Don’t Mess with Leithers

In the late summer of 1987, Hibernian’s then owner Kenny Waugh decided to sell the football club to unknown lawyer David Duff for £875,000. Born in Edinburgh but based in England, Duff immediately installed himself as club chairman and his brother-in-law as Managing Director – always a good start.

Joining them were an accountant and solicitor appointed for their supposed ‘expertise’ in the vital field of acquiring property; which the new owner proposed to utilise to further the interests of the club and in the stated aim of competing with the Old Firm. The owners quickly ingratiated themselves with a support starved of any sign of success when they signed Neil Orr and Andy Goram for a combined total of £425,000.

A little over a year later, Hibs became the first Scottish and second British football club to float itself on the stock market – couched in the Thatcherite nonsense that this would open up ownership to the ordinary supporter. Only around 1700 fans actually purchased any shares, ending up with a 15% stake in the club.

Overall, the flotation was estimated to earn the club over £2 million and this new money was purportedly earmarked for paying down existing debt and putting the club on the sound financial footing needed to launch any assault on the upper reaches of Scottish football.

Like all good venture capitalists, the new ownership team started a period of ‘restructuring’; splitting the football club into three different sections. Edinburgh Hibernian PLC was for all intents and purposes the football club (but with a snappier title), and this was joined by Hibernian Leisure and Hibernian Land and Property. The latter two were the vehicles for the new ownership team’s vision of using property deals to bolster the revenue streams available to the football club.

In this vein, they quickly purchased a nightclub in the west of England called The Talk of the Town (it wasn’t). This acquisition was reported to have cost a million pounds and involved the taking out of a very large mortgage. Subsequently, this bit of savvy entrepreneurship was followed by a Sport and Country club in Devon and a chain of hotels and pubs in the English West Country called Avon Inns, which were purchased for over £6 million combined.

The cunning business acumen behind these purchases was plainly evident when the new property ventures were estimated to start bringing in a yearly income of £800,000 and in fact lost more than double that in the first year alone. Chess not checkers perhaps.

Despite doing their best to make it seem otherwise, it began to transpire that there were in fact a few wolves behind all this sheep’s clothing. Each of the various properties in the west of England that were purchased by the new look Hibernian were in receivership, and all were owned by the same person – David Rowland. It was further revealed that Rowland had provided David Duff with the vast majority of the funds for his purchase of Hibs (an £800,000 loan) and that the accountant brought onto the board by Duff was in fact a director of both of Rowland’s existing companies. Rowland used the club and its supporters to clear these problem properties from his books.

As events unfolded, it was revealed that Rowland had been gifted 30% of the initial share issue when Hibs floated on the stock exchange – at a value of £1.2 million for the shares and his ‘expertise’. Of the £2 million raised by the share issue it was soon understood that the club had actually only received £500,000, with the rest going on expenses and to Rowland.

Going against the grain later in life, David Rowland became the Conservative Party’s largest single donor in 2009, gifting them £2.8 million from his tax exile home and becoming the Party’s elected treasurer the next year. He was forced to resign soon after for being too much of a Tory for the Tories.  

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A second share issue ended in unmitigated disaster. Only around 200 of the original 1700 investors took up the option to purchase additional shares in the club and a flotation that was being estimated at returning £5.75 million in fact ended up with the club’s shares being de-listed from the relevant stock market after they fell below the legal value threshold – crashing from a high of 70p a share down to 17p. This led Hibs to post a loss of £1.6 million in the year of 1989, bringing their overdraft arrears up to £5.5 million – from £300,000 at the time of the takeover.

Duff and other board members later attended a meeting in London under the assumption they would be opening negotiations with a mysterious potential buyer for some of the properties they had saddled the club with. This turned out to be none other than Hearts chairman Wallace Mercer.

