The fishermen of Kilkeel campaigned for Brexit two years ago under a jovial banner of a cartoon fish which sported a helmet, armour, a union jack shield and the legend “Fishing for Leave”.
The image symbolised hope that this fishing community in Northern Ireland and others across the UK would escape European Union strictures and enter a new, blue yonder of British maritime sovereignty.
After the referendum passed, the flags stayed on the boats, fluttering in triumph.
Now there is no sign of them. Instead, flapping in chill autumnal winds, is a new flag showing a map of the UK and the legend “No Fishing Sellout”. A new, anxious message.
“It doesn’t appear that we’re going to get what I voted for,” said Charlie McBride, 65, a veteran fisherman who owns two boats. “We were told we’d get our 200-mile limit back, we were promised that.”
Fishermen were promised a lot of things: an extended exclusive fishing zone; bigger offshore quotas for UK vessels and curbs on foreign fleets which currently hoover up most of the shellfish, plaice, Dover sole, herring and hake in UK waters; a harpoon driven through the common fisheries policy (CFP) foisted on them when Britain joined the European Community in 1973.
But as the House of Commons prepares to vote on a Brexit deal many of those who work the docks in Kilkeel, home of Northern Ireland’s biggest fishing fleet, wonder if they detect an acrid zephyr wafting in from the across the Irish Sea, one more pungent than the usual mix of crab, prawn and diesel: the smell of betrayal.
Quick GuideBrexit and backstops: an explainer
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A backstop is required to ensure there is no hard border in Ireland if a comprehensive free trade deal cannot be signed before the end of 2020. Theresa May has proposed to the EU that the whole of the UK would remain in the customs union after Brexit, but Brussels has said it needs more time to evaluate the proposal.
As a result, the EU insists on having its own backstop - the backstop to the backstop - which would mean Northern Ireland would remain in the single market and customs union in the absence of a free trade deal, prompting fierce objections from Conservative hard Brexiters and the DUP, which props up her government.
That prompted May to propose a country-wide alternative in which the whole of the UK would remain in parts of the customs union after Brexit.
“The EU still requires a ‘backstop to the backstop’ – effectively an insurance policy for the insurance policy. And they want this to be the Northern Ireland-only solution that they had previously proposed,” May told MPs.
Raising the stakes, the prime minister said the EU’s insistence amounted to a threat to the constitution of the UK: “We have been clear that we cannot agree to anything that threatens the integrity of our United Kingdom,” she added.
“The government has been bending over backwards to Brussels,” said Raymond Patterson, 40, a mechanic working on the Steadfast, a 19-metre prawn trawler. “It seems they’re already conceding.”
The latest reason for foreboding is dispute over whether fishing will be part of a wider trade package, which could see fishing rights sacrificed for other priorities.
A draft political declaration says the UK and EU will establish a new fisheries agreement, ideally by 1 July 2020, enshrining the UK as an “independent coastal state”. Government sources insist a fisheries deal will be negotiated separately to trade policy, though this does not rule out EU member states getting access to UK waters.
However some MPs from fishing constituencies in England and Scotland are sounding the alarm, saying this sounds like the hated common fisheries policy in all but name.
“It’s really hard to predict what’s going to happen,” said Christopher Huggins, a University of Suffolk politics lecturer who writes about fishing policy.
“The political declaration effectively leaves the future relationship with the EU on fisheries to be determined. Fishing is a small part of the overall UK economy but it is vital to the local economy of many coastal communities and has political salience so for the government it’s a balancing issue.”
Heather Millar, who runs a fish stall and equipment store in Kilkeel, is bracing for the worst. “We don’t know if London will trade our fishing rights to the EU for something else. I think they will. Historically that’s what they’ve always done.”
The fear is that all the Brexiter talk about fishing being a totemic industry and part of British identity will run aground on hard numbers.
Fishing comprises less than 0.5% of the UK’s GDP – an economic minnow. Northern Ireland’s fishing industry is even tinier. Its 310 registered vessels account for just 6% of the UK’s fishing fleet. Their catch of 17,000 tonnes per year is worth about £30m – 4% of the value of fish landed into UK ports.
“There may be a temptation to sell us out to get some bigger and better deal,” said Alan McCulla, who runs the Anglo North Irish Fish Producers’ Organisation from an office on Kilkeel dock. “This is politics, it’s a negotiation.”
His group, representing 60 member vessels, distributed the “No Fishing Sellout” flags which replaced the cartoon fish emblem.
The cause is hardly lost, said McCulla, who lobbies MPs at Westminster. “We’re excited about the opportunities that Brexit presents. We’re feeling confident.”
Northern Ireland however is uniquely vulnerable. The UK fishing industry is no monolith. Each region has distinct needs and preferences – and lobbyists. If Brexit negotiators have to throw people overboard, the small and weak may go first.
Fishermen in Scotland and England have vocal support from many MPs, including Tory ones who have threatened to defy party whips.
Northern Ireland’s politicians, in contrast, seem lost with the crew of the Mary Celeste. Stormont is a deserted chamber since the power-sharing executive collapsed last year. Kilkeel is in a Sinn Féin constituency which means its MP, Chris Hazzard, boycotts Westminster. The Democratic Unionist party (DUP) does have sway over the government but is focused on the Irish border backstop. Fishing barely registered at the party’s conference on Saturday.
Thus Northern Ireland’s fishermen have been raging – so far in vain – at the Irish Republic’s decision in 2016 to exclude them from waters previously accessed under the so-called Voisinage Agreement, which Ireland’s supreme court deemed unconstitutional. “Outrageous, and they get away with it,” said Patterson, the mechanic.
Kilkeel’s Brexit dream of full control over the ocean is a potential nightmare for fishermen in the Republic who could lose access to UK waters and find French, Spanish and other EU fleets displaced into Irish waters.
But Francis O’Donnell, who heads the Irish Fish Producers Organisation in Killybegs, Co Donegal, is not panicking. “I think there will be an agreement and that fisheries will be part of that agreement. The UK won’t retain exclusive rights. I’m hopeful that we will be able to continue shipping in British waters.”