124
A.
ALVAREZ
votes, whatever his party. And in this instance, the man was very
good indeed: a tough, white-haired, fire-eating Scot, who had
gained his campaign experience the hard way, in Tynemouth in the
'twenties, had written a book on money, was an expert on Middle
Eastern affairs, had done his stint of lecturing in the States and,
above all, had that rare quality, a real political passion. The mani·
festo he circulated through the constituency was a detailed, care–
fully reasoned critique of the Tories and an equally precise exposi.
tion of his own principles. The Conservative, on the other hand,
produced a brief little handbill saying, in effect, that he had done
all right so far-in the manner, presumably of King Log, since
his
parliamentary record was, to all intents and purposes, a blank–
and hoped he would be given the chance to do the same again.
Personally, he liked golf and his wife cooked well. Admittedly, only
Oxford dons vote on prose style; but on paper it looked as though
there would be a Labour walkover.
Granted, elections aren't fought out on paper. But they don't
even seem to be fought at meetings. The first one we went to was
held in the hall of a local school. It was a foggy evening and the
fog had crept into the corners of the room, giving the place a queer,
churchly air. When we arrived, rather late, a local councillor was
in full spate. He was a young man, plump and buttoned up tightly
in a tweed jacket, who spoke with an awkward mixture of porn·
posity and nervousness-later we heard that this was his maiden
speech-but would not be stopped. On he droned with a kind of
foggy intensity, while the chairman tugged occasionally at his
jacket, surreptitiously at first, then quite openly; the candidate
stared glumly at his boots, and the candidate's wife peered down
her nose at the offender. Finally and unwillingly, he sat down,
apologizing for all the points he had not had time for. There
was
some ragged, scarcely polite clapping. Then the candidate was
in·
troduced. And within minutes the bored, inert audience was ap–
plauding, heckling, laughing, squabbling among themselves. We all
talk politics with more or less heat, but it is only on occasions like
this that one realizes the huge gap between the interested amateur
and the professional. The young councillor had known his facts and
