Staring at the Sea

Photo by Neil Thomson

If you live on Barra, the only jobs here are fishing or crofting (farming). I started fishing here when I was 14 and since then I’ve made thousands of pounds and become known as the best fisherman on the island. Things are different now though. In fact, I would say the whole fishing industry is at risk. Looking around me now at the bay I can remember the days when there used to be 15 or 20 boats all moored here, now though, there’s only one. It’s really sad. All the young men have to go off to sea to the mainland to find work now. Here’s some context. When I bought my first boat when I was 15 it cost me £120. Three years later I bought another one for £1,000, then on my 21st birthday I bought a lobster boat worth about £40,000, if you include all the gear I had on it. I was pulling in 300 crates of lobster a day, and at £35 a kilo I was making a lot of money. All the lads were. It was a great time. We were out there every day catching lobster, crab, prawns, sprats, halibut, turbot, anything you can think of. I love the job of fishing, there is no better job in the world. I would go back to fishing tomorrow if the conditions were the same as they were when I was young. The main reason the trade is on its knees is because the government has put up the prices of equipment and fuel so much. Back in the old days, it would cost you around £15 for a lobster pot, these days it’s about £45. That would be okay if the price for a pound of lobster had gone up by the same ratio but it hasn’t. It’s only gone up by about £10. Fuel prices have also risen and the equipment for the boats and the boats themselves have increased in price as well. When the steel industry was shut down by Thatcher everybody had to buy their steel from abroad and, as well as taking away thousands of jobs from working class people who made the steel, the people who bought it had to pay more for foreign steel. Originally the problems started with people like Thatcher but the continuing problems are all the Labour government’s fault. They say they care about normal people but they don’t. They are selling us down the river. They should come up here and see our industry and see how we’re living but none of them are doing that. To add insult to injury, there’s even talk of Tony Blair wanting to dump a nuclear waste plant on an island not far from here. What are they trying to do? Get rid of fishing altogether? PAUL HILLHOUSE