JOHN MACLEOD: We are an island nation...nothing can erase the place fishermen hold in the UK's national consciousness

Daily Mail​

21-05-2025

In May 2000 I had a memorable break in Raasay, a lush and fascinating island sandwiched roughly between Portree and Applecross.
And found myself one afternoon, briefly at the tiller, helming a sailboat in the kindly sou' easter of a summer breeze, of a design that would have been immediately familiar to my four great-grandfathers, all of whom were fishermen.
How the Raasay Outdoor Centre came into possession of a traditional sgoth-Niseach – a broad-beamed, lug rigged clinker-built vessel with narrow oars, overlapping planks and in straight and evident descent from Norsemen's longboats – is, no doubt, a story in itself.
The very word abiding in Gaelic for the Vikings – na Lochlannaich, 'the loch-lurkers' – speaks to the terror these ruthless raiders once inspired.
But, as I pulled that tiller portside and to its tautest and the Oigh Niseach surged back towards Raasay on her starboard beam, I felt something of the muscle-memory of many near forebears, on the surge of the wind and the sea.
In a week when Britain's fishermen have just, and not for the first time, been comprehensively betrayed by His Majesty's Government, I have never forgotten that noiseless, washy boil of power, immediately under my hand, driven by but wind-filled sail, with no rattle of engine or taint of fumes.
The EU 'reset' on which Sir Keir Starmer signed off the other day, and on terms which will be very difficult for a future Government to overturn, grants EU access to our fishing-waters for the next twelve years and – apart from a veterinary, phytosanitary deal making our food exports a little easier – for not very much.
To add insult to injury, we will have to pay the European Union for the privilege – annual Danegeld to a racket the people of Britain voted to leave nine years ago and in larger numbers than they have ever voted for anything.
A decision most of the chatterati, and much of the deep State, has refused wilfully ever to respect.
'This is a total betrayal,' stormed one Cornish fisherman. 'We were promised our waters back, and now Starmer's rolled over and handed them straight to the French for over a decade.'
'It's like Brexit never happened. He's sold us out to Brussels just to please his Eurocrat mates.'
It's a 'horror show,' says Elspeth of the Scottish Fishermen's Federation, 'far worse than Boris Johnson's botched Brexit agreement.
'It is clear that Sir Keir Starmer made the whole deal on the backs of our fishermen and coastal communities, granting EU vessels 12 years of continuous access to UK waters at the last minute to secure other objectives.'
Fishing in Britain has deeply declined. Stornoway's inner harbour, chockers with smacks and trawlers when I was a little boy, is now largely a marina, glamorous yachts and launches putting one in mind of Bergerac.
The fleet harvesting our home waters is a whisper of what it was. In cold Whitehall numbers, fishing is now but 0.03% of the British economy – and barely 6,500 people now work on our fishing boats.
In fact, at least in the Western Isles, recruitment has been a problem for years. Few young men want a life of murderous hours, pre-dawn starts and arduous physical toil in what, statistically, is one of the most dangerous jobs out.
Few years pass without a Hebridean tragedy. Three friends of mine were fortunate to survive when – in separate Harris incidents, a hand or ankle momentarily entangled in a spooling rope – they went overboard with a fleet of creels.
One lost several fingers. We deluged 'Fachie' with assorted goodies in hospital and lamented his lost prospects as a concert-pianist.
In April 2016, the crew of the MFV Louisa awoke to find their craft foundering by the bows off the uninhabited island of Mingulay.
Everything that could have gone wrong for those lads went wrong. The electronic distress-beacon gave HM Coastguard an inaccurate position.
The life-raft would not inflate; the subcontractor handsomely paid for its annual service had failed to replace the CO2 cylinder.
Inadequate life-jackets had not kept men upright, face-up in the water. Only one, Lachlan Armstrong, 27 – who somehow swam to safety – survived. His three comrades drowned: one body, slipping from the winchman's grasp, was never recovered.
But bald economic statistics cannot erase the fond place of the trawlerman in our national self-consciousness.
This is an island nation. A maritime land, where nowhere is more than forty miles from the sea. We were raised singing sea-shanties at school, Captain Birdseye is something of a national treasure and even the Queen, on annual Balmoral sojourn, used to send out quietly for fish and chips.
Fishing, even on Lewis, is not what it was. The rich, haddocky waters of Broad Bay were trawled to extinction by ruthless east-coasters.
The broad boats I remember beached at Shawbost – cobles and skiffs, lovingly maintained by experts with the baited longline and shortline – vanished decades ago. The herring-boom collapsed in 1977 and no one even bothers, commercially at least, to poach salmon anymore.
What survives is a creel-boat, 'static gear' industry – most successfully in waters off South Lochs, Scalpay or in the Sound of Harris where the gainful pursuit of prawn, lobster and velvet-crab calls for keen local knowledge.
Which reminds me of when, back in 1996, Caledonian MacBrayne belatedly began a car ferry service across the Sound of Harris – all shoals, reefs, shifting sandbanks and quirky tides – and one local boatman, of unparalleled skill, was confidently assumed to be a shoo-in for command.
But CalMac had to choose another chargehand, for he turned out to be colour-blind.
To complicate things further, most of the fish landed in Britain goes overseas – the Spanish have a bottomless appetite for our crustaceans, and especially for our hake – and much of what we do eat is imported.
Much of it frozen and processed, for most of us these days shy from fish cookery and your local fishmonger – my daily walk to school, through Morningside, four decades ago used to take me past four – is now an endangered species.
But one still remember tales of a past fishing generation, not that long ago, who daily braved the perils of the deep.
Like one grizzled skipper, off the Butt of Lewis, sat at the transom and who spotted something, frowned, and at once ordered his men to row as fast as possible for the shore.
For an age they pulled and pulled on their oars. He demanded they go faster. One protested. He pulled a knife, glared at him, and rapped that the first man who stopped rowing would get it in the guts.
Just as the exhausted men felt they could not last another minute, they beached on the golden sands of Traigh Shanndaidh – and the boat disintegrated beneath them.
Her keel had cracked, half an hour earlier and a mile or two from shore: their master had spotted it immediately, and knew that only sustained forward motion would spare all their lives.
Typical of an old Hebridean school that taught life was precious, but the soul was priceless.
And in the dark wisdom of a Gaelic proverb one still hears. The waves have some mercy; but the rocks have no mercy at all.