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Scotland on Sunday 06/03/1994
Guiding light shines over field of dreams
'Dempsey and Low, who turned down directorships, may be content to wait until a period of turmoil is complete'
'Attempts to maintain a dynastic power structure set up conflicting forces which came close to pulling Celtic to pieces'
'McCann completed all the paperwork at 11:52 on Friday. It was eight minutes from the bank's deadline of high noon'
'Friday was for the formalities. Smith, White and Michael Kelly were ready to stand down so long as they were compensated'
THERE'S an American ritual which follows every election; prosaic in itself, but eloquent of the transience of power. In the small hours of the morning, when the result is certain, the Secret Service moves in to protect its new president. It spoke volumes on Friday afternoon, many hours before the old guard finally capitulated, that Celtic's burly security officer, George Douglas, was in the car park to meet Fergus McCann and guide him through the throng.
For two hours and a crucial eight minutes earlier, the only thing that really counted had been settled. That morning, Scots-Canadian millionaire McCann and his adviser, David Low, had dodged traffic in their PR man's BMW to reach the Bank of Scotland offices in Trongate, Glasgow. The car, fittingly, was fire-engine red; they were bent not only on rescuing a debt-ridden Celtic but also on seizing control of one of the world's great footballing institutions.
The day before, the bank had been on the point of calling in the receiver, and relented only when McCann's consortium agreed to inject 1m immediately to control an overdraft erupting beyond its 5m limit. Frantic activity ensued as the money was located, transferred, converted to sterling and lodged in the Trongate branch. McCann completed all the paperwork at 11:52 on Friday. It was eight minutes from the bank's deadline of high noon. The battle for Celtic ended with those strokes of the pen.
Attention focused on Celtic Park, where three directors were agreeing to resign and sell their shares, but their fate had been inevitable from the moment the bank swung behind McCann. When he arrived at the club soon after two o'clock, he was proprietor rather than visitor. At the main door McCann was greeted by Glasgow businessman Brian Dempsey, another member of his group. The moment was camera perfect; the club opened up for them, with the Celtic crest, and all it stands for, looming large on its glass doors.
Such stage-management only begins when the struggle is concluded. The turmoil of the past few extraordinary days has its origins in 1986, the year Rangers breached the cosy conventions which had made the Old Firm rivalry so profitable to both throughout the century. Until then the Ibrox club had operated in the same frugal manner as Celtic; their record signing had been 250,000 for Craig Paterson. When Lawrence Marlborough then took over Rangers he introduced a spending programme which tapped their true potential. Graeme Souness became manager and English internationals such as Terry Butcher were lured north. The club boomed:
Celtic have been struggling, and failing, to frame a response ever since. Their catalogue of troubles trips off the tongue with the ease of a nursery rhyme. Lou Macari is the fourth manager at the club since 1986, after only five in the preceding 99 years. The last trophy was won in 1989. The expensive players who were occasionally purchased mostly flopped. Although it is individuals who are berated on the terracing, Celtic's problems lie in their own archaic nature. The club was a family affair, run by the Whites, Kellys and Grants, who had, by the early years of this century, all won power struggles of their own. They tended to conduct business in a prudent if unimaginative fashion.
After 1986, however, thrift was no longer enough. The club's subsequent attempts to both change its ways and maintain a dynastic power structure set up the play of conflicting forces which came close to pulling Celtic to pieces. In May of 1990 two new directors were brought on to the board, Michael Kelly and Brian Dempsey. The appointments were viewed as a cause for celebration by fans who consider such matters at all. Michael Kelly is the grandson of James Kelly, captain of the first Celtic team, and the former Lord Provost of Glasgow, a PR to his toes who is credited with much of the success of the city's Miles Better campaign. No shrinking violet he;
Michael still adorned a Celtic press release 10 days ago, during the now-discredited ''launch'' of Celtic plc, with pictures of Mr Happy. But such ironies were yet to come. At the time, the former economics lecturer seemed to offer both intellectual ability and shrewdness. Brian Dempsey, who had established his own business as a housebuilder, was supposed to provide commercial acumen. The club was facing the Taylor Report's demand for an all-seater stadium by 1994, and Dempsey proposed that Celtic should build a new ground as part of a complex at Robroyston. But the virtues of that scheme were never to be tested. In October 1990, Michael Kelly and company secretary Chris White engineered a coup which saw Dempsey removed from the board at the agm. The quest for a motive leads straight into a morass of allegation and innuendo. Would the Robroyston plan have proved disastrous? Did Dempsey stand to benefit personally from the scheme? Were Kelly and White fearful of his growing authority within Celtic? Motives aside, their coup had one undeniable effect; they had created a powerful and aggrieved adversary.
Dempsey is the son of a Labour MP and has childhood memories of being bundled out of his bedroom so that his father might have privacy to talk to a constituent. Dempsey, a captivating orator, is steeped in the craft of campaigning. In October 1990 he at last found his cause. Nonetheless, Celtic might well have beaten off Dempsey's persuasiveness and McCann's millions had it not been for the cunning and pugnacity of one man. David Low may well have been the most important figure in the events which saw the old guard vanquished this week. The 35-year-old is usually described as a financial analyst but cheerily answers to the term ''corporate thug''. He has a venomous way with company law and is usually brought in to devastate one side in strife-torn businesses. In 1991 he was chairman of Bremner's and presided over the acrimonious task of turning a failed department store into a healthy investment firm.
In that period Low retained Kelly for PR purposes. Low now recalls remarking to Kelly that his removal of Dempsey would ''come back to haunt him''. This was an observation rather than a veiled threat, but in August of that year he moved house from Edinburgh and returned to his native Glasgow. The relocation brought him close to the conundrum of a floundering Celtic. Low's background made an intense interest in the topic natural. At Friday's triumph he carefully chose to wear the old school tie of St Aloysius, a Catholic, fee-paying institution in Glasgow. In 1991 his inquisitive mind prevented him from accepting the received wisdom that it was impossible to take over Celtic. His inquiries established that the board owned only 40% of the shares, although their close relatives held a further 20%. Celtic, as a private company, are able to exercise a veto over any sale of shares but Low soon devised a means of circumventing that obstacle. He concluded that it would be enough to buy the proxy, or voting right, of any share even if the share remained in the name of its original owner. Having alerted Dempsey to the strategy Low began travelling frenetically in Ireland and North America, either purchasing proxies or at least encouraging shareholders to join the rebellion. That was easy evangelism for there was widespread bitterness over Celtic's decline. His establishment of a coherent, dissenting group of minority shareholders began to make the board's position look precarious.
In January 1992 SoS revealed Low's activities and brought the conflict into the public arena, where it has remained ever since. Soon after, two directors – Tom Grant and Jimmy Farrell – were identified as being ready to support Dempsey's attempted takeover. In a pre-emptive strike the remainder of the board then called an extraordinary general meeting for March to secure the dismissal of both men. With his customary guile, Low ensured that the motion would fail. He demonstrated to the courts that a large number of shares in the hands of the opposition had been unlawfully transferred in the past. An interim interdict then prevented them from being used. Just before the meeting, however, Grant reached a peace agreement with