Britain should be generous to the EU: a civil Brexit is still worth fighting for
The danger is that leaders in Europe and the UK have enjoyed the theatrics in Jersey rather too much
6 May 2021 • 10:52pm
A couple of years ago, when the Brexit talks were in full swing, the Civil Service carried out a war game with France as the imagined adversary.
The scenario: a deal was agreed, but with fishing rights bitterly contested. The French deployed a flotilla of trawlers, ramming English boats in a protest about scallops.
The exercise ended with Michael Gove issuing a statement announcing the death of a British fisherman. At the time, ministers thought the whole game was ludicrous. It seems less so now.
Gunboats dispatched to Jersey in UK/French fishing rights conflict
A degrading jingoistic spectacle played out this week between the UK and France over fishing rights in the waters around Jersey.
Up to 60 French fishing vessels blockaded the island’s St Hellier’s port for several hours Thursday, overseen by two Royal Navy gunboats and two French military vessels.
Jersey is the largest of the Channel Islands and home to just over 100,000 people. Located 14 miles from the French Normandy coast and 85 miles south of the UK, it was brought under the English/British crown with the conquest of England by William the Conqueror in 1066, remaining so when King John surrendered his claim to the Duchy of Normandy in 1259.
But there was also support among some Jersey fishers for the protest.
Chris Le Masurier, the owner of the Jersey Oyster Company, described conditions placed upon the new post-Brexit fishing licences issued to Breton and Norman fishers as “insulting and discriminatory”.
The EU also backed the claims of French fishers. In a statement issued overnight, the European Commission said the conditions set on licences for fishing in the Channel Island’s waters were in breach of the trade agreement struck on Christmas Eve.
A spokesperson said: “The commission was notified on Friday 30 April by UK authorities of the granting of 41 licences to EU vessels for fishing in Jersey’s territorial waters as of 1 May with specific conditions.
Leading the sabre-rattling that added fire to today s fishing war in Jersey is Emmanuel Macron s hard-left maritime minister, a fisherman s daughter and Brexit hater who has made inflammatory threats to cut off the island s electricity.
Annick Girardin, a member of the Radical Party of the Left, is a straight-talking political street fighter who in a previous role led efforts to defend the French language over the growing global influence of English - an abiding obsession of the country s political class.
The 56-year-old, once dubbed the Pirate of Hope in a TV documentary praising her radical credentials, is MP for Saint-Pierre-et-Miquelon, an isolated, weather-beaten French overseas territory of just over 6,000 souls off the coast of Newfoundland, where she grew up and gave birth to her first child, a daughter, aged 15.
The Athos boat travelled along the River Seine from Rouen to Le Havre then around Cherbourg towards Jersey - after two UK Navy vessels began patrolling waters around the island.