Devon rhymes with heaven, and for
good reason. It’s all green grass, chocolate-box cottages and fishermen’s
coves, wedged between three equally beautiful counties: Cornwall, Somerset and
Dorset. Together, these make up the farthest corner of England -- a paradisical
peninsula jutting into the Celtic Sea, on the edge of the Atlantic Ocean.
When an Englishman thinks of
Devonshire, cider and clotted cream come to mind, and wild Exmoor, where
buzzards swoop overhead, and red deer and wild ponies roam free. So the very
last thing anyone would associate with Devon would be the Stafford Furniture
Company, Limited.
In the 1970s, the Devonshire town
council of Barnstaple voted quietly for the creation of an industrial park to
be tucked in a woody area on the edge of the town. This would result in jobs,
and in increased business and tax income, they claimed. It would be good for
Barnstaple. The local weekly paper gave the story supportive splash headlines,
and not a letter was written to the editor; and not a voice raised in protest.
Barnstaple’s people weren’t like that. Not at that point, anyway.
Barnstaple’s elders kept a wary eye
on the kinds of plant that set up shop in their industrial park. The newcomers
tended to be environmentally friendly -- which was not a phrase much used in
England at that time. There was a manufacturer of duvets, for whom an
environmental crisis could be nothing more serious than a cloud of goose
feathers accidentally leaked into the
atmosphere. There were two household furniture factories that made couches and
armchairs out of local oak and imported hardwoods. Another made window shades,
and others produced balls of twine, cardboard boxes, and a brand of
confectionery very similar to Twinkies.
And then along came Jack Stafford, a
tall, lean man in his early thirties who had bushy black eyebrows, and who, had
he chosen to be an actor, would have made a perfect hero in a Bronte or Dickens
movie. Jack was a furniture designer who had recently won several awards from Britain’s
prestigious Design Council. However, his furniture was not comfy couches and
chairs for peoples’ homes. His business was contract furniture, and his
specialty was stacking chairs, for use in conference rooms, hospitals and other
public places. He’d been so successful that his firm had recently been bought
by the Thomas Tilling Group, a conglomerate active in everything from life
insurance and laboratory glassware to engineering. Stafford’s small workshop in
Norfolk could no longer cope with the demand, and Tilling agreed to invest in a
new plant elsewhere.
When Stafford’s planning application
reached the town council, the burghers of Barnstaple read it with care. They
looked at artfully lit photographs of his award-winning chairs, and another
that showed his impressive gold-plated trophy from the Design Council. The
recent acquisition by the respected Thomas Tilling Group was noted, and the
application was accepted.
At that time I was already a public
relations consultant to several Tilling Group companies, including Stafford
Furniture. Jack Stafford and I drove down to Devon to see how the new building,
on a site on the edge of Barnstaple Bay, was progressing. For me, the main aim
of this trip was to gather enough information to write a proposal for organizing and publicizing the official
opening of the plant about a year later.
At one point we passed a rectangular
building, out of which several pipes snaked toward the bay.
“What’s that going to be?” I asked.
“That? Oh, it’ll be the water
treatment plant.”
“What’s it going to treat, exactly?”
Jack seemed unconcerned. “It takes
the gunk out of the water we use in the plating process.”
“What kind of gunk?”
“Well, chromium and cadmium, actually.
They’re deadly poisons, of course. We use them to put the chrome on the chairs.
The treatment plant will filter it out, so by the time it gets into the bay
it’ll be as clean as a whistle.”
That sounded okay to me, and my mind
switched elsewhere.
The plant began what they called
‘pilot production’ about three months before the official opening ceremony
planned for April 1971. A few days after the first shiny chrome-plated chairs
came off the assembly line, Jack Stafford called me in my office in London.
“Bit of a fuss going on in Devon,
John,” he said.
“Really? “ I said.
“There are people demonstrating at
the gate.”
“Demonstrating?
What about?”
“Some of the townspeople are in a bit
of a tizzy about the plating plant. They’ve heard about the chrome and cadmium.
