British fishermen for most of the 20th century had the reputation they ascribe to the Spanish and French – but fairly in their case. The UK adopted steam trawlers early, along with power winches and equipment – indeed pre-World War I. The result was that British fishermen ‘raped’ the fishing grounds of Norway, Iceland and the Newfoundland Grand Banks. These fisheries recovered during WWI and WWII, to start collapsing again when UK fishermen accessed them at the end of each war. A major factor in all of this was the UK national taste for deep-sea white fish, Cod in particular, but also Haddock, etc. These fish are/were less abundant in British waters – preferring instead the northern colder waters of Norway, Iceland and the Grand Banks. The British public then and now largely eschewed much of the inshore waters fish from UK waters – prawns, monkfish, etc. Moreover, in the absence of a single market, these fish landed from the UK couldn’t make it sufficiently quickly to French, Spanish and the mainland European markets that actually like them.
The whole thing started to go pear-shaped with the Norwegian Fishing Case which started in 1933, but was only ruled on by an international tribunal in 1951 – in which Norway gained the right to exclude UK trawlers from its fishing grounds. This caused the UK’s rapacious fishing industry to increase its catches from the Grand Banks and Iceland, with two results – the Grand Banks cod fishery slowly collapsed between 1969 and 1986, and the Icelanders decided they wanted UK trawlers controlled, which led to the successive Cod Wars of 1958-1976 during which the UK deployed the Royal Navy to force access to Icelandic waters – eventually the UK lost in 1976.
Why does all of this matter? Because Britain was negotiating accession to the European Community in the early 1970s – and at that time, the UK fishing industry had little serious interest in the waters close to her own shores, since its market was the UK – where the consumers preferred the deep-water white fish from the Grand Banks and Iceland – and Britain was confident that it could continue to force access to those fish. The result was that the UK took a very relaxed view of her own waters with respect to the common fisheries policy.
What changed? Well, the UK lost the Cod Wars and due to the imminent collapse of the Grand Banks fisheries, by 1978 the Canadians had started to take steps to restrict access to those waters for US and UK (and other) boats. Even so, the UK kept the lion’s share of the fishing quotas for UK inshore waters – 60-80%, allocating them to British fishermen. The problem was, under the Thatcher administration with its extreme capitalist ideology, those quotas turned into property rights that could be sold – and retiring British fishermen sold them (screwing their heirs) in large quantities. Spanish, Dutch and French fishermen, so called quota-hoppers, came to buy well over half of those British quotas while their own countries did not allow these quotas to be exported. This serves to illustrate an inherent dishonesty in British fishermen’s complaint, because it was British fishing families, companies and individuals who chose to sell the quotas, trouser the cash, then whinge about ‘not having their cake and eating it.’ As a consequence, this is going to add a multibillion cost to the Brexit bill if UK fishermen get what they want, as I’ll explain below.
The second thing that changed was the Single Market – and seamless fast transport to the European mainland. All of a sudden fish landed in UK (and Irish) fishing ports could be at Les Halles for example, while still reasonably fresh The fish which the British public disdained could make it to France, the Netherlands, Belgium. and Spain in time to secure a premium price. Suddenly UK fishermen were resenting the deals that had been made in 1973 – and their own sale of quotas. But remember, the UK fishing industry had largely screwed itself, in part because they thought they could keep screwing Iceland and Newfoundland.
Now the awkward details. UK fishermen dream of revoking the quota-hoppers rights to use the fishing quotas which those British fishermen sold; but international law would deny expropriation without compensation. So if those quotas are to be revoked, their EU owners will have to be compensated at current value – and that bill will run into billions of pounds. And if the UK doesn’t compensate for such expropriation, the consequences for foreign inward investment (in all UK assets and industries) would be dire. The second awkward problem is that the UK industry needs seamless access to EU markets for UK fish, because the UK public still doesn’t really like those fish varieties which we largely catch.
This article appeared in The Guardian online on 31/08/2010.
