[BITList] Empire Jack

[John Feltham]

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> Griffiths, Sir  John  Norton-, first baronet  (1871-1930), public works contractor, was born on 13 July 1871, at Williton, Somerset, son of John Griffiths (1825-1891), builder, and his wife, Juliet Avery (1831-1926). He was educated at Colet Court, Kensington, and Latymer School, Edmonton. At fifteen he was articled to an architect but soon enlisted in the army as a trooper after lying about his age. During the 1890s he worked in southern Africa as a sheep farmer, beachcomber, barman, captain in the British South African police in Mashonaland, scout in the Matabele (Ndebele) campaign, and collector of mining claims in Rhodesia. He re-enlisted during the South African War and was captain of Lord Roberts's bodyguard.
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> In 1901 Griffiths married Gwladys (1873-1974), daughter of Thomas Wood, engineer; they had two sons and two daughters. He was selected in 1905 to build the Benguela railway connecting the Angolan coast with Belgian Congo mining districts and the Rhodesian copperbelt. Despite the suspension of this work in 1908 Griffiths obtained the backing of a syndicate led by Lord Howard de Walden to form the firm of Griffiths & Co. In 1909 Griffiths and this syndicate contracted to build a northern extension to the Chilean Longitudinal Railway. For five years he spent half his time in Chile superintending the work. Life there was rough: on average two peons were murdered weekly on his work gangs. Griffiths had the strength of a prize-fighter and the temperament of a guerrilla leader. He made a private cult of triumphing over adversity by sheer will-power and this resulted in his eventual nemesis.
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> Before 1914 Griffiths built sewers in London and Manchester, and constructed a 105 mile aqueduct through the Caucasus to supply the oil industry at Baku. In 1911 he formed a Canadian subsidiary, but his backers were alarmed by his escalating costs in Chile and Russia, and refused to finance an Australian railway contract signed by him in 1913. Howard de Walden resigned in October 1914 as chairman of the Griffiths company, which was wound up in March 1915 with heavy losses. Griffiths had secured his own financial position, but henceforth met difficulties in raising capital.
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> A regiment of irregulars, the 2nd King Edward's Horse, was raised by Griffiths in August 1914. Next year, under the aegis of the Royal Engineers, using methods evolved by his sewer workmen, he organized tunnelling companies which endured hideous conditions to reach the German lines, under which they planted deadly mines. Most notably they buried 933,300 pounds of explosive under Messines Ridge; when these were detonated on 7 June 1917 Lloyd George heard the explosion in Downing Street. Griffiths was abominated by fellow officers for his flamboyance, which included motoring about Flanders in a 2 ton Rolls-Royce loaded with champagne, but was awarded the DSO and temporary rank of lieutenant-colonel (1916). In November 1916 he was sent to Romania to destroy vital materials which the Germans might seize. He mustered a small force, and within six days exploded 200 square miles of oilfields causing damage valued at £50 million. He also burned or flooded hundreds of thousands of tons of grain. On becoming KCB in 1917 he assumed the surname of Norton-Griffiths.
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> In January 1910 Griffiths was elected Conservative MP for Wednesbury (which he represented until 1918). He defeated a partner of his business rival Weetman Pearson, afterwards Viscount Cowdray; simultaneously Worthington Evans, Griffiths's intimate business friend, defeated Pearson at Colchester. Griffiths's patriotism was violent and vulgar-admirers nicknamed him 'Empire Jack'. He and Evans were ultra-Imperialist 'insufferable bores', Sir Maurice Hankey noted in 1917, Griffiths 'a clever man in a technical sense, but stupid, unpractical and visionary in his ideas'  (Roskill, 423). Norton-Griffiths was elected anti-coalition Unionist MP for Wandsworth in 1918 and held this seat until 1924. His public meetings were often rowdy, and he was fined for striking a heckler. He received a baronetcy in 1922 and implored Baldwin for a barony in 1929:
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> I'm always fighting Yanks, Italians, Germans etc and a Peerage would materially influence foreign business for the benefit of British Trade ... Cowdray helped his party, but his party helped him to do so. Why if one has played the game for 20 years shouldn't a good old Conservative get an equal chance to a Liberal? ... I am the only British firm-or all but-trying to keep the flag flying in S America ... I can play the game and of course I should do much more if I am helped in this manner. (Norton-Griffiths to Baldwin, n.d. [1929], Baldwin MS 164)
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> J. Norton-Griffiths Ltd in 1921 contracted to reconstruct the harbour at Luanda, but when work was suspended in 1925, it was suspected 'that operations were being deliberately held up and difficulties intentionally created so as to provoke a breach of contract' by the Angolan government 'so to give the firm an opportunity of claiming damages'  (dispatch 14 of A. B. Hutcheon, 17 March 1925, TNA: PRO FO 371/11091). Among other works in the 1920s Norton-Griffiths built the underground railway from Charing Cross to Kennington, but lost money on the contract. He was deeply distrusted in the City and by government departments. Like many bullies he was a poor judge of character. His desperation increased as he became discredited: by 1928 he was involved with dubious associates, or pursuing over-elaborate schemes with no object 'except that ... our old friend "Empire Jack" will make a few thousand pounds to buy a new Rolls Royce'  (Joseph Addison to Sir Michael Palairet, 10 Aug 1928, TNA: PRO FO 371/13275).
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> In 1929 Norton-Griffiths contracted to heighten the Aswan Dam, but his costings were hopelessly awry. Facing ruin, he could not maintain his bluster any longer and on 27 September 1930 paddled out in a surf boat at the coastal resort of San Stefano near Alexandria and shot himself. His embalmed corpse was returned to England.
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> Richard Davenport-Hines 
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> Sources  The Times (29 Sept 1930) + The Engineer (3 Oct 1930) + R. K. Middlemas, The master builders (1963) + R. P. T. Davenport-Hines, Dudley Docker: the life and times of a trade warrior (1984) + S. W. Roskill, Hankey, man of secrets, 1 (1970) + Memoirs of a Conservative: J. C. C. Davidson's memoirs and papers, 1910-37, ed. R. R. James (1969), 287-8 + department of overseas trade memorandum, 1 Feb 1924, TNA: PRO, FO 371/10092 + Anti-Slavery and Aborigines Protection Society to foreign office, letter, 10 Aug 1926, TNA: PRO, FO 371/11136 + Norton-Griffiths to Ramsay MacDonald, letter, 24 June 1924, TNA: PRO, FO 371/10031 + H. Lewin, to L. Maxse, letter, 7 Oct 1917, W. Sussex RO, Maxse papers, 474/238-9 + Midland Advertiser (1909-14) [sundry reports] + S. E. Katzenellenbogen, Railways and the copper mines of Katanga (1973) + CUL, Baldwin MS 164 + Joseph Addison to Sir Michael Palairet, 10 Aug 1928, TNA: PRO, FO 371/13275 + Dispatch 14 of A. B. Hutcheon, 17 March 1925, TNA: PRO, FO 371/11091 + R. P. T. Davenport-Hines, 'Griffiths, Sir John Norton', DBB + DNB
> Archives CUL, Baldwin MSS + Parl. Arch., Davidson MSS + TNA: PRO, Foreign Office MSS, 371 series
> Likenesses  J. Kerr-Lawson, pencil and watercolour drawing, NPG [see illus.] · photograph, repro. in Davenport-Hines, Dudley Docker, 64 · photographs · photographs, repro. in Middlemas, Master builders, 256-7
> Wealth at death  £5392 2s. 4d.: probate, 29 Nov 1930, CGPLA Eng. & Wales
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