New Year, Old Problems

For the Scottish Parliament the next 12 weeks will be particularly busy. And for the North-East, they could determine our community’s future.

The New Year revelations that a Tory Prime Minister cynically sold out the Scottish fishing fleet when he took us into the EEC and into the Common Fisheries Policy have come as no surprise. But the opening up of documents in the Public Records Office to scrutiny in the annual release under the “30-year rule” is particularly timely this year.

For we can now read that, whatever else he did, he was not acting irrationally. He believed that although the Scottish fleet would suffer, there would be greater benefits for fishermen south of the border. And as Prime Minister for the whole of the UK that may have seemed to make sense for him.

But it illustrates why Scotland needs to be sitting at the top table in Europe, and elsewhere. Our interests need to be at the top of the agenda for our negotiators.


Every other country directly represented at the EU fisheries talks got what they needed. Even when, as in the case of Denmark’s industrial fisheries, it means their continuing to hoover up with their small-mesh nets, cod, haddocks and the food they eat. Science had nothing to do with the outcome, politics, straightforward power politics, determined the outcome.

And it will be no use Scottish Fisheries Minister, Ross Finnie, telling Parliament on the 8th of January that we were outvoted. Because he didn’t have a vote. And the person who was supposed to be acting in our interests, UK Minister Eliot Morley, chose to accept the deal and thus may have closed off some of the ways of taking further action in Europe.

Nonetheless the deal is clearly discriminatory, fishermen with wide net mesh sizes banned from waters in which those with small meshes can still fish and catch the same species. The Danes can fish and the Scots cannot.

So the fishermen’s organisations may still have a legal way forward. And the proper response of the legal system should be to suspend the arrangements agreed by the UK government and return to something which meets Scotland’s needs.

I anticipate a rowdy time when Ross Finnie gives us his statement on Wednesday.

Report Card

The last year in politics in the area have been busy. And jobs have been top of the agenda throughout.

A long and tortuous path eventually led to transfer of the ‘Simmers of Hatton’ factory from the ownership of a multi-national into local hands. And new boss Paul Allan has already expanded his interests with the takeover of the Chalmers Bakery shops in the area. So it looks like a long term future for a business started in the late 1800s.

Fisher Foods eventually became Macrae’s when difficulties with finance pulled down the previous owners of large factories in Fraserburgh and Peterhead. With hundreds of jobs at stake, negotiations between the receiver and prospective new owners broke down on several occasions. Elegant footwork by Alex Salmond saved the day.

Unlike the situation with employment disputes where the ‘qango’ ACAS can be brought in to broker a deal when relationships between employer and employee have broken down, there is no equivalent body there to help with failing companies.

So it is just as well that both Alex and I have experience of business and can play a conciliating and brokering role from time to time.

The danger for politicians is that success cannot be guaranteed. But in these cases businesses returned to local control meant good news for us all.

For me the Peterhead Prison Campaign dominated. When two partners of prison officers first approached me, it set in motion a chain of events that motivated a community and defeated the Scottish Executive’s plans to close our prison.

And it illustrated for me once again the potential of Scotland’s women. The average wage of men still exceeds that of women despite the first of the equal opportunities laws coming into force as long ago as 1st of January 1975.

The Partners’ Committee showed that women are certainly no less articulate than men and they already been the inspiration for the Cod Crusaders whose tea-shirt “Fishing SoS” I am wearing as I write.

May they be just as successful in 2003 as the prison campaigners were in 2002.

And Finally …

We do occasionally have a humerous moment or two in Parliament. Consider these Ministerial responses to questions from me during debate on the Land Reform Bill;

Deputy Rural Affairs Minister, Allan Wilson: In response to Stewart Stevenson's final point, I confirm that drowning is included in access rights.

and

Allan Wilson: It is not possible to translate paths on to water, because people cannot walk on water.