Jack Dunnett, who has died aged 97, was a solicitor, Labour MP and property developer who will also be remembered as a hugely successful chairman of Notts County FC – and as president of the Football League during a troubled time for the English game.
Dunnett served as league president from 1981 to 1986, and again from 1988 to 1989. He was in the role at the time of the 1985 Heysel stadium disaster: before the European Cup final between Liverpool and Juventus in Brussels, 39 mostly Italian fans died after Liverpool fans attacked supporters of Juventus, leading to a fatal crush. The disaster resulted in a ban on English clubs competing in Europe.
Dunnett helped to restore English clubs to European competitions, and urged Margaret Thatcher to abandon her plan, in the aftermath of Heysel, for fans to carry identity cards linked to computerised turnstiles. The ID scheme was dropped after Dunnett resigned as league president in 1989.
Dunnett will also always be seen as a considerable influence in the revival of Notts County (as chairman he oversaw their rise from the fourth division to the first in little more than a decade) and, as Labour MP in the city, a key figure in Nottingham’s political fortunes. He was adamant that his football connection – he would talk about the game with local people when holding his clinics in city pubs – played a significant part in his winning six elections.
His involvement in football began in 1963 when he became chairman of Brentford FC, then in the fourth division. After the 1966 World Cup the club was losing £500 a week, and he discussed with Queens Park Rangers’ chairman, Jim Gregory, a merger of the two clubs. But this move threatened Brentford’s independence – and a consortium of businessmen and supporters bought out Dunnett’s shares to stop the proposed deal.
Within weeks he had joined the board of Notts County, another fourth-division club. He financed the club’s regular annual losses by making interest-free loans from his company, Park Street Securities. The club paid a low rent to their landlords, Nottingham council.
In his two decades at Meadow Lane, Dunnett had a happier time than at Brentford. He appointed Jimmy Sirrel, a charismatic Scot who had played for Celtic, as manager in November 1969. By 1973 he had taken the club to the second tier. Sirrel departed for Sheffield United in October 1975, but returned two years later to complete the remarkable transformation of Notts County into a First Division side in May 1981. The club remained in the top flight until 1984.
Dunnett was born in Maryhill, Glasgow, to working-class parents. The family moved to Croydon, south London, where Dunnett attended the independent Whitgift middle school. He won a place at Downing College, Cambridge, to read law, but the war interrupted his course: he served in the Royal Fusiliers and the Cheshire Regiment. Demobilised as a captain in 1946, he returned to Cambridge, took his degree and, after qualifying as a solicitor in 1949, set up his own practice in Mayfair, central London. Dunnett also soon made a fortune on the property market, with enough liquid assets to become a “name” at the Lloyd’s insurance market in 1968.
Dunnett joined the Labour party in 1949 and was on Middlesex county and Enfield borough councils from 1958 to 1961, serving as an alderman until 1963. He was elected to the Greater London council in 1964.
In the same year he was elected as MP for Nottingham Central and held the seat until it was abolished in boundary changes for the 1974 election. He was then returned for the new Nottingham East constituency until the 1983 general election, in which he did not stand. The seat then fell to the Conservatives.
Despite his cutting edge as a successful businessman, Dunnett also had the common touch as an MP – and prodigious energy. Needing only five hours’ sleep after arriving back in Nottingham from Westminster in the small hours, he would travel around Nottingham schools and factories in the morning, before heading to Meadow Lane in the afternoon to meet the Notts County manager and club executives.
On Friday evenings Dunnett would hold his MP’s surgery, then visit pubs in his constituency, having a pint in each and chatting with anyone – and it could be hundreds of people – who chose to bend his ear, whether it was about football, politics or a problem in their lives.
It amused the Notts County players that Dunnett would turn up at the football ground in his Rolls-Royce, whereas at election time he would be seen driving an old Ford Capri with a megaphone on the bonnet. But such was the loyalty Dunnett commanded that he would have Notts County players canvassing on his behalf in streets around the ground – apart from the striker Les Bradd (still Notts County’s highest scorer), who had been brought up as a Conservative and would stand on the street corner while other players went from door to door.
When the playing days of central defender Alex Gibson, another fellow Scot, were drawing to a close, and he appeared to be destined for work at the fruit market, Dunnett hired him as his chauffeur and he drove the chairman to and from London for several years.
In 1987 Dunnett stood down as director of Notts County, severing his connection with the club but leaving behind a legacy of success. With the club almost £2m in debt, he also left behind the Lifeline fundraising scheme, in which fans were invited to pay £2 a week to ensure the club’s survival and have the chance to win cash prizes. Lifeline has played a large part in saving the club, and is still operating today.
His wife, Pamela, whom he married in 1951, predeceased him. He is survived by two sons and three daughters.
• Jack (John Jacob) Dunnett, solicitor, politician and football club chairman, born 24 June 1922; died 26 October 2019
