Fishermen fear village saved in war could fall to EU quota

A PLAQUE on a wall in Newlyn Harbour commemorates the departure from the port in 1937 of a fishing boat bearing a petition to the British government.

The petition asks for the village to be spared the effects of the Penzance house clearing scheme, a plea which the plaque notes was partially successful. The planned demolition was eventually halted by the outbreak of the second World War, since when Newlyn has become a conservation area.

It is an irony for fishermen here that while war in Europe helped save the old village, peaceful cooperation in Europe might yet be the death of it. Locals claim the combination of Brussels-imposed fleet reductions and resultant quota-hopping" will reduce this long-established fishing community to the fate from which Hitler saved it.

The irony of the situation will hardly have been lost on Sir James Goldsmith, one of two party leaders to have staged recent high profile visits to the port, and who has recruited a local fisherman to represent him in the election.

Local supporters of the Referendum Party gleefully compare the warm welcome for Sir James with that accorded to Monday's visit by Mr John Major, whose reception was as flat as the plaice with which he posed on the front of yesterday's Western Morning News.

But sources in the Liberal Democrats say the welcome for Goldsmith came chiefly from "Tory bar-room bores and closet fascists" rather than the fishing community. "You get the same crowd for a National Front meeting," one activist said.

The colours of the Referendum Party have replaced those of Canada on the masts of most of Newlyn's boats, but this may be less political conviction, more just another flag of convenience under which the crewmen cock a snook at authority.

Meanwhile, in the office of the Cornish Fish Producers Association, a spokesman claimed Mr Major was lucky that most boats were out at sea at the time of his visit. And on the subject of the quota-hopping Spaniards, he claimed they were even more discreet than Mr Major, tending to avoid the port altogether and preferring the more anonymous environs of nearby Falmouth.

"They haven't got the guts to come in. Newlyn is a small, close community and they'd be murdered here. The local people wouldn't stand back."

But a trawler owner, Mr Fred Steel, had a more sympathetic view of his fellow Europeans.

"They've been fishing these waters for hundreds of years. It's the EU which forced them into taking up our quota to stay here."

His friend, Mr Dave Hicks, who claims to have initiated the Canadian flag protest, would also tolerate the visitors - as paying guests. "We need to take the waters back into British control and let the fishermen manage them. Then we could charge others for fishing here, like they do in the Falklands."

The Referendum Party candidate, Mr Nick Faulkner, takes up the point: "I've spent half my working life in French and Irish waters. Obviously, we have to have international agreements. But not the situation we have at the moment, where the likes of Luxembourg has a vote on fishing policy!

"It's ridiculous."

But most fishermen blame successive British governments as much as Brussels for the plight of the industry.