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 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,
they claimed, would result in jobs, and in increased business and tax income.
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 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 thriving conglomerate
active in everything from life insurance and laboratory glassware to
engineering. Stafford’s small workshop, in the county of 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 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 chrome plating
process.”
“What
kind of gunk?”
“Chromium
and cadmium. 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.
“It’s piffle,” he said. “Absolute bosh! That water’s as pure as the
driven snow. 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 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
are?”
“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 Stafford bloke in there?”
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 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 one condition.”
“What’s
that?” I said.
“That
you drink it first,” said the grinning MP for Devon North.
In
the morning I slipped out and bought an elegant crystal goblet from the nearby
Dartington Glass Works, and half an hour later, the Right Honorable Jeremy
Thorpe, 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, and
utterly tasteless. I then filled more glasses and passed them to the others.
“Not
a vintage year, I ‘d say,” Thorpe said dryly.
Three
hours later the town 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.
