Fish tale July 2, 2017
Posted by WorldbyStorm in Uncategorized.trackback
The British government has announced that it is withdrawing the UK from a deal that will result in trawlers from the Republic of Ireland no longer being allowed to fish within 12 nautical miles of the UK coastline.
British ministers will trigger withdrawal from the London Fisheries Convention, signed in 1964 before the UK joined the European Union, to start the two-year process to leave the agreement.
There’s quite some sleight of hand here given this does predate UK accession to the EEC (not the EU needless to say but hey who worries about such technicalities these days).
But irritating as it is – at least in relation to the rhetoric… there are more fundamental issues as well. For example in this brave new Brexit world what of quotas and so on.
Environmental law firm Client Earth consultant Dr Tom West said the move appeared to be an aggressive negotiating tactic.
“As a country outside the EU we need to consider how we can best co-operate with our neighbours rather than unilaterally withdrawing from all agreements in the hope that standing alone will make us better.
“Many fish stocks in UK waters are shared with our neighbours and so need co-operation and shared management.”
He also warned of the need to put in place strong laws to protect marine wildlife, or there was a risk the UK would row back on hard-won environmental protection over the last 40 years.
But Will McCallum, Greenpeace UK head of oceans, said leaving the convention would not in itself deliver a better future for the UK fishing industry, and that for years governments had blamed the EU for their “failure” to support the small-scale, sustainable fishers.
He said Mr Gove needed to keep the 2015 Conservative Party manifesto commitment to “re-balance fishing quotas in favour of small-scale, specific locally based fishing communities”.
Is that really going to happen?
The Cedar Lounge Revolution 
Apparently there is no doubt that it is going to happen almost immediately.
Does It means that 26-county based fishing vessels must now remain further from 6 county coast? What does it mean for 6-county based vessels in relation to the 26-county coast? Irish Government must clarify immediately!
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That’s a great point Paddy. I don’t know. Be good to have clarity. But that’s precisely the sort of outcome that is ensuing on foot of Brexit that irritates me – totally unnecessary, throwing up pointless but not irrelevant barriers, etc, etc..
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The problem here is that Gove is a sociopath, and so appeals will fall on deaf ears.
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Yup, and it’s not hyperbole.
Real odd fish.
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gove’s adopted father was in the fish trade in Scotland and Gove blamed EU laws for closing his dad’s business, even though his dad did not agree.
This looks like Gove’s revenge!!!
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/jun/15/michael-gove-father-company-eu-policies-fish-processing-aberdeen
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Similar in nature to May saying well we’ll pull out if you don’t drop the divorce bill. The EU then says hmm okay maybe we drop the Bill to 10 billion and May says yeah, but no, oh and the fishing is gone for you unless you give us x etc etc.
A lot of things are going to be discussed that will shock many people but they are likely opening gambits. In an era of social media and instantaneous reaction and the viewing of events in the immediate it’s striking how a horsetrading event must look.
May in outrageous demand of € 200 for old pony. EU proves her wrong by saying € 170 and confirms it will walk away. May turns and walks away in shock development. EU shouts out would €180 do it.
May has to signal this stuff because she needs the Spanish and Dutch Fisher folk to get on the phone giving out yards to their respective TDs.
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I am surprised that the government does not revive the Rockall claim. Loftus was right about it. And Ireland backed by the EU is now in a stronger position.
Other point is that this is a public escalation of Brexit. It bodes bad for a mutually beneficial outcome. Perhaps we should send or Labour Court people over to help them negotiate.
If this j#keeps up, another recession is coming.
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I have never seen a credible version of the Rockall claim. The closest land to Rockall is St Kilda, which is always regarded as Scotland. The British landed on Rockall and claimed it, the Irish have done neither. Nobody has ever inhabited it apart from a hermit if you believe the Navigation of St Brendan.
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Possession is nine-tenths of the law, as the British have used to their advantage so many times before (and the Chinese are now copying). Stick a section of EU nations marines on it and see what happens.
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I’d imagine they’d all be drowned after their tents were washed into the sea by large waves…
By the by, unless the UK & Ireland withdraw from UNCLOS this is irrelevant as uninhabitable rocks are not allowed to have an EEZ.
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This is where you’re behind the times on ‘rocks’ being made habitable by feats of engineering.
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Send Arthur Morgan over.He has experience garnered in both the fishing industry and the IRN ( Irish Republican Navy)!
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Forget Rockall, with or without that rock the Brits are playing hardball. Only today Gove and his mates issued a ukase declaring that the twenty-six counties will be better off outside the EU. First the stick (fisheries) and now the carrot. Having blown off the dust from its openly unionist credentials the UK government is serving notice that it wants to take Ireland with it. Whats wrong with that, you say? Well put it another way, the Brits failed, eventually, with military force, they failed to kill home rule with kindness, now they are trying to use economic pressure. They know that for all the talk of democracy and sovereignty, any capitalist Government of the Republic outside the EU is likely to be a satellite of British neo-imperialism, with less real independence or democratic input than it has in the EU. This is the natural result of Brexit as it was fought: an imperialist economic war. It will mean the reversal of the meagre gains remaining from the Anglo-Irish Economic War of the ‘thirties. Only a workers’ republic, as a launching pad for world socialist revolution is likely to protect Irish interests. How many socialists will oppose this?
