Fishing and the EU
by Richard Hare
I’m confused by Aldo Assirati’s letter, EADT 19/4/18. He ridicules Martin Deighton’s letter that pointed out that the EU ban on cod fishing in the North Sea in the early 2000s resulted in cod stocks returning to sustainable levels, and the consequent lifting of the ban. With the UK loosing the Cod War with Iceland during the ’60s and ’70s it was necessary to prevent Britain and its neighbours from annihilating North Sea cod stocks. What is wrong with that? It’s a success story! Victory snatched from the jaws of defeat! Isn’t it? Aldo can now return to catching cod, like the magnificent specimen pictured not just legally, but with a clear conscience.
No one disagrees with Aldo that abundant cod stocks existed in the 70s – the British were fishing Icelandic waters up until then. Like me, Aldo is old enough to remember this. Nor were stocks so severely depleted in the ‘mid-80s’, as is evident from the one shown with Mr Assirati. However, Mr Deighton claimed the ban was introduced almost two decades later than this, in the early 2000s.
It doesn’t stop there though. I was born and grew up in Leigh-on-Sea, Essex, home to East Anglia’s historic cockle industry. Back then the Thames estuary was polluted and fishing limped along, its harvest choked in toxicity.
Consequently, the EU demanded that the UK clean up its seas. The British rebelled. We weren’t going be told what to do by foreigners. We took action against Brussels to prevent its interference, and we lost. So, we had to clean up our Seas, and we did it grudgingly.
Today the cockle boats of Old Leigh thrive. The landing beach has never been so busy. Meanwhile, across the estuary Whitstable harbour is now a-buzz with activity, not just landing wet fish but oysters and mussels too, cultivated and natural.
So what brought about this change? Navigate a boat out into the creeks and gutways of the Thames estuary at low tide today and you’ll see the undeniable evidence of our reluctant clean up – there are seals everywhere, basking in the sunshine on the sandbanks. And where there are seals, there are fish, and lots of them. As a boy and a young man I never saw a single seal.
It’s clear that there is an issue to resolve over UK fishing access to the North Sea. Perhaps a fisherman can help us here. We have been told of Lowestoft fishermen selling their licenses to Dutch boat owners, in which case… That said, with UKIP MEPs batting for us in Brussels what hope did we ever have? UKIP has always had a subversive agenda on all things ‘European’. It isn’t only incapable of managing its own affairs.
Broadly speaking though (and, emphatically, this is not a criticism of Mr Assirati), I am deeply saddened by the sort-term, quick-fix, isolationist logic of Brexit. I’m ashamed of the Windrush scandal, and I’m depressed by the rise in anti-semitism. How much longer must Jewish people be prejudiced against? Isn’t 1,700 years enough? And for Heaven’s sake – what for? Both ‘Windrush’ and anti-semitism are an indictment of a disturbing mindset. Have simple solutions ever worked? I don’t think so. We’ve been here before, in recent history. It’s not as though we don’t have a blueprint of where this can lead. So let’s be careful what we wish for.