Fishing

The Banff and Buchan area contains communities rooted in traditional industries and values. Both fishing and farming depend heavily on the environment and weather.

Both breed exceptional people able to respond and adapt to changing circumstances.

Since the late 1980s, unemployment has fallen substantially to a current level just over a quarter of that when my colleague Alex Salmond was first elected.

That has been possible with changes in the world and state economy but has utterly depended on the spirit of entrepreneurship in local folk. We have over twice as many self-employed people in our area when compared to Scotland as a whole.

But despite the presence of good schools and the very active and successful Banff & Buchan College embedded in our midst, we retain a substantially lower level of qualified people than elsewhere.

This may be about to bite.

It is well documented that our major industry of fishing has faced over recent years, and continues to face, quite exceptional challenges.

Our pre-eminence in the fishing industry in all its variety – catching, processing and servicing – has always been firmly based on catching, without which other sectors would never have existed.

While the pelagic sector has grown and prospered, despite the best efforts of UK and EU governments to deny our fishermen fair quotas, it remains the junior partner in the catching sector.

White fish catching remains paramount. But for how much longer?

Each year has seen unreasonable the EU and its Common Fishing Policy bite deep into the capability of our industry. The recent scientific report once again recommending a complete ban on cod catching in the North Sea does not signal any useful change of heart.

But it is not just those currently hunting the cod and haddocks that are affected by the current artificial restrictions in catching.

Faced with an industry palpably in decline and an apparent inability or unwillingness of the present governments to fight for it, youngsters are making choices about future careers outwith fishing.

And not just catching. Processing factories depend on special skills. As earnings have dropped among filleters, paid largely on a piecework basis, new entrants to the industry have dropped and advertised positions attract few applicants.

When the catching sector suffers, the effects are widespread and subtle. Clearly fewer boats mean fewer shore-side jobs – painters, engineers, icemakers, etc.. – supporting them. But when you have a limited number of days at sea each month it is compounded by crews undertaking self-maintenance that would previously have been done by shore based locals.

And what economists call ‘third level effects’ also kick in. The butcher’s shops – we have about 16 in Banff and Buchan – suffer as fewer crews buy their grub for fewer voyages. Paper shops sell fewer small items as fewer men stop for last minute items enroute to their boats. Fewer new cars are bought as earnings drop.

So the ill effects of policy decisions do not just affect those directly employed.
The oil industry has helped mop up some of the slack. But this notoriously boom and bust business has two generations – at most – to go.

Individuals in the industry continue to innovate. And that is one of our community’s great strengths.

One of the most interesting suggestions I have heard is to develop a ‘brand loyalty’. The ‘Eddie Stobbart Fan Club’ personalises and glamorises an English trucking company – ‘Eddie spotters’ collect numberplates!

The ’16 Men of Tain’ are part of the legend that has kept the Glenmorangie brand pre-eminent in a crowded industry and meant a £300 million price tag on their heads.

Perhaps we will see the faces of our notable skippers beaming off the supermarket shelves as southerners fight for the last pack of cod on the shelf caught by their favourite, and trusted, north-east man.

And then the justified pride that we have in our industry, and in those who go to sea to sustain it, will carry forward for more future generations than we can number.