Just prior to this, Mercer had announced plans to build a new ‘super’ stadium for Hearts on some green-belt land in the west of Edinburgh owned by then Rangers chairman David Murray (had to be). This stadium was to be the centrepiece of a projected £200 million 375 acre office and housing development on the site and it became obvious that the stadium’s inclusion in the plan was an attempt to bypass the strict planning permission requirements for green-belt sites at the time.

On the morning of Monday 4^th June 1990, it was announced that Mercer had tabled a bid of £6.2 million for Hibernian Football Club. Mercer sold this takeover as “his vision for the future that would see one Edinburgh side challenge the dominance of Rangers and Celtic and an end of tribalism in the city”. However, this was quickly recognised as yet another tired episode of vulture capitalists attempting to subsume a rival and strip its assets to fund their own vanity. Easter Road stadium and the ludicrous properties acquired by Hibs under the ownership of Duff were to be sold off to fund Mercer and Murray’s gentrification project in west Edinburgh.

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By lunchtime that very day, crowds gathered outside Easter Road to condemn the takeover and Mercer with it. At a packed out meeting held later that night in the local supporters club and the street outside, ‘Hands Off Hibs’ was formed and a campaign of resistance launched. The supporters club and others immediately began to purchase shares in Hibernian and the campaign received prominent support from the local council and MP.

The Saturday of that week saw a protest rally take place inside Easter Road itself. Former players and well-known supporters gave speeches and support, with The Proclaimers ending the event with a powerful version of that anthem of solidarity ‘You’ll Never Walk Alone’. A ‘Battle Bus’ was organised by the campaign to tour the city collecting signatures for a petition against the takeover, which was delivered to the Hearts board and to Margaret Thatcher in Downing Street. Groups of Hibs fans formed picket lines at the Bank of Scotland headquarters on The Mound to pressure them to block the sale. 

Subsequently, the Bank of Scotland stipulated that in this instance, instead of only having to acquire 51% of the shares in the club/company to be considered the owner, Mercer would need to reach the figure of 76% which would make any sale legally enforceable. If he failed to do so by the 2^nd of July, he would be forced to withdraw.

The puppet on the strings of the vultures, David Duff, became a real boy and refused to sell his crucial share – urging all others involved to follow his lead. The bid hamstrung, July 2^nd arrived and instead was the date for another mass rally, this time at the Usher Hall. Hearts hero John Robertson disobeyed his club’s owner and gave a speech at the event. Mercer meanwhile, stalled at 62% of the shares, could only apply to extend the deadline by a week.

On Saturday 14^th July, that deadline passed with Mercer unable to gain the 76% control necessary: on defeat Mercer reflected that he had been beaten ‘by the sheer ferocity of emotion displayed by the fans of the Easter Road club’.

The club were still in financial difficulty before they were bought by Tom Farmer in the summer of 1991, who wisely left the leisure and property arms of the corporate Hibs in the hands of the receivers. Hibernian survived, and tribalism in Edinburgh got its ultimate villain.

‘Hands Off Hibs’ was a moment in time and something that is still fondly remembered by fans today. It should also act as an inspiration to the current Hibs support. The campaign energised and involved large numbers of ordinary people in taking the destiny of their club and community into their own hands. The Hibs support out-thought and out-manoeuvred those used to getting their own way simply through the massive advantages that their wealth and power seemingly entitles them to.

A permanently engaged and organised support could have the ability to shape Hibernian Football Club in the present as it once did in the recent past. From campaigning for genuinely affordable ticket prices for every game, through organised dissent at blatant mismanagement, all the way to fan and community ownership of the institution that they have had the largest part in creating.

An organised fan-base can also act as a positive and progressive force within the community – lending support to initiatives and struggles in the local, regional and national area both within and outside of the world of football.

To those who think the sport of working people is lost to the venal world of big business, this may seem wishful thinking. But we need only remember the time when the supporters of Hibernian took on those who know the price of everything and the value of nothing – and won.

All information for this article was sourced from ‘Hibernian: The Life and Times of a Famous Football Club’ by Tom Wright.