Jiang Zemin would have been impressed. Xavier Pastor, the lead campaigner on board the protest ship Greenpeace, had just finished composing a final appeal to the Chinese president. Now he was nonchalantly vacuuming the radio room.
'It is very proletarian,' Mr Pastor admitted wryly.
But any claims to proletarian credentials are unlikely to open doors when Greenpeace takes its anti-nuclear campaign to China.
The Greenpeace, fresh from a bruising campaign against the French at Mururoa last September, is due to arrive in Shanghai this morning to protest against China's continued nuclear testing. The likely confrontation marks one of Greenpeace's greatest challenges.
Highlighting environmental horrors and pinpointing the culprits are Greenpeace's raison d'etre. The world's most controversial green group draws lifeblood for its campaigns from media attention and public outcry.
But the absence of both a free press and freedom of speech in China poses inevitable problems. The first protest in Tiananmen Square against China's nuclear testing by six Greenpeace directors last August, which ended in their arrest, interrogation and deportation, was not even reported in China.
In the rest of the world, it was headline news; but how to conduct effective campaigns in China is something Greenpeace is still working out.
