Fishing and the British Nation

Britain is an island country possessing a wealth of coastal assets. Fishing here has a long history dating back to prehistoric times when humans consciously exploited what nearby waters had to offer and continuing to the present day.

Over time, larger settlements and towns grew up by the water, their growth facilitated by the adjacent food supply. By Norman times, the importance of fish in everyday diet increased due to the practice of meat abstinence during religious holidays.

Extensive

From the fourteenth century or possibly even earlier, deep water fishing boats went out into the Atlantic Ocean from Bristol and other ports. And by the sixteenth century, fishing had become an extensive economic activity around the British coast.

By later standards the Tudor fishing industry was still small-scale. Boats were relatively small, fishing often seasonal. Long before refrigeration or rapid transport, catches were preserved through salting, drying, smoking or pickling.

‘…the fishing industry reflected a growing maritime nation…’

Yet even then the industry was already connected to wider commerce and reflected a growing maritime nation. Preserved herring and cod were both traded over long distances. Fishing ports needed boats and equipment. Merchants, shipwrights, coopers and other trades became linked to the industry.

Significantly, the Tudor state saw fishing as more than just a source of food. Because fishermen possessed knowledge of tides, winds, navigation and coastal waters, fisheries were a “nursery for English seamen”. From that period onwards they were associated with national strength, the training of sailors and maritime power.

Herring was one of the great staple commodities of pre-industrial northern Europe; relatively cheap, plentiful and easily preserved. North Sea herring fisheries helped sustain settlements and markets along the east coast of Britain for centuries – notably Great Yarmouth and Lowestoft.

Support

Fishing could support communities where agriculture offered limited opportunities, affecting patterns of settlement. In many coastal areas, fishing became combined with other occupations such as farming, boatbuilding and maritime trade.

Important pilchard, herring and mackerel fisheries developed in South West England. In Scotland, fishing became especially significant around the east coast and later around the Moray Firth and the north-east. On the north-east English coast, herring became increasingly important from the eighteenth century onwards.

Competition

But Britain’s fishing industry faced international competition. Dutch fishing fleets were particularly powerful in the North Sea and by the early seventeenth century, several English fisheries were experiencing decline in the face of Dutch competition. Even so, by the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries Britain had possibly the world’s largest fishing industry.

‘The industrial revolution fundamentally transformed British fishing.’

But it was the industrial revolution which fundamentally transformed British fishing by changing the demand for fish and the ways it could be caught and transported.

Britain’s rapidly expanding industrial towns created enormous urban markets. The combination of railway expansion and improved preservation transformed fresh fish from an unaffordable luxury into an important source of protein and oils for workers.

National

A factory worker in Manchester, Leeds, Sheffield or Birmingham could eat fish caught hundreds of miles away. No longer was the fishing industry primarily a collection of coastal trades but part of the national system of industrial economy.

Fishing reflected changes taking place throughout British industry. From the 1880s, steel-hulled steam trawlers increasingly displaced sailing vessels. They were as much a product of the industrial age as railway locomotives.

Capitalist

Larger vessels could remain at sea for longer periods but required more investment. Capitalist fishing companies replaced small family enterprises. Fishing became connected to banks and merchants.

By the 1860s and 1870s, hundreds of fishing vessels were operating from rapidly-growing Hull. And Grimsby developed into one of the world’s great fishing ports.

Labour became increasingly organised around employers who owned vessels and controlled access to markets. This transformation was not simply an increase in scale but also a change in the organisation of production.

Control

Employers and skippers exercised considerable control over their workers who endured physically dangerous and demanding conditions. Most of our fishing ports have sad memories of vessels shipwrecked with loss of sailors’ lives.

At the same time, fishing communities developed distinctive forms of social organisation and trade unions emerged to defend workers’ interests. The history of fishing thus belongs within the history of Britain’s working class.

Advanced

By the beginning of the twentieth century, Britain possessed a huge, technologically advanced and capital-intensive fishing industry. It led the world in the scale of its catching, processing and distribution.

