Backhanded Aloof Socialist French Fishermen Thr
Post# of 51175
Threaten to BLOCKADE UK If Stopped from
Plundering British Fisheries < >
French fishermen are threatening direct action to blockade the United Kingdom if they are stopped from plundering the county’s fisheries once it takes control of them back from the European Union.
Shortly before Britain joined the European Economic Community, as the European Union then called itself, the bloc changed its rules so national fisheries became a so-called “common resource” to be shared out by Brussels — a well-times move, considering the an outright majority of the fish in northern Europe were in British waters.
Norway, which was also applying to join the bloc at the time, ultimately decided against doing so due in no small part to the devastating impact they expected the measure might have on the fishing industry — but Britain’s europhile prime minister, the late Edward ‘Ted’ Heath, decided his government must “swallow it all and swallow it whole” in order to secure accession after previous setbacks in the 1960s.
The blow to the British fishing industry did indeed end up being considerable, particularly in Scotland, and was exacerbated when Spain joined the bloc in the 1990s — the the point where most of Britain’s fish is assigned to foreign countries.
Leave campaigners such as Nigel Farage have therefore long considered the return of full, sovereign control of Britain’s fisheries as “the acid test of Brexit”, and warned that any exit arrangements which fail to achieve this would not be a genuine break with the bloc.