REVEALED: Tony Blair’s plan to move Premier League club to Belfast during his time as Prime Minister is revealed in newly released files
Tony Blair wanted to move struggling Premier League club Wimbledon to Belfast in the late 1990s.
Previously secret government papers reveal the former Labor prime minister thought it was an ‘excellent’ idea to encourage the south London club to move to Northern Ireland.
A memo from 1997, not long after Blair came to power, is described as “a follow-up to previous informal discussions about the possibility of an English Premier League football club moving to Belfast.”
The fact that the city would have an English Premier League club would be a “major breakthrough”, the document said, and “should be able to build strong support from across the community and provide a positive unifying force in a divided city.’
The note proposed renaming Wimbledon Belfast United and building a 40,000-seat sports stadium, mainly funded by the private sector, either on Queen’s Island in east Belfast or on the North Foreshore in the north of the city.
Prime Minister Tony Blair, pictured at the Football Association’s London headquarters in 1997, wanted to move Premier League club Wimbledon to Belfast in the late 1990s.
Wimbledon had won the FA Cup in 1988 but had fallen on hard times in the late 1990s
Blair’s response shows that he thought it would be ‘excellent if Wimbledon moved to Belfast and we should encourage this as much as possible.’
The story was leaked to the Belfast Telegraph, which reported that Foreign Secretary Mo Mowlam supported the idea, which the government said would bring new investment to Northern Ireland.
However, the memo also met with strong local opposition within the football community, amid fears it could ‘destroy the game in Northern Ireland’.
Downing Street’s chief press secretary Alistair Campbell noted that Wimbledon’s owner Sam Hammam had ‘explored the possibility of moving Wimbledon to Dublin’.
It was noted that Hammam wanted to gauge how serious the idea of moving to Belfast was.
A new bulletin dated July 16, 1998 – a few months after the Good Friday Agreement was signed – gave Blair’s personal support for the proposal.
It was followed up on August 17, with the matter at a ‘delicate stage’ as Irish football authorities ‘remained strongly opposed to the idea’.
Belfast television presenter Eamonn Holmes and three local newspapers had been ‘active in rallying public support’.
Blair stands next to Irish Prime Minister Bertie Ahern during the peace process in Northern Ireland
Wimbledon chief Sam Hammam had considered moving the club to Dublin in the 1990s
By the time of the next exchange in April 1999, the situation had not improved much.
A member of the Bring Premier League Soccer to Northern Ireland wrote that ‘difficult, intensely open, honest debate, discussion and negotiation are required’, but the reward could be ‘great indeed and potentially magnificent’. A situation comparable to the peace process.’
The idea was eventually shelved and the 1988 FA Cup winners Wimbledon eventually moved to Milton Keynes and were renamed MK Dons in 2004.
A successor club, AFC Wimbledon, was founded by fans and has climbed the football pyramid. They currently play in League Two.
Another cache of newly declassified documents released in 2022 revealed that Campbell wrote to Blair in 1998 suggesting an Old Firm match between Rangers and Celtic be held in Belfast.
The dossier suggested the two sides could swap kits and wear their rival team’s colors for the match, not long before the vote on the Good Friday Agreement.
Alistair Campbell (right), former adviser to Prime Minister Tony Blair, wrote a letter in 1998 suggesting a match in Belfast between Celtic and Rangers (left) to publicize the Good Friday Agreement
Campbell said, “An idea. How about staging a match between Rangers and Celtic in Belfast in the final days of the referendum campaign?
‘It would be a unique event in itself, but we could add to it by having Celtic wear Rangers strips, and Rangers wearing Celtic strips (although one or two of the Rangers players, as far as I know , may have difficulty with that). this).
‘But both in terms of generating publicity for the campaign and sending out a message it would be very powerful.
‘I have direct access to Celtic, while I can get Alex Ferguson to approach Rangers.
‘Before I go any further, do you and (Foreign Minister) Mo (Mowlam) think it is worth pursuing this even if, given end-of-season commitments, it may not be possible to get all the big names there?’
There is no record of anyone at Campbell revisiting the idea.