Large steam-trawling fleets from around the country reached fishing grounds around Iceland, the Faroes, the Barents Sea and the North Atlantic.

Fishing was part of an industrial system. It benefited from world-leading manufacturing, finance and maritime trade and also contributed to them. Importantly, the development of fishing helped connect remote coastal communities to national markets.

War

During the First World War (1914-18) fishing vessels and fishermen became involved in naval operations with their invaluable knowledge of the sea and seamanship. And the fishing fleet helped feed the country.

This relationship continued during the Second World War (1939-45), not least the role of fishing trawlers in rescuing British and French soldiers at Dunkirk in 1940.

Decline

The end of the Second World War marked a decisive turning point for fishing. Changes in fish stocks, consumer habits, international competition and post-war economic restructuring all contributed to the industry’s long-term decline.

Britain’s wider industrial economy was also changing with the loss of heavy industry and the decline of coal and rail freight. The economic environment which had helped produce the nineteenth-century fishing boom was fast disappearing.

Sophisticated

What remained of the fishing industry nevertheless became more technologically sophisticated in terms of vessels, sonar location technologies, refrigeration and processing.

After 1945, countries increasingly asserted control over larger areas of surrounding waters. Britain extended its fisheries jurisdiction, while Iceland progressively expanded its exclusive fishing zones.

This led to the Cod Wars between Britain and Iceland in the 1970s. The disputes were about sovereignty, national economic interests and maritime power. Britain was no longer the dominant naval and industrial power. Iceland regarded control over its fisheries as vital to its economic future.

Common Fisheries Policy

Britain’s entry into the European Economic Community in 1973 marked a major change. British fisheries became subject to the Common Fisheries Policy. In 1973 Edward Heath’s government surrendered Britain’s 200-mile fishing limit.

Fishermen suffered a loss of control over local resources. The impact on the home fishing fleet was catastrophic. By the end of our EU membership, vessels from EU nations were taking at least half the total catch in British waters.

Fishing and Brexit

Despite economic decline over the last half century, fishing acquired symbolic importance. It became a powerful expression of a particular conception of Britishness, of us as an island, a maritime nation, and a country whose interests extended into the surrounding seas.

‘Fishing was a frontline issue in the 2016 EU Referendum…’

Fishing was a frontline issue in Brexit politics and in the 2016 EU Referendum. It was important to many coastal communities and also to our national identity and sovereignty.

Fishing organisations supported Brexit partly because they expected Britain to regain greater control over its waters. Fishermen showed an extraordinarily high level of support for leaving the EU. Their hope was that Britain would take control of our Exclusive Economic Zone again), oust the rights of EU vessels and boost our own fishing industry, behaving similar to Iceland and Norway.

But British governments and their negotiators refused to exercise control over our waters. Instead they betrayed our fishermen by allowing EU vessels to continue to operate in British waters. A further dreadful agreement in 2025 extended EU access to British fishing grounds until 2038.

Fishing now

The British fishing fleet has shrunk dramatically. By 2024, there were only 5,232 UK-registered fishing vessels, a 52 per cent reduction since 1994. And around 80 per cent of the remaining vessels are small, under ten metres long.

In 2024, UK vessels landed 745,000 tonnes of sea fish worth £1.16 billion. But Britain imported 633,000 tonnes of fish and fish preparations worth £3.5 billion, while exporting 380,000 tonnes worth £2 billion.

The British people cannot tolerate our fishing being on the road to eventual extinction. British fishing is linked to industry and independence – developing and declining together.

Disgrace

It would be a disgrace if British fishing disappears and only exists in the realm of nostalgia, in fishing museums or heritage centres. To avoid this, the attitude of the British people must change. They must press the government into withdrawing from the unequal deals with EU and to restore national control over our waters.

Sharpen the dignity of our independence. Stop being bullied. Modernise our port infrastructure. Make more fishing boats again. Reintroduce training and apprenticeships to encourage young people into industry. End the betrayal! Show we care for the future of fishing by enforcing positive change!

• A shorter, edited version of this article appears in the November/December 2026 issue of Workers magazine.