In this video, Hastings fisherman John Griffin told us that thanks to Greenpeace and its supporters many more people now know how the fishing laws are working.
Greenpeace also managed to get local Conservative MP Amber Rudd to speak out on the matter.
It’s great that she is helping to draw attention to this issue – but she does look mighty uncomfortable among such strange allies. I doubt she’s used to hanging out with a bunch of greeny-liberal-lefty campaigners dressed as endangered fish – I wonder whether they engaged her on other issues important to Greenpeace, such as climate change, defending forests and banning nuclear weapons.
Changes to the EU Common Fisheries Policy are to be agreed in the coming weeks, and it is high time that the share of fishing quotas set aside for inshore fishing were increased – such as the ancient beach based fleet at Hastings.
I think it’s looking increasingly as if this campaign will achieve some progress for the UK’s small fishermen, and that has to be good news, along with the ban on discarding fish from 2014.
We must hope that whatever new policy is agreed works to achieve its aim as intended, and that it cannot be subverted in a way that benefits big fishing.
In the next stage of its campaign, Greenpeace will explain how it thinks supporters can go about influencing Britain’s politicos. In the meantime, see a story about their campaign here, a video by newspaper columnist John Harris explaining how a policy that was put in place to conserve fish stocks has gone wrong and now benefits big business.