We must beware the net results of leaving the EU

Comment Fordyce Maxwell

Crofting and fishing have historical links in Scotland. In some areas crofters relied mainly on their land with a bit of fishing. In other areas, they were mainly fisherman who farmed a little.

But links between larger scale farming and commercial fishing have never been strong. People were, and are, either farmer or fisherman although both are in primary industries bringing food to our tables.

Fishermen claim that in doing that they have always had a rawer deal than farmers with nothing like the subsidies farmers have received over the past 70 years, out and in and now about to be out again, of the European Union.

The response by farmers is that commercial fishing is an industry that only has harvesting costs with no inputs required. Their “crop” is out there, growing without any costs for fishermen, waiting to be caught.

The human cost could be debated. Farming, along with the construction industry, has a bad safety and fatality record. But fishing, particularly deep sea fishing, had until at least recent years a horrifying safety record.

Scotland’s east coast has a string of former fishing villages and almost every one has a memorial to at least one fishing fleet disaster. The few remaining large scale ports have records of many more, some of them recent. Looking from the outside I can only conclude that, like wanting to be a coal miner, only those born in to a fishing family could want to be a trawlerman.

But past human cost has no relevance when negotiating political and trade

0 Fishing’s problems must act as a warning to farmers deals. Through the 1960s when President de Gaulle said no to British entry to European union and into the early 1970s, when prime minister Heath’s persistence finally got Britain accepted as a member, fishing rights were one of the sacrificial pawns in the game.

As a specialist farming journalist, I wrote nothing about fishing, but wrote a lot about the negotiations and their likely effect on British farming. These forecasts fluctuated if not day to day at least usually week to week.

The astute might note the connection with the acres of space and hours of TV and radio time now being given to Brexit as we try to get out of, with some shreds of national dignity intact, what we tried so hard for so long to get in to.

For farming, 40 years or so of European Union membership has on balance been a good thing. Subsidies might have stifled initiative and innovation in some sectors of farming, notably beef and sheep, while the mainly unsubsidised sectors such as pigs, poultry and potato and vegetable production have become much more efficient. But on balance most farmers are better off than they would have been without EU subsidies and support. That is why they are clinging to promises by Westminster and Holyrood governments that subsidy support will continue beyond the time, if and when, Brexit takes place.

The fate of fishing should be a warning to them because fishermen have no such past record and no such assurance about the future. Their fishing rights were seen as expendable almost half a century ago and over the years since they have suffered successive cuts in catch quota, bans on catching some species, and were denied subsidies that competitors in countries such as Spain, France and Portugal got.

And last week fishermen were reminded that what rights they still have could be expendable as Brexit negotiations continue.

Chancellor Philip Hammond appeared to suggest that part of any deal could mean foreign fishermen retained access to British fishing grounds.

As with farming, some fishermen’s complaints have puzzled me. For example, there was no point in selling quota to the highest foreign bidder then complaining about foreigners catching “our” fish.

And in the same way as we have moved inexorably towards fewer farmers with bigger individual businesses we have fewer and bigger fishing boats. It is harder to feel sympathy for those with £1.5 million trawlers.

But as humans with businesses they’re seen as expendable in a political deal. In spite of recent government promises, farmers should note that.