How Britain was sold down the river

‘ What are old men supposed

to do — go away and die? ’

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 j ust f i ve 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. One of the casualties was Earnest ‘ Bubs’ Cromer, a former trawler skipper.

Bubs, as he’s known by everyone, is now 76 and recovering from prostate cancer and a knee replacement operation. he retains his love of the sea and fishing.

his daily exercise consists of walking 60 yards out into the estuary to inspect a net tethered on the mud-flats to catch fish on the incoming tide. It’s a method which has been used by locals on the banks between Grimsby and Cleethorpes for generations.

On a good day, he might catch two small Dover sole, weighing about a pound each, enough for a decent dinner for himself and his wife Kirsten.

Some days the net is empty. But if he catches more than a couple of fish, he gives them away to friends and neighbours. By no means is this a commercial operation.

Until fairly recently there were about 15 nets pegged out on the flats. Bubs hadn’t been back for a while because he was recuperating from his surgery.

happily, his doctor has now told him he can start to take regular exercise again. Earlier this week, at low tide, Bubs returned to the estuary to check his net. he was approached by two ‘beach safety officers’ in hi-viz jackets, naturally, riding beach-buggies.

They said he would have to remove his net or it would be confiscated and destroyed. Bubs was told he was in breach of a new bye-law and was advised to ring the North Eastern Inshore Fisheries and Conservation Authority (NEIFCA) for further information.

WhEN he r ang: ‘They said I was in contravention of some regulati on so - and- so from 2013 and if I didn’t remove my net from the beach they would do it for me.

‘I couldn’t understand it. People have been fishing this stretch since time immemorial, certainly as long as I can remember. I’ve had no problem in the past, so why now?’

Bubs emailed me. he’d read last week’s column, about an 83-yearold man persecuted by Greater Manchester Police for giving his infirm wife a pain-killing patch, headlined ‘ Modern Britain: No Country For Old Men’ and thought I might be interested in his plight.

‘No country for old men is about right. That’s exactly how I feel about this. What are we supposed to do — go away and die?’

I decided to investigate. On the authority’s website, there’s a picture of its Chief Officer, David McCandless, and an invitation to ‘Ask The Chief’ a question by email.

So I did, expecting it to disappear into a bureaucratic black hole. The following morning I received a personal reply from Chief McCandless. I was impressed. Most people in his position hide behind a battalion of PR officers.

he explained it was his job to enforce laws relating to fish conservation between the Tyne and the North Lincolnshire coast. ‘One such regulation relates to the management of fixed engines or nets and has been in force since the Nineties.

‘ Specifically i t protects and conserves migratory species such as salmon and eels in the estuarine and marine environment and other marine species from over-exploitation. In doing so, it prohibits the setting of any type of fixed net in the humber, specifically in the intertidal zone.

‘We received an enquiry from a member of the public this Monday seeking guidance on the application of that regulation and that guidance was supplied.

‘The regulations apply across the board to everyone and we have to apply them fairly and evenly to all stake-holders.’ I appreciate that Chief McCandless has a job to do. But, if the rules have been in place since the Nineties, why are they only being applied now?

Elsewhere on the website, there’s a copy of the humber Estuary Fishing Bye-law. This states: ‘No person shall dig, use any pots, traps, nets (whether fixed, anchored to the sea-bed, or not) trawls, dredges or similar devices within the Specified Area.’

Scroll down, however, and you’ll see it was only drawn up last September and signed into law by the civil servant in charge of sustainable fisheries on January 30 this year.

That would explain why, before Bubs began his treatment, there were 15 nets on the mud-flats and now there’s only his left. Obviously, 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.

Bubs points out that 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.

The bye-law which bans Bubs from casting his net for Dover sole may have been signed by a British civil servant but it will have had its origins in a directive from Brussels.

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 f i shermen f rom 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 t o watch i mpotently as politicians such as the ghastly Grocer heath sold them out in the cause of the doomed i deal 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 f i shing f l eet, we are employing hi-viz wardens on beachbuggies to stop redundant trawler skippers like Bubs Cromer from netting a couple of Dover sole for the dinner table.

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.