In July 1971, shortly after the new, centre-left coalition government came to power in Iceland and announced its intention to extend its fishing limits from 12 to 50 miles, Antony Royle, spokesman for the British Tory govemment justified its opposition to the projected move in rather interesting and undisguised terms. He said that if such a policy was suceessful against British fishing-fleets "...only to a limited extent could the loss be made good by switching to other grounds. Most of these are already fully exploited.." What he was saying in effect was that the blind, unplanned plunder of the North Atlantic fishing-grounds had exhausted them and that Iceland's coastal shelf, on which cod spawn and to which herring migrate in large numbers, was the major remaining area from which the British fishing industry could extract its profits, using its antiquated and dangerous trawlers and its over-worked and under-paid labour force. The objections of a small country, whose whole economy virtually depends on those same fish (80% of Iceland's exports are products or by-products of fish) were to him of little consequence.
As revolutionary socialists we should defend and maintain positions which are in the interest of the whole working-class, in this case in Iceland, as well as in Britain. Let us look then at the subjective responses and objective situations of the workers in the two countries, in relation to this issue.
REACTIONARY HOSTILITY The Icelandic government began to actively detend its policy by force in September 1972 using its very small coastguard vessels to cut the trawling-wires of British and German boats found fishing within the 50-mile limit. The response of the workers' in and around the British fishing and fish-processing industries Carl Gardner looks at the British-Icelandic conflict (who number about 100,000), egged on by the capitalist press and their "socialist leaders in the Labour Party and the unions has been one of reactionary indignation and chauvinistic hostility.
Such a response can be shown quite easily to be short-sighted and directly opposed to the long-term interests of the workers involved. It is the section of the British ruling-class involved in the fishing industry, who have brought about the present situation by their policy of over-fishing in the first place. What hostility against the Icelandic actions means, is that the trawlermen are being misled into endangering their lives by fighting the ruling class's battles imagining them to be their own. What is clear is that given this policy, whatever happens, the trawlermen and the fishindustry workers will suffer. If the trawlerowners, backed by the British government, manage to smash the 50-mile limit, then over-fishing of this last vital fishing-ground will soon reduce the total stocks of fish in the Atlantic and there will be a cutback in the industry. Exactly the same thing will happen if the Icelandic government is successful in maintaining the limit. ATROCIOUS CONDITIONS Tne trawlermen of Hull, Grimsby, Fleetwood, elc. should be organising themselves to defend their real interests against the fleet owners, not attacking the Icelandic government and the Icelandic workers, who face exactly the same fate as they do for exactly the same reasons. The demands they should be raising and fighting for now, concern the improvement in their conditions (which are atrociously dangerous) and a basic rate of pay, and no redundancies, instead of the periodic lay-offs and piece-rates they work for now, which set one group of workers against another and cause them to bear the brunt of lower catches, which are inevitable given the situation outlined above. These are the only moves which can maintain their interests as a section of the working-class.
ECONOMIC BASE In Iceland, the workers support completely the actions of the coalition parties in power, to defend the fishing-grounds around their coasts. While being in no way revolutionary, they are certainly necessary as a precondition for maintaining the economic base of the whole country, without which the future development of any society, be it capitalist or socialist, would be impossible. The move is engineered in the direct self-interest of the small Icelandic ruling-class, and is supported by them. A philanthropic desire to maintain the ecology of the oceans plays no part in their thinking, though objectively such moves must be critically supported by socialists, especially those in one of the main capitalist countries responsible for the plunder in the first place. The issue of self-determination, in the context of Iceland, must be seen in the broader sense of present and future control of the resources on which that nation depends, even by the national capitalist class. Only by recognising this fact and defending the right of Iceland to the 50-mile limit can the British working class movement assist the struggle of Icelandic socialists to overthrow the capitalist system in that country. What we are ultimately faced with is the necessity for total social ownership of the world's resources and their coordinated use in a natural and controlled manner. By fighting for the above positions, the British working class can play its part in this process.
On Sunday, 21 January, the Observer news-