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11.57 pm
Mrs. Joan Humble (Blackpool, North and Fleetwood): I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Hull, West and Hessle (Mr. Johnson) on securing this important debate and allowing me the opportunity to speak, albeit briefly. I also congratulate the British Fishermen's Association on fighting such a long campaign to secure compensation for its members.
I especially single out Peggy Whittacker, who chairs the Fleetwood branch of the BFA. I do so deliberately because today, on international women's day, it is
important to remember the role that women had, and still have, in fishing communities such as Fleetwood--wives and mothers, they were left behind for weeks at a time to raise children, look after the home, pay the bills and wait in the hope that their husbands would return safely from one of the most dangerous jobs in the world. We are talking about whole communities and about families, not just about the men who went out on the boats.
However, I would not like to underestimate how dangerous the job was. My hon. Friend the Member for Hull, West and Hessle outlined the dangers. When I speak to men in Fleetwood who fished the waters around Iceland, they tell me horrific stories of cold, ice, fierce seas and frostbite. Those men and their families deserve compensation for the loss of their jobs and livelihoods.
There is now a chance to rectify the broken promises of the past. While vessel owners received handsome compensation, the men received nothing--no training, no help, no compensation. For a large number of Fleetwood men, the original injustices of the 1970s were made worse by the failings of the previous Government's ex gratia scheme. Many of them were share fishermen. They were employees in every sense of the word. They paid tax and national insurance; they saw themselves as employees. But because of the rules imposed by the 1993 scheme, they found that they could not claim. Most of the men who were distant water trawlermen in Fleetwood could not claim and did not benefit, and even those who did received a paltry amount for the long, long years that they spent on the seas. To make things worse, these men are dying off. Even since September 1998, nine men who would qualify within the scheme supported by the BFA have died. How many more have to die before something is done about this matter?
Shona McIsaac (Cleethorpes):
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Hull, West and Hessle (Mr. Johnson) on securing the debate. I thank him for allowing me to contribute to it.
We cannot imagine while we are in the Chamber the hardship that the trawlermen endured at sea. We probably cannot imagine either the pain with which their bodies are racked these days as a result of many years fishing in distant waters. We promised them 20 years ago to compensate them for losing their jobs. We are here tonight to ensure that justice is done at last.
My father was off Iceland in 1976. He was not on the trawlers but serving on HMS Russell to protect the fishing fleet during the cod wars. Even with more than 20 years' service in the Royal Navy behind him, my father was appalled at the conditions in which the trawlermen worked. We have heard a little about that already tonight--for example, the 18-hour days, the temperatures that the men endured and the nature of the job, which made it far more dangerous than mining. In addition to
the hardships that they were enduring at sea, there was hardship at home. Their home lives were largely dissipated by a working pattern that meant about three weeks at sea and then only three days at home.
All those years of working in such an environment is taking its toll. The ex-trawlermen who are still with us have ailments such as arthritis, bronchial conditions and heart disease. When people say that the price of fish has been high in human terms, they are certainly not kidding.
My father sailed home on HMS Russell to the security of a job, but the men of our distant water fleet sailed back to redundancy and a bleak future. They were promised compensation but it never came. We have heard that the trawler owners received a tidy packet in compensation but, as ever, the trawlermen, the workers, got nothing.
In August 1996, my right hon. Friend the now Deputy Prime Minister, visiting me in Cleethorpes, told my local newspaper, the Grimsby Evening Telegraph:
Finally, Jimmy Gale of Healing says that he feels luckier than some. Two ships that he left temporarily to take Christmas breaks sank, killing many of his colleagues. He describes the job in these terms:
Mr. Austin Mitchell (Great Grimsby):
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Hull, West and Hessle (Mr. Johnson) on the courage and perseverance with which he has pursued the matter. I assure him and my hon. Friend the Minister that the Members for the great former distant water fishing ports will not rest until compensation is provided on the lines proposed by the British Fishermen's Association for the trawlermen who lost their jobs when we packed up fishing in Icelandic waters in 1976.
As my hon. Friend said, the trawlermen were promised compensation, retraining, new jobs, and support for the industry. The promises were lavish; none of them was
fulfilled. Instead, the men were dumped on the shore, and they did not even get the statutory redundancy money, because they were deemed to be casual workers and therefore entitled to nothing.
That view was proved wrong by Humphrey Forrest of the Humberside Law Centre in the Atkinson Dickenson v. Hellyers case, which showed that the trawlermen were not casual. As a result of that proof, they got minimal redundancy 16 years late, but they got no compensation for the loss of their jobs, their future and their industry. Had it been realised in 1976 when they lost their jobs that they were not in fact casual, they would have got compensation for their jobs at that time, as car workers, steel workers and miners did. The trawlermen would not have had to cash their pathetic pensions just to survive.
Distant water fishing was the only British industry that was run down without any compensation at all for those who worked in it. There was lavish compensation for the owners, running into millions. The owners hit the jackpot, but the fishermen did not even get the lemons to put on the soles, as a result of the death of that industry. It is a scandal for which we can now make only partial reparation, but we should make it by paying them compensation on the terms set out by the British Fishermen's Association. That will pay our debt to those who suffer still from the industrial diseases of fishing--dermatitis, white skin, weeping scabs, arthritis, injuries, loss of limbs and loss of fingers--which were deemed then in fishing to be acts of God, not grounds for compensation.
We can pay our debt to those who lost their pensions because they had to withdraw the money, as they had nothing else to exist on when they lost their jobs. If they did not work again, as many did not, they were not able to accumulate a SERPS pension to comfort them in old age, so they are now relegated to poverty in old age as a result.
"It's been an absolute scandal. Owners were paid large sums of money to decommission fishing vessels, but none passed on to the trawlermen themselves."
My right hon. Friend added:
"I am an ex-seaman. When there were redundancies in other areas, the seamen were properly compensated. But fishing was not only the hardest of these professions, but has been the worst treated, too."
I shall refer to only a few of the many men in my constituency who worked in that hardest of professions, who lost their livelihoods and have now lost their health. They are still waiting, 20 years on. There is William Webb of Thornton crescent in Cleethorpes. He worked in Icelandic waters until the jobs dried up in 1978. He says:
"There was no chance of getting a job. There were so many men and so few jobs left."
Since then he has suffered several strokes. He can hardly walk. He has severe arthritis. Bob Sinclair of Berkeley road in Humberston worked for 30 years until the firms packed up after the cod wars. He has since had both hips replaced. He suffers from osteoarthritis in his spine, hips, knees and ankles.
"It was the last legalised slavery in the country."
In a way, it was slavery, and like slaves, the trawlermen were given nothing. They have been cast aside and forgotten. Tonight we want to see justice done. Let us have no more talking. To coin a famous phrase, it is now time to do.
12.5 am
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