They think our treated water could kill the fish in the bay, and find its way
into the town’s water supply.”
“What’s your reaction to that?” I
asked.
“Piffle,” he said. “Absolute bosh! That water’s as
pure as the driven snow. Why? A baby could drink it."
In a day or so we’d fixed a press
conference, at which the plant manager and I met the demonstrators and the
local media. Armed with documents from the firm of consultants certifying the
purity of the water, we took reporters on a guided tour of the plant. On the
next day the noisy, banner-waving crowd was gone from the factory gates and,
later in the week, stories appeared in the local paper and broadcast media
assuring Barnstaple’s citizens that they had nothing to fear.
For the next few months all was
quiet. Then, one day in the spring, Jack Stafford and his board of directors
converged on the town’s best hotel, with me, of course, in readiness for the
opening ceremony. Later in the day came Sir Geoffrey Eley, the chairman of the
Thomas Tilling Group and others of his ilk, together with Jeremy Thorpe, the
popular Member of Parliament for Devon North. With my press releases,
photographs, lists of invitees, name tabs and other PR paraphernalia after
weeks of preparatory work, I was there checking and counter-checking, phoning
and fussing.
That evening, as we all relaxed in
the hotel bar enjoying pre-dinner drinks, I heard what seemed to be raised
voices in the street outside the hotel. I looked out the window, where about
thirty people were gathering, unfurling banners on which the word ‘Poison’
seemed to be prominent.
“They’re back,” I whispered to Jack.
“Who?”
“The demonstrators.”
Stafford and I slipped out of the bar
and into the street, where a slightly belligerent man with a red, round face
asked me, “Is that Jack Stafford bloke in there?”
“He’s right here.” I told him.
Stafford strolled up to the man, for
all the world like Clint Eastwood as Dirty Harry. But he held out his hand.
“How do you do,” he said. “What can I do for you?”
“Well, you can shut down that bloody factory
for a start!” the man said.
An argument began about the efficacy
of the water treatment plant, at the end of which Stafford said, “Listen, my
good man, I thought we cleared this up once and for all last year. Tell me,
what do we have to do to convince you that this water’s perfectly safe?”
The man thought for a moment, and his
colleagues craned to hear his answer.
“There’s only one thing,” he said.
“If you can get one of them high-ups to drink some of that water himself, in
front of the newspapers and that. Then we’ll believe ya’”
“Bargain,” said Stafford, and they
shook hands again.
Who’d impress them most, Jack and I
wondered. We doubted Sir Geoffrey Eley would do it. Who better, we agreed, than
their own, likeable Member of Parliament?
Back in the bar I sidled up to Jeremy
Thorpe and put the question to him.
With a sly grin he said. “Why not?
But there’s just one condition.”
“What’s that?” I said.
“That you drink it first,” said the
MP for Devon North.
In the morning I slipped out the
hotel and bought an elegant crystal goblet from the nearby Dartington Glass
Works, and half an hour later, the Right Honorable Jeremy Thorpe, MP, Jack
Stafford, a foreman and I stood together, alone, around a faucet in the water
treatment plant.
The water ran clear and clean. I
raised the goblet to my lips. It was flat, but utterly tasteless. I refilled
the glass and passed it to the others.
“Not a vintage year, I’d say,” Thorpe
said dryly.
Three hours later the band played,
Sir Geoffrey Eley cut the ceremonial tape, and the VIP party meandered through
the plant under the watchful eyes of the reporters and TV cameras. At the water
treatment plant, true to his word, Jeremy Thorpe drank a convincing amount of
the water. Then, inviting an unbiased witness to join him, he poured himself
another glass, carried it to the front of the building, raised his goblet to
the crowd, and downed the entire contents. Smiling broadly, the Right Honorable
Member made a little bow.
The demonstrators had watched
silently among the public on their tiered benches, waiting for the show, their
banners furled but ready. Slowly, a ripple of applause from the audience
swelled into cheers.
And we never heard from them again.
oooOooo
