Gastronomic tour
James Hughes-Onslow
rr here was a short respite from election 1 news last week when that mysterious pilotless executive jet from Vienna flew across Scotland and plunged into the Atlan- tic near Iceland. Cartoonists had fun. It was a bit like the Marie Celeste — not very, just a bit.
If you turned on BBCI that same Thurs- day evening at 9 p.m. expecting to see the news, you would have seen an identical aircraft with a couple of hopeful executives on board, Where it was going we were not told. In fact, this was a Liberal SDP broad- cast with Roy Jenkins and David Steel demonstrating how well they work as a team. Jenkins, who seems to have been suf- fering from decompression ever since he returned from that tall building in Brussels, is fond of the aircraft analogy. You will remember the experimental plane that was to break the mould, standing on the runway ready for take-off about four years ago. Well, it's up there now and the big question is: who, if anyone, will be at the controls when it comes down again?
A video of this film was shown the following day on David Steel's Battlebus as it made its way from Islington to St Albans. (The day before, on the way back from Huddersfield, the journalists had been luckier. They had watched Countess Dracula.) What made us passengers a little uneasy was Jenkins's mention on TV of food, or rather lack of it, the starvation he had experienced in his childhood in South Wales in the Twenties and Thirties. Loud guffaws and calls for a lunch stop were heard from the parliamentary press. Steel explained that there was no time for lunch — it was not on the schedule — and an aide added rightly but rather cheekily that lobby correspondents always ate too much anyway. We did stop for lunch when the Battlebus was found to be ahead of schedule, but if this had been the Jenkins Battlebus, lunch, surely, would have been on the schedule.
Gastronomic matters to Roy Jenkins are what broken ankles are to Michael Foot part of the stereotype. So it's a bit unfair to
go on about it. But wnichever way you look at it, food is a recurring theme in the life of the Battlebus. In the course of 24 hours campaigning last week, David Steel publicly consumed a Bakewell tart for his Midland fans, a chip butty for his northern ones and a carton of cockles for the fishermen of Southend. The Liberals of Southend also presented their leader with a stick of rock, with 'Liberal SDP Alliance' written right through it, a good enough excuse for keep- ing it as a memento. He obligingly helped himself when a handful of greasy chips was thrust in front of him in mid-afternoon, causing an aide to say, 'Oh no, he'll be sick. The St Albans Liberals gave him locally- made marzipan effigies of himself and ROY. Jenkins. `Do I eat myself or Roy first?' he asked, neatly getting out of that one. ,You aolrivFe000nt pboecilainugsedwaye.,are going
should have given me a marzipan them to eat the Food markets are much favoured for political walkabouts, not because they offer the opportunity to discuss issues of burning importance to the voters' pockets but because they produce an immediate crowd for the television cameras. This is not always appreciated by the local community. 'They look pretty but they've got no brains' was the opinion of the Bermondsey shopper who had seen quite a lot of politicians in the recent by-election campaign. 'I'm trying to make a living. Hop it', said a stallholder in Chapel Market in Islington. A pensioner, anxious for his aphorism to be recorded, stood beside the Battlebus repeating 'You lot have done as much for the working classes as Cyril Smith has done for hang- gliding.'
Shirley Williams was the first to mention food last Friday as I was waiting for the Battlebus to depart. She produced the notorious 1979 Thatcher shopping bag, with 1983 prices, at the press conference at the National Liberal Club at 8.30 a.m. This
was too much for the Standard reporter
who had had a bad night and was nearly sick before we reached Bermondsey. At the Blue Market, a favourite stomping ground of the Liberals' brand-new former MP for Bermondsey, Simon Hughes, I was obliged to find black coffee and toast for the suffering hack. I wonder if Hughes knows where you find black coffee and toast in the Blue Market. The fish and chip shop is the answer. By producing coffee I think I also gained a few points with Steel's transport aide who had threatened to give my seat to a more serious reporter who he hoped would show up at the next stop.
The aide was trying to boil a kettle while fixing up the loudspeaker system. He was
also trying to provide waiting journalists with copies of the day's itinerary from a machine that was working at half speed, and at the same time trying unsuccessfully to get through to the Shirley Williams bus on the telephone. The Liberals have been criticised for hiring a Belgian bus and their answer is that it was the only one available. Every- thing inside it, they explain, the sofas, the swivel chairs, the coffee machine, the televi- sion, the telephone and the loo are all British. But while the bus worked perfectly they had considerable trouble with the home-made bits.
Perhaps because they've seen it all so recently before, Bermondsey was more tolerant of the Battlebus entourage than Isl- ington. In Bermondsey they are really rather blasé; after the by-election 2% months ago when all the big shots turned up, the general election looks quiet by com- parison. Unfortunate Islington in any case found itself on Friday at the centre of a minor furore which was of little concern to the constituents of John Grant, the SDP candidate for Islington North . Frank Ch apple had endorsed Grant, a friend of his, caus- ing Arthur Scargill to demand Chapple's resignation as chairman of the TUC. Press and television crews trampled the vegetable boxes, angering market stallholders, in the stampede for quotes. It was a happy chance for the SDP that a heavy shower forced Mr Grant back on the bus to hold his press con- ference on board.
Watching Steel in action one is struck by the variety of oddballs — sorry, broad cross-section of candidates — he has to deal with. A smooth young barrister in Ber- mondsey, a quiet low-key door-to-door campaigner in Hackney who knows the slums inside out, and a couple of hardboil- ed former Labour MPs in Islington. In St Albans and Chelmsford, on the other hand, both Tory seats where the Liberals have a good chance, the candidates are tall angular young public school types who have worked in Steel's Westminster office.
The head of Steel's private office, Stuart Mole, has been burrowing away at Norman St John-Stevas's elegant Chelmsford foundations for 11 years. This time he ex- pects to topple the edifice and join his boss at Westminster. He congratulated Steel on arriving in Chelmsford, his final stop of the day, an hour early — incidentally giving the hungry press time for dinner. Shirley Williams who had been in Chelmsford at lunchtime, had been 40 minutes late. Shirley's lateness, along with Roy's gour- mandising and Michael Foot's accidents, is the other recurring joke of the campaign.
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