‘Sold down the river’: The Cornish fishermen betrayed by Brexit

IIt must have been one of the strangest moments in the lead-up to the EU referendum.

Boldly sailing down the Thames, Brexit poster boy Nigel Farage grinned at the head of an armada of fishing boats bound for Westminster and loudly called for withdrawal from the EU.

But suddenly, under the shadow of Tower Bridge, a handful of boat ships launch a surprise “attack” to stop the fleet; There was none other than Bob Geldof in this attack.

“You’re no fisherman’s friend… you’re a fraud,” Remain supporters shouted at Mr Farage, the Band Aid founder, as they waved “In” flags in the London breeze.

The bizarre scene was followed by colorful insults in the muddy waters before Mr Geldof’s ship was reported to have been fired upon with a hose.

Back on land, Mr Farage condemned Mr Geldof for the “hugely disgraceful” display and accused him of showing “absolute disdain” for the fishermen and women who supported the Leave River protest under the Fishing for Permit banner.

The group approved a commitment that the UK would take back control of UK waters. So did the majority of the country’s fishing community; Nine in 10 people said they planned to vote for Brexit.

A few months later they got what they wanted in the referendum.

But today, a decade after the vote to leave the EU, many in the fishing community say their industry has been betrayed following promises that Britain would regain control of its waters.

“We felt betrayed because we were convinced, promised, that we would achieve these key points by not complying with the fishing limit of 12 nautical miles off the British coast for foreign vessels,” said fisherman Anthony Hoskin, from Port Newlyn in Cornwall.

Mr Hoskin sits with Andy Wheeler, deputy chief executive of the Cornish Fish Producers Organization (CFPO), in the cooperative’s modest offices overlooking the stone-walled harbour, which dates back to 1435. At the base of the co-op is a Victorian building that once served as a “fisherman’s retreat” more than a century ago.

It’s a bright afternoon and several fishing boats – a mix of beam trawlers and crab boats – are slowly entering the blue-water harbour, where workers are busy loading huge arctic trucks destined for places as far away as Portugal.

Mr. Hoskin continued: “The only thing you can count on our politicians is that they will screw this up.” “The idea of ​​Brexit was good but the people we had, the people we always had, they all seemed very weak and didn’t have an understanding of our industry. In the end we were betrayed.”

Since the 1970s, under the rule of the European Economic Community, the EU’s predecessor, European vessels had been allowed to fish up to six nautical miles off the coast of Britain. As part of the Leave campaign, many hoped for the exclusion zone to be withdrawn to 12 nautical miles.

However, the UK did not negotiate the exclusion of EU fishing fleets.

Instead, Boris Johnson agreed to increase fishing quotas for UK ships during a five-year transition period – before last year Sir Keir Starmer extended the regulation allowing European ships to operate in UK waters until 2038 last year.

At his desk, Mr Wheeler recalls Mr Farage visiting Newlyn, Britain’s largest fishing port, ahead of the Brexit referendum. Other politicians took the same campaign route from London to the town, nearly 300 miles away, in the months before the vote.

“Fishing tugs at the heartstrings of the nation and they [Leave campaigners] “I really tried to take advantage of that with promises of sovereignty,” Mr. Wheeler says.

“But if you take into account the fact that fishing accounts for a very low percentage of GDP (0.05 per cent), all these promises were never going to come to fruition due to the trade-offs required in the Brexit negotiations. Fishing was going to be last on the list of priorities.”

One of Mr. Wheeler’s duties is to divide dozens of quotas for fishing species among the 150 or so members of his group. Its remit is also to warn foreign ships to keep away from shellfish containers left by UK boats, particularly in waters within 12 nautical miles of the coast.

Using WhatsApp and a live maritime traffic map, he texts a French ship about the 16-square-mile area where the pots are anchored. The French crew seem to oblige this time, but that’s not always the case.

Often during storms, when many small UK vessels are forced to dock, French trawlers use the cape at the southern tip of Cornwall as a shelter to continue fishing day and night, leading to weekly clashes with UK-laid vessels.

“It’s £100 a pot and thousands of pounds for new rope,” says fisherman Richard Carroll, who stood in the harbor feeding spare rope from a machine for his pots after damage caused by trawlers in December.

Mr Carroll, skipper of the blue-dyed Winter of Ladram, says he spends between £60,000 and £70,000 on new ropes and ropes each year and that his attempt to get even a penny back from the list of ships he has withdrawn ends up “not getting a penny”.

The 49-year-old says: “I fish in British fishing waters but my gear is damaged by foreign ships that ignore our messages. How is this fair? Imagine if we did the same in French waters, a war would break out.”

Mr Carroll, who works for a fishing company called Waterdance, also complained that Brexit had caused difficulties in recruiting crew and problems with paperwork had previously led to employees being forced to leave. There are currently six Latvians on board. “Good employees,” he says.

Further down the harbor is Josh Dornam, a 34-year-old fisherman who had to return from the Netherlands due to a post-Brexit rise in export costs. “I voted for Brexit because I thought it would help the fishing industry, but it was all based on lies,” he says.

Brexit voter Phil Mitchell, 55, is in charge of a teleporter that catches fish including lemon sole and monkfish. He said the failure to stop foreign ships fishing in British waters was the biggest disappointment in the Brexit deal.

“When the weather gets bad [French and Belgium vessels] We can continue fishing, so when we go out we find the stock is low.

“Idea [of Brexit] Were you able to control your waters and push your friends? [foreign vessels] which did not happen. “We were too weak and the quotas were too small, it’s disgusting.”

The failure to deliver on promises was reflected by former environment minister George Eustice in a local BBC phone call five years ago. Mr Eustice, who lost his seat of Camborne and Redruth in Cornwall at the last general election, admitted: “We haven’t had as much success in fishing as we had hoped, I won’t pretend otherwise.”

An hour’s drive from Newlyn on the north coast of Cornwall is the seaside resort of Newquay.

Built in 1833, a town that flourished as a fishing port in Victorian times, the harbor now has only around 15 fishing vessels and almost as many fishing pleasure boats, charging around £25 for two hours at sea.

At the nearby Red Lion pub, where battered cod and chips cost £15.95, framed pictures of the harbor show dozens of masted fishing vessels with railway tracks on the packed walls of the man-made bay.

But on the quiet main street (we visit on a Tuesday in March) there is little evidence of the town’s fishing past. Asked where a locally caught crab sandwich can be purchased, the worker at the Travelodge shrugs. “Not here,” he says.

Outside, overlooking the picturesque harbour, a shellfisher shares the same frustrations as those in Newlyn.

“We would all be better off as a result of Brexit,” he says.

The man, who runs a boat with his son, collects shellfish from around 2,000 pots located within 12 nautical miles of the north Cornwall coastline.

“We were told that the French and Belgian ships would not haul our belongings and that would make our lives easier,” he says. “I wouldn’t be able to sleep knowing that thousands of pounds worth of rope and pottery could be lost.

“We would have even taken control of our quotas without the dictates of Brussels. But we were sold out, it’s that simple.”