Tag Archives: European Economic Community
If Brexit is to mean anything we must end fraud of EU fishing boats registering as British
Last week, with surprisingly little fanfare given the years of high-profile politicking over our territorial waters, the Fisheries Bill was written into UK Law. The long awaited Bill slipped quietly into legislation,,, The fact that the fishing industry was the first industry to be sold out by Labour and Conservative governments as we entered the European Economic Community means, I firmly believe, it must be the first industry to be returned to the status demanded by full sovereignty. I watched hours of debate, as the Bill passed through the commons onto the House of Lords, in which more attention was given to marine conservation and sustainability than to how this bill will affect the United Kingdom’s fishing industry and coastal communities. >click to read< 15:25
Catches, quotas and communities: the key fisheries issues at stake
Only a few hours after accession talks had begun on 30 June 1970, the UK government was told that a common fisheries policy had been agreed by the original six members of the community. It was a fait accompli. The UK had to hand over equal access to its waters and the catch quotas for each country were fixed on the basis of the recorded catches of the various national fleets between 1973 and 1978. It led to some very unpalatable outcomes, including those in the Channel, where the UK’s share of the cod quota stands at 9%, whereas France’s share is 84%. Today, EU fishing fleets catch 675,000 tonnes of fish in UK waters – 60% of the total caught in the UK sector. British fishermen catch just 88,000 tonnes, or 16% of the fish taken in EU waters. >click to read< 13:39
Will Britain lose another fishing war?
On average, a fish in the North Sea crosses five territorial waters frontiers every day. They don’t have passports or face quarantine. Britain made a fool of itself during the three cod wars it fought with Iceland between 1956 and 1976. British fishermen decided these were “traditional” waters and the Royal Navy was sent in to try and intimidate the Icelandic fishing boats. Other than geo-thermal energy, banking and airlines, the main Icelandic product is cod. They depended on hauling cod of out the northern waters close to Arctic Circle — we looked absurd trying to stop them. Does a new fish war with France, the Netherlands, and Spain now loom? The problem arises partly from the 1982 UN Law of the Sea convention which extended territorial waters out to 200 km. >click to read< 10:09
Fishing: The Great Betrayal
The Common Fisheries Policy began as a land (or rather, sea) grab, evolved into a stitch-up and grew into an environmentally devastating and commercially disastrous scandal. The EU, UK government and avaricious commercial interests are all to blame – and we’re far from being out of the woods yet. >click to read< 18:57
