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‘Justice for Fishermen’ In 1948, Iceland first displayed concern over the potential danger to domestic marine resources from foreign fishing fleets. A formal request to the U.N. General Assembly followed, to sanction an extension of coastal fishery limits to 4 nautical miles, to protect the position. Iceland was ignored. The response marked the beginning of a long-term strategy to ultimately remove all foreign fishery activity from Icelandic waters, which finally materialised in 1976, when Iceland unilaterally imposed a 200-mile coastal exclusion zone. Subsequently,
the British-owned trawler fleets were dismantled, with their redundant crews
left abandoned and devastated. In professional and social terms they suffered
the equivalent of a nuclear offensive, effectively removing all UK trawling
fleet efforts, and jobs. To the dedicated workforce of British fishermen, such a
catastrophe was beyond belief or comprehension. It was comparable to a failure
in the Nations’ infrastructure: Postmen without mail, or Transport without
vehicles. Government took the media flak and the blame, resulting in hundreds of
millions in fiscal contributions, ultimately going towards funding flawed
fishery restructuring projects. However, the corporate employed British
fishermen, with enviable records of industrial relations, and whose families
bore the hardship and heartache from harvesting the seas, got nothing. As self-starting
individualists, this once-mighty workforce of seafarers simply disintegrated and
spread around the world to find work, anywhere where their fishery or nautical
expertise could be marketed. Similar to natural disasters – from chaos comes
order – some survived and developed, to become notably successful in
commercial circles. A large number remained in a state of shock, continuing to
pursue dead-end careers and be exploited by cold-hearted employers, as they had
become accustomed to over the generations. Many of the victims and casualties of
the Icelandic fiasco, as it ultimately proved to be, were approaching retirement
age and clearly unattractive to employers, despite considerable talent and
expertise in their field. For this sector of former fishermen, the aftermath of
the Cod Wars, a period of commercial retrenchment and restructuring, proved to
be a study in social exclusion and deprivation, unparalleled in modern times. With the formation of
the British Fishermen’s Association in 1982, the efforts and struggle for
social inclusion and Justice for Fishermen continued with renewed vigour and
growing support. Finally, it took a Labour administration, after 18 years of
Conservative rule, to recognise and overturn the grave injustices suffered by
all UK fishermen in the corporate sector. In July 2000, New Labour said publicly
that they recognised and acknowledged the claims of fishermen were indeed
justified, and announced a Compensation Scheme to be implemented in October
2000. However, the eventual Scheme has been only partially successful, and
ironically, tended to distort and suppress the initial largesse and intentions
of New Labour. With the Scheme creating anomalies and obstacles, events have
turned out to be something of an administrative nightmare for officials, despite
their industrious efforts to process the claims efficiently. August 2007 - See also the National Audit Office Report, here
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