After the Demo, a Fishy View of the Way Ahead.

Phew! I don't think that I saw as many human beings in the last two years, as in the last couple of days. However the Demo went of peacefully, bar a few Brexiteers throwing eggs and trying to make trouble - so I'm told, though I didn't see any myself. Apparently they were quickly contained by the police, who on the whole were remarkable for their absence. I thought to myself, where else could you have over a million people thronging the centre of power and protesting the Government's actions with so much good humour and so little trouble? It actually made me feel really proud of the English part of my heritage in a way that I hadn't done so for something over fifty years. The question that nags is, can they be serious, when there is so little difference between a demo and a walk in the park?

photo by Liz Aston

     The poster on the right has to have my prize; others slogans I particularly appreciated were '50%English, 50%Irish, 100%European' and 'This is what a real demo looks like, Nigel!' Things did get claustrophobic as we approached Parliament Square, with a steady flow of people arriving and nowhere to go. A counter flow developed, which we  joined, escaping off to the first promising watering hole that we could find, which happened to be the floating pub on the Tattershall Castle. Even on an old boat permanently tied up in the middle of London, I feel a little better afloat, and I love to watch the tide pulsing in and out regardless of our passing cares!

With Liz and Bernie

So it went on; next day Cristiona, Joe and myself took a boat downriver to Greenwich, which was mobbed with Sunday strollers in fine Spring sunshine that had finally prevailed over grey cloud. London looked magnificent from the hill there, as it did from the river. It's a pity there's no view to the east and the sea though. Of course I would liked to have carried on downriver, towards the place of my birth and earliest memories, Southend-on-Sea. I always however despised those endless mud-flats, that dirty water and the dreary, battered waste-land ashore. How my heart lifted when, in my father's little boat, I first experienced the Atlantic swell down off the Lizard! However,  possibly now, with for instance old rubbish tips reclaimed as nature reserves, with a better appreciation for all those little reminders of a long past and also battered as I am with perhaps too much familiarity with Atlantic swells, I might appreciate the Essex mud-flats better.

     The question is, did the Demo really make a difference, other than leaving us with the agreeable sensation of having done our bit? Where do we go from here? I always tend to revert to seeing the whole problem in terms of fishing, being what I have a lot of first-hand experience of and also because I regard is as a specially good lens through which to view these things. Besides, being on the London River reminded me of Mr Farage's little jaunt on a fishing boat here: a typical meaningless stunt, considering that the inshore fleet has nothing to gain from Brexit, and indeed quite a lot to lose. They mostly deal in shellfish for which the biggest and best market is on the Continent.

     What about bigger boats? It is of course true that the quota system of the CFP is extremely deficient, but who is to say that a national fishing policy would be any better? Either way, it needs a drastic overhaul. We have a classic breakdown between a Command and Control superstructure and actual reality; but one thing Brexit will certainly not produce is more fish. In the case of the Newlyn netter fleet, they will get an awful shock if they lose half their fishing ground, being shut out of Irish waters. But there are very few skipper/owners left, and the health of the stocks is dire. 

      Fishermen are adept at finding new possibilities, and there has indeed anyway been a reduction in effort which presumably has to do some good; however, one should not necessarily take little bits of good news at face value. For example it is very doubtful that the recent good landings of hake off the south of Ireland are merely the result of a decline in Spanish fishing effort and improvement in stocks. More likely it is because, equipped with Olex chartplotters, they have now a very accurate picture of the sea-bed beneath them, and have learnt to target the hake more effectively.

     Anyway most of the British fleet, other than the inshore boats, are company owned. The capital involved could just as well be from Spaniards as anyone else. The quota system does work half well for these companies. In England they are able to buy up and manipulate fish quota in a way that is impossible for a skipper/owner, say in Ireland. Since it became frequently impossible for the Irish skipper to make a living within his quotas, selling fish at public auctions has pretty much died out, for the simple reason that it is not possible to lay out one's catch on the auction hall floor. What the log-books say and what the boxes actually contain are two different things. Meanwhile, the companies are in a better position to negotiate a modus vivendi with the authorities, and when this does break down, they can afford the odd fine in a way the skipper/owner probably cannot. Unless they  are seriously enlightened, they will find it very hard to resist the Duckie's (Trumpian) approach.

     Changing all this will be very difficult. In the extremely unlikely event of a British Government, especially a Tory one, seriously wanting to do so, the fact is that any solution will have a large market dimension, and the market is continent-wide. It will also require the active collaboration of the fishermen themselves and all stake-holders. However the fact that decision-making is perhaps more objective on an EU level, and its very remoteness means it may be less subject to local interests, has its advantages. Certainly nothing can be done when competing national interests constantly subvert and drag down to a lowest common denominator. The necessary scientific and technical know-how are also much more likely to emerge on a continental basis, along with the whole cultural revolution that is called for. 

     To develop the will and indeed the techniques to turn situations like this around is the vital task ahead of us all, if we do not want to bequeath an utterly dysfunctional and dystopic world, where pockets of elite interest scrap over the plundered and degraded remnants of a once beautiful and bountiful world. The EU can only survive and prosper, and ourselves with it, to the degree that it offers a credible context and environment for so doing.

Heading Down the London River.