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I think you’re right that outside the EU we’d slip right back into the UK’s orbit – and in the process we’d be trashing relationships established and built across decades with other states. I have a few thoughts on the Bassett report which I’ll post up in the week but one thing that was remarkable in it was the way in which it avoided addressing our respective trade with the EU (collectively and individual nation states) and with the UK.
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Whether capitalist or socialist Ireland would be very foolish indeed if she abandoned her “gallant allies in Europe” to put herself voluntarily under the UK once again.
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The British have already now laid claim to the entirety of Lough Foyle (I believe Brokenshire has reiterated this territorial grab). Anyone who thinks that the EU will allow the Dublin FG government to cave and allow them annex it is in for a surprise, I think.
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I’m a little afraid to put my toe in this water, but here goes.
The RoI, like every other state involved, will be acting to protect its interests as best it can in all this i.e. in Brexit. Being part of the EU 27 can be a strength but it can also be a weakness. The weakness bit being that the others in the 27 will ultimately act in their own interests. Our ‘gallant allies in Europe’ weren’t so gallant at the time of the banking crisis. There is a potential axis within the EU – the core EU if you will, Germany/France/Holland/Belgium/etc – that might see the RoI and maybe the other PIGSs as an encumbrance. Ultimately Germany, France, Netherlands etc will act in their own national interests.
So when it comes down to it, the RoI needs to be clear on its interests too. It will need to do the sums on whatever deal is eventually reached – the economic sums and the ‘peace on this island’ sums. And if the sums add up to the RoI economically and wrt peace being better off out, that wouldn’t mean that we are returning to ‘the mothership’ or signing up with British neo-imperialism.
Let’s not let the 800 years of oppression blind us to what’s in our best interests – that’s all I’m saying.
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Problem is that an Irexit doesn’t seem to on the face of it address our interests better than staying in the EU. Look at the trends in trade, hugely increased with EU 26 since the 70s and dwarfing UK trade which HSS significantly decreased in the same period. That’s structural, there is little chance of returning to 1973 from 2017. Ray Bassett is right about one thing, none of this is good for Ireland.
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One thing though I do agree with is the necessity to draw up a balance sheet of our interests and how these are affected.
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Could happen Joe but it’s not my reading of EU mood and policy at the moment.
The signs are at the moment that the EU will go out of their way to protect Irish (RoI) interests because it’s in their interest not to create a precedent whereby leaving members can put pressure on neighbours who remain in the EU.
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Yes and in the process in effect create new smaller common economic areas.
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And if the sums add up to the RoI economically and wrt peace being better off out, that wouldn’t mean that we are returning to ‘the mothership’ or signing up with British neo-imperialism.
The problem is, that that is exactly what it would mean. Small nations are always, without fail, better served by joining multinational organisations and negotiating in a rules-bound setting rather than having to bend to every demand of bigger neighbours. If we left the EU, we’d be strong-armed into the Commonwealth and probably NATO.
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I believe I predicted this some time ago – the Brits will pick ‘winnable’ fights with their neighbours of something like fishing to cover up the bankruptcy of the Brexit politics. The British navy is just about capable of a little fishing war.
The tragedy is that the oceans can only be managed as a commons and the situation there is dire. Keystone species are being fished out while the ocean warms and acidifies with far-ranging ecological consequences. The web of life there is having huge holes ripped in it.
National fishing interests conflict with global interests in a classic tragedy of the commons.
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“The British navy is just about capable of a little fishing war.” Not according to a former Admiral now in the Lords (Labour no less):
http://forces.net/news/navy/ex-navy-chief-britain-could-become-laughing-stock
I suppose they could use the new aircraft carriers for that though, not poxy little fishery protection vessels. Bomb Spanish trawlers with $100m F-35s. That’ll show ’em Britannia rules the waves!!
Some countries say they are going to ignore the abrogation of the old (pre-EU) London Fisheries Agreement:
“The Labour peer said a number of countries had already indicated they would continue to fish in British waters”.
This means war!
It all seems of a piece with Trumpism. Belligerence, but is it play acting? “You are fired”!!
Of course the London Fisheries Agreement has nothing to do with the EU.
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Yes Joe, we must do our sums, and take all figures into the equation. AS wbs has stated, there is no way that we can go back to before ’73. One particular point that should be mentioned is that, if we leave with Britain, our relations with the EU countries are likely to be worse rather than better than they were in the ’60s. Furthermore, we won’t be in a multi-national alliance which does give, admittedly limited, scope for manoeuvre, but in a relationship, formally one-to-one, but, in weight, one-to-ten against us. We will be over-reliant on British good will towards us, and, in Gove’s case, at least,it does not look as if there will be much of that.
Charles de Gaulle said that Churchill told him not to rely too much on British support in power struggles with America within the Atlantic Alliance; ‘Whenever Britain has to choose between Europe and the open sea, she will choose the open sea.’ This was not sentimentality; Britain chooses the open sea because it has more scope to dominate the countries within and beyond it. Historically, Ireland is the first of these countries.
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