Basil Charles •

I shake hands might and main, With "How d'you do," and "How d'you do" and "How d'you do" again!

Jerry the Merge (Trio. To the Air of: '0 Polly,

you might have toyed and kissed.') 0 voter, you should Macheath resist; By keeping Ted off, you'll bring me on.

First Floater But he so teases me, and he so squeezes me, What he asks, I've nearly done.

Jerry the Merge

0 voter, from Harold the Twist desist, Be woo'd at length, but never won.

Second Floater But Harold teases me, and he so squeezes me.

I fear very soon I shall be undone.

Mac the Smile

Harold the Twist Jerry the Merge (In Unison. To the Air of: 'Fill every bowl, for wine inspires us, and fires us') Fill every box, for votes inspire us and fire us, With cour-age, love and joy.

Ballots and polls our lives employ.

Is there aught else earth desirious?

Fill every box, for votes inspire us, and tire us.

With Cour-age, love and joy.

Third Floater (Solo Aria. To the Air of: 'How

happy could I be with either.')

How happy could I be with any,

Were t'other sly charmers away!

But when they all tease me together For no one I'll vote on the day. Tol-de-rol, lol-de-rol, laddy, Tol lol-de-rol, lol-de-rol, lay, Tol lol-de-rol, lol-de-rol, laddy, Tol lol-de-rol, lol-de-rol, lay! which a greater sense of crisis prevailed or a more profound frustration with the style of national debate.

I like canvassing. Of course, it needs practice in building the stamina required to enjoy meeting the local problem family after their neighbours have just slammed their front door in your face. But the secret of successful canvassing is to meet people and not just to accost them and demand their vote. Perhaps the contempt that some politicians profess in private for the intelligence of the electorate is the inevitable result of the difficulty of making social contact on the doorstep. Not that many doors are slammed in Islington, When the campaign started friends professed sympathy over what they called a tough seat. There were rumours that stones had been thrown at a previous Conservative candidate. It was said that cars with Tory stickers had their tyres slashed in the street. In fact, if the courtesy I have received were any indication of voting intentions, I would be home and dry. • We canvassed the owner-occupiers first concentrating as we thought on supporters. As the campaign prospered and manpower increased we diversified into blocks of council flats. As it turned out, the sprinkling of support there was almost comparable and our welcome a great deal warmer.

In fact, the worst evening we spent was in the most prosperous part of Islington. I had assumed that the well-heeled intellectual who despises any Tory as an illiterate, ignorant of the Hegelian sophistications of the 1848 Marx, no longer existed except in the columns of Peter Simple. No so. Barnsbury is full of them. Earnest academics and television producers were contemptuous on the doorstep or inveighed against us over the intercom as it was difficult for them to leave their dinner parties.

As an historian I have always maintained that Tory support is drawn, in absolute numbers, pretty evenly from all classes and income groups. This is vividly confirmed by experience. Islington South and Finsbury, with much of the old London community still intact south of the gentrified streets of Canonbury and Barnsbury, is fairly representative. It provides a reminder, if any were needed, that the gulf between the 'opinion formers' and the public is refreshingly large. Too many politicians forget this. Wilson has been campaigning in a world of his own creation. The Leader of the Labour Party, that purveyor of the Dunkirk spirit, after ten years of crying 'crisis' no sooner finds himself with one of his very own than he accuses the rest of us of conspiring to exaggerate it. His speeches are presentation without content, beyond the ritual Tory-bashing. If he is working on T. S. Eliot's belief that "Human kind Cannot bear very much reality."

then he is living dangerously. Certainly he will not be able to stand against any political pressure that is rooted in reality. I chaired one of Mr Heath's meetings, a talk-in with about two hundred young people. The ITN news bulletin referred to a 'filtered audience' and it is true that we did not have to field a single difficult question. A more politically representative audience might have provoked combative responses from Mr Heath and produced more inspiring coverage on the evening news-casts.

Our own canvas returns, like the polls, show that public opinion is fluid and there are too many 'don't knows' for accurate prediction. This must make it difficult for Central Office to keep a finger on the pulse, however sophisticated their feedback. All the more reason for party leaders to be exposed to the rough and tumble of the grass-roots so that their statements carry the conviction of immediate response to public concern. Politicians place a necessary but potentially dangerous reliance on professional public relations. My own campaign has been greatly helped by a PR consultant friend of mine, actuated I hope by friendship, or else by a professional challenge, since she's a Liberal sympathiser. My own first idea was to transport my deposit to the Town Hall in a wheelbarrow. The present rate of inflation, unchecked, will lead to a Weimar situation, and we shall all be collecting our wages by the barrow load.

If this election is to achieve anything we must convince the nation that inflation poses an immediate threat not only to our economic well-being but to our social and politicalsystem. There are still, I am afraid, even members of the Tory Party who have not grasped this essential fact. Any departure from this central point is, at the best, window dressing and, at the worst, stupidity.

Good public relations sometimes requires soft answers. But the public deserves, and I believe wants to hear, the truth. The truth may not be pleasant but it is acceptable when it is put over with conviction and concern. Honesty is the essence of political sex appeal. Islington South is a highly politicised constituency. During a Saturday morning walk-about in Chapel Market we were in competition with Communists, Squatters and Irish civil rights campaigners. At one stage a small crowd (of three) gathered and began to shout that I didn't know what a pound of apples cost and I should go back where I came from SinceI usually buy my fruit in Chapel Street and I live nearby, this worried me. But the hecklers turned out to belong to the 'Solidarity with the People of Chile' movement, so I consoled myself with the thought that their solidarity with the people of Islington was problematical.

The best thing about electioneering is the remarkable help and support given by friends. And during stresses and strains of the campaign you certainly need it.

Patricia Hodgson is Conservative candidate for Islington South and Finsbury.