Ellen Wiles - The Invisible Crowd

I’ve always tried to be patient, but it’s hard if you’re constantly being deluged with someone else’s worries or pestered for reassurance or blamed, especially when you’ve got a lot going on yourself. Not to mention the fact that, after I accepted the candidacy, Nina decided she actively disliked all party politics and refused to speak about my work at home. Point-blank! So I was expected to gag myself against any mention of the work I was doing at the most important point in my entire career, but constantly tell Nina not to worry about ridiculous things in a patient voice that implied she wasn’t in fact being ridiculous? It didn’t exactly motivate me to rush back home when I had a constituency to convince, put it that way.

But I digress. That day, Alice and I were on our way back to London, as I say, and I had a vile hangover, but Alice had scheduled a review discussion en route. So I bought myself a long black at the station, and once we were on the train I pulled out my notebook. We talked about how the trip had gone, how the campaign had progressed, what had worked well or less well, and how we might adapt our approach, and, inevitably, we got onto immigration.

It had never been a policy priority for me personally before, not really, but this phase of the campaign had made me realize I just had to take it seriously and focus on it if I wanted to engage the constituents. It was a huge deal for them. Their biggest worry. People were already concerned about all the Eastern Europeans in the mix offering labour for peanuts, and what with illegal immigration stepping up too and asylum seekers swarming in, they felt like they were being invaded. And I needed to up the ante – my UKIP counterpart was wielding all kinds of extreme language, and he was becoming far more popular than anyone had predicted.

Alice and I had always seen eye to eye on pretty much everything. But that morning she said that, in her view, a lot of the headlines I was regularly quoting were more media hype than fact and I should ‘maybe chill out a bit’. I told her she risked being naïve, and while I appreciated her playing devil’s advocate, I ultimately needed her to endorse the approach I was taking, and in fact strengthen it, and that what I was saying was actually more considered and moderate than it necessarily needed to be to make the point. Basically, genuine refugees are fine, but illegal immigration and bogus asylum seekers are major problems that have got to be tackled. She apologized then, and stroked my knee, which I quickly moved away, beginning to be irritated. (Alice is an unusually tactile person, but I’d told her several times before that physical contact like that between us in public was inappropriate. She’s not at all unattractive, so I knew people would jump to conclusions.) I took a break and made my way along the corridor to find a Gents.

I admit I did then start to wonder whether Alice was partly right, and whether I could moderate my tone a bit, if not my fundamental stance. I mean, the evidence of the impact of illegal immigration wasn’t yet clear – how could it be, if these people are under the radar? – though the constituents were convinced. But I had to take a line. Voters like a strong line. I just wished Nina would let me run this kind of issue by her. I’ve always been open to talking about her work, about the arts scene, all that. My head was pounding, and I was reprimanding myself for letting Alice persuade me into that last bottle of wine the night before, wishing I’d got the evening train home so I could have read Clara a bedtime story and played a bit of piano – and that was when I saw him. Your Mr Kelati. Standing in the toilet doorway talking with the conductor.

It didn’t look friendly, so I intuited pretty quickly what was going on. I took a few steps closer to try to hear what they were saying; having just come from that conversation with Alice I was particularly intrigued to see someone like him in the flesh, caught in the act. He looked like a tramp, quite frankly, smelled like one too, and had a heavy African accent. As I was trying to overhear, it occurred to me to snap a photo of the two of them, thinking I might blog about it as part of the public conversation. I still couldn’t quite make out the words, but then I saw him wince and clutch his stomach, which looked entirely fake to me, and I managed to capture it in another shot, but the conductor seemed to be developing a sympathetic look on his face. And then, to my disbelief, he patted the guy on the shoulder and began to turn away, with no ticket or anything being handed over! So I snapped once more, then cleared my throat and said, ‘Excuse me, but as a paying customer I’d like to check that appropriate action is being taken if people are travelling without tickets.’

‘Well, I’ve dealt with it appropriately ,’ the conductor said, rather abruptly. ‘So please go ahead and enjoy your journey.’

‘But I didn’t see a ticket,’ I persisted, and then asked the guy to show me his ticket. My head was exploding and I thought there was a good chance I might be physically sick, but I also felt that I was now engaging in a tiny act of heroism on behalf of the constituents that I could tell Alice about.

Anyway, the conductor obviously felt his pride was at stake. He said, ‘Hang on – what right have you got to make demands? Are you police?’

I contemplated pretending I was for a second. ‘I’m the Conservative Parliamentary Candidate for Great Grimsby, and I’m asking this as a representative of people who are deeply concerned about illegal migration and its consequences,’ was what I said. I expect I sounded deeply pompous but it was true.

He rolled his eyes and told me to ‘drop it’.

‘Excuse me?’ I said. ‘I’m perfectly free to ask a question if I want, like any other conscientious citizen. But if you’re unable or unwilling to answer me, I’ve got a photo of your exchange—’

‘Oh, do what you like with your photo,’ he said, and proceeded to call me the f word, before shoving past me into the next carriage to check more tickets! Unbelievable. When I turned to your guy, he was gone too. of course he was.

At least the loo became free eventually. I locked the door behind me and sat on the lid, looking at the photo I’d taken, zooming into the guy’s face, then out, and wondering how best to encapsulate what I wanted to say about the incident on my blog without sounding too sensational. It’s a lot of pressure on a candidate, in this day and age, being expected to blog all the time, and make sure you say the right things in the right words. I wasn’t being an arse by publishing his photo, was I? No, I thought – this was exactly my point about the difference between illegal scammers and genuine refugees that I had been trying to make, and a photo can say a thousand words. So I went for: Came across this illegal immigrant on the train without a ticket today. It brought home voters’ rightful concern about the rising influx . That was about as measured but proactive, clear and firm as I could make it. Then I realized that wording might make me sound as if I hadn’t already been on the case, so I changed brought home to reminded me of .

If I hadn’t looked at the photo and thought about the exchange at such length so I could write about it, I would never have recognized the guy the next time I saw him. I didn’t spot him when we changed trains, and it’s frankly bizarre that I came across him again at all, never mind in my mother-in-law’s kitchen ! I haven’t even got to that bit yet.

In hindsight I do feel like a bit of a numpty about that whole encounter, which was probably tied up with my elephantine hangover, and election stress, and my discomfort over Alice boundaries – which I should have nipped straight in the bud – and with Nina censoring me at home. If only I’d just stayed back, watched from a distance and called 999, I could’ve got the police to anticipate him in London at the station and they could have investigated properly. I can tell from your expression that you think that’s vindictive. But remember, other passengers had paid, and this guy was travelling illegally. Likewise, he could just have claimed asylum when he got here, but he chose not to. And his illegality didn’t stop there, did it? But anyway, I bungled it, so he continued on his merry way.