The British and their fish

The Documentary Podcast

BBC

Society & Culture, Documentary, Personal Journals

4.3 • 2.6K Ratings

🗓️ 22 October 2020

⏱️ 27 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

By the middle of the 20th century, the English town of Grimsby was the biggest fishing port in the world. When the catch was good “fishermen could live like rock stars”, says Kurt Christensen who first went to sea aged 15. He was instantly addicted to a tough and dangerous life on the waves. But from the 1970s onwards, the industry went into decline. Today it contributes just a tenth of one percent to Britain’s GDP – less than Harrods, London best known department store. So how can such a tiny industry cause so much political havoc and threaten to scupper a post Brexit deal with Europe? Fishing communities have often blamed EU membership - and the foreign boats that have arrived as a result - for a steep fall in catches over the last half century. Many coastal towns voted overwhelmingly for Britain to leave the European Union. Now, Grimsby’s recently-elected Conservative MP – the first non-socialist the town has sent to Westminster in nearly 100 years - has spoken of a modern fleet and fresh opportunities. For Assignment, Lucy Ash travels to Grimsby to hear how fishing towns like this, ignored for decades by London’s political elite, now hope finally to turn a corner. She explores the huge place fishing plays in the British psyche and asks if the cold, stormy seas around Britain really can make coastal communities rich once again.

Producer Mike Gallagher

(Image: A trader examines a haddock at the daily Grimsby Fish Market auction. Credit: Bethany Clarke/Getty Images)

Transcript

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0:00.0	We're all fishermen, we all want to make a living. We've just got to make it fair for the English people.
0:10.0	BBC World Service, welcome to assignment.
0:14.0	The English Fisherman for the last 20 years have been pushed aside
0:18.0	and we've ended up with a skeleton of a fishery we have. There's trouble at sea. I'm on board a fishing boat called
0:27.3	Sweetwater off the east coast of England. Its skipper is Darren Kenyan.
0:33.0	I've been fishing since I was 13 year old, so 40 years now.
0:37.0	And what kind of changes have you seen?
0:39.0	A lot of people I think have got fed up and a lot of people have packed up.
0:43.0	But the foreign boats we're allowed to keep catching.
0:46.0	French boats or Spanish boats can come and take the fish.
0:50.0	The fish what you're not allowed to catch, if we we caught it we would be arrested on the key side Fishing is just a fraction of the UK economy a tenth of 1% and many of the boats around
1:08.0	here are European because when Britain became a member of the European Union, it had to share its fishing grounds
1:15.2	with other member states.
1:17.3	Now that it's left the EU, the government says it's going to take back control of the seas. And many fishermen hope that there'll be a
1:24.8	renaissance of the British fishing industry. I'm Lucy Ash, and for this week's assignment, I'm
1:30.8	in Darren's homeport of Grimsby to ask how realistic such hopes are and to understand why fishing remains such an emotive issue despite its steep decline.
1:42.0	It would be lovely to get, you know, our fishing rights back,
1:47.0	but we'll believe it when we see it because we've been let down
1:51.0	year after year after year after year. get demoralised I'm afraid. But you still
1:56.4	enjoy it? Oh yeah yeah I do yeah yes yeah I do I'd rather be at see them be
2:01.7	assured there's a lot of trouble ashore in there.
2:07.3	Okay I'll put you on the ladder a.
	...

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