it wasn’t covered
by the press. Judging by Norris’
attitude in his case against David Cook (1919), he would not have agreed to
such a thing: it wouldn’t have been a sufficiently public apology. Norris v Armfield reached court on 11 April
1924 and was heard by the Lord Chief Justice.
Armfield’s barrister was Sir Hugh Fraser. Norris’ barrister was Mr Campion KC who’d
acted for him in his case against Cook.
Campion got quite a lot of laughs when, in his speech putting Norris’ case,
he gave the judge a quick resumé of the debate on whether import duties were
able to solve unemployment and the judge asked him who on earth he’d got that
argument from. Campion carefully glossed
over Norris’ conduct in letting Hawkin send for publication some views he must
have known would offend people in Fulham.
Campion said Norris had “felt it his duty” to let Hawkin publish his
letter and wasn’t responsible for the widespread publicity it had then
received.
Nothing Campion said
made any difference: Armfield’s words were a slander, and their appearance in
the Fulham Chronicle an undoubted libel.
Armfield had already admitted it and paid a contribution towards Norris’
costs and 100 guineas into the court as damages. Fraser, as Armfield’s barrister, had only to
repeat his client’s apologies and regrets.
Norris gave the 100 guineas to charity.
And so ended Henry
Norris’ career in politics. For many
different reasons, an anything-but-glorious one.
IF YOU WANT TO KNOW
MORE ABOUT THE SOURCES OF ALL THIS INFORMATION, SEND ME AN EMAIL AND I’LL SEND
YOU THE SOURCES FILE.
Copyright Sally Davis August 2008
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