The destruction of the British fishing industry

On 20 June 2014, Richard Littlejohn told us this in The Daily Mail:

“Grimsby was once the busiest fishing port in the world, boasting a fleet of 700 trawlers. It was killed by the Icelandic cod wars of the early Seventies and the EU’s Common Fisheries Policy. Britain’s fishing industry was sacrificed on the altar of Edward Heath’s desperation to join the old Common Market at any cost. Our traditional waters were handed over to foreign factory ships in exchange for a place at the subsidised lobster supper tables of Brussels.

Today there are just five trawlers operating out of Grimsby, a third of the number of boats servicing off-shore wind farms in the Humber Estuary. Tens of thousands of men lost their jobs when their boats were decommissioned..

There has been a concerted operation over the past six months to clear out locals fishing the mud-flats. Why? What harm are they doing? Between them, they can only have been catching a few dozen fish every week… Just along the estuary there is a power station which kills tons of immature fish every year by sucking them into its water-cooling intake.

This is, on the face of it, another story of the little man being crushed by an overbearing bureaucracy. But it is much, much more than that. It’s about how we are governed, how short-term political obsession takes priority over people’s best interests, and how our way of life has been changed irrevocably by our membership of the European Union…

Fish conservation in the Humber wouldn’t even be necessary had the politicians not handed over our traditional waters in the North Sea to foreign fleets who hoovered up everything on an industrial scale. Stocks of cod, haddock and other species were harvested virtually to extinction.

The destruction of the British fishing industry is one of the greatest betrayals in our history. During World War II, the only food not on ration was fish and chips. That was because brave fishermen from Grimsby and elsewhere risked life and limb to bring home their catch from treacherous waters in constant danger of being sunk by enemy warships and submarines.

Their reward, in their own lifetime, was to watch impotently as politicians such as the ghastly Grocer Heath sold them out in the cause of the doomed ideal of creating a European superstate. They had to stand back and watch their boats being burned while British waters were plundered by foreign fishermen, with the collaboration of their own government. What would these men make of the once-proud port of Grimsby today?

All you need to know about modern Britain is that there are three times more boats servicing utterly useless and expensive wind turbines in the Humber Estuary than there are actually catching fish. Instead of boasting the world’s greatest fishing fleet, we are employing hi-viz wardens on beach-

Not for the first time over the past few weeks have I had cause to reflect on what my father’s generation would think of the nation they fought so gallantly to defend.

No country for old men? You can say that again.”

No, Richard, this is THE country for old men.

We're the ones who lost our country. We're the ones who allowed our childrens' birthright to be stolen. We're the ones who must fight to get it back.

We are the old men who must suffer and die dishonourably if we sit back and do nothing.

This is THE country for old men, Richard. We broke it when we were young.

Now we must fix it.