Film catches a fishing tragedy - The Observer

Behind a lauded screen drama about people-smuggling is the reality of desperate Scottish trawler communities struggling to survive

Thomas Quinn
Sunday October 1, 2006
The Observer

Generations of fishermen from north-east Scotland have battled wind, high seas, rain and icy temperatures. Yet in recent years it has not been the forces of nature that reduced their trawlers to scrap but a government decommissioning programme and the European Union Common Fisheries Policy.

A new Scottish film highlighting the personal cost of this upheaval will be screened for the first time in Scotland this week after winning plaudits at the Toronto Film Festival.

In True North, Gary Lewis plays a trawler skipper facing financial ruin and the loss of his boat. His son, played by Martin Compston, who was in Ken Loach's film Sweet Sixteen, and his first mate, played by Peter Mullan, try to put things right by agreeing to smuggle 20 Chinese workers across the North Sea to Britain from Belgium.

The scheme leads to tragedy, but it is the plight faced by the main characters that strikes a chord. Written and directed by Steve Hudson, the film is in the running for a Scottish Bafta.

'It is bang up to date. You could write the script tomorrow,' said Lewis. 'You feel the fishermen are under siege because they are losing money, whatever they do or however hard they work.

'What struck me most was how emotionally connected these men are to their boats. That isn't some poetic abstract for them. I spoke to one skipper and he talked about launching his trawler in the way a father might talk about the birth of his son. It's that strong a feeling.'

Glasgow-born Lewis, who has played tough, uncompromising working-class men in films such as Billy Elliot and Martin Scorsese's Gangs of New York, was amazed by the physical demands fishermen are under.

'I only spent a day on a fishing boat, but having done that I can appreciate just what hard graft it is,' he said. 'It struck me they are the one industry where the workers are never alienated from their product. They are involved at every stage, from kitting the boat out, paying for the boat, catching and gutting the fish, landing it and selling it in the market. No wonder there's such a strong attachment to the job.

'Obviously there are issues about over-fishing, and I accept there has to be some monitoring and control, but the cost to some of these people is high. What my character and his son in True North do is down to a need for raw survival.'

Many fishing communities are fighting for that sort of survival in real-life in north-east Scotland. To meet EU white fish quotas, around 1,000 boats have been decommissioned and as many as 5,000 fishermen forced out of the industry. Coastal communities such as Peterhead and Fraserburgh have changed for ever.

'It's not just the fishermen who are affected. We've lost many businesses too, including butchers who specialised in supplying the boats,' said the area's MSP, Stewart Stevenson, of the SNP.

He gives limited support to a Scottish Executive-led action plan announced last week to develop the industry north of the border. The measures will include new marketing, processing and catching initiatives involving everyone from the fishermen themselves to retailers such as Marks & Spencer.

'It is doing something worthwhile but it could go further,' Stevenson said. 'It's meant to show the fish are coming from sustainable stocks - but they could also look to identify actual trawlers where the fish are sourced.'

The real issue, he and his party claim, is that Scotland's interests are not properly represented by a UK government which does not consider fishing a priority. As a result, the Scottish share of European fishing rights is smaller than it should be.

Morag Ritchie, one of the so-called Fraserburgh fishwives who spearheaded the Cod Crusaders, a high-profile campaign against decommissioning and for Britain to free itself from the Common Fisheries Policy, says they have been defeated. Despite raising a petition with more than 250,000 signatures, including that of Sean Connery, the Westminster government confirmed last month that it will not consider ending Britain's part in the policy.

'The fleet is far smaller now and the boats that have survived have seen an increase in prices this year, and that's helped them,' Ritchie said. 'But they are still fighting all the time - against increased fuel costs and the quota system. The fishermen don't agree with the scientists who say fish stocks are low. They know it's better than it has been in decades.'

The emotional bond fishing people have with the sea is strong. 'Your crew is like part of your family. These men work together, eat together and sleep together. Once they are on shore they socialise together. These are very close knit communities.

'Most Scottish boats are family-owned and are named after personal things and people, your children for example. The transition for some of the fishermen has been extremely difficult - it's led to many families breaking up. The fishermen are used to being at sea. If they are stuck at home they don't know what to do. They haven't got hobbies.'

Some take to drink and drugs. The use of heroin in some of these communities is said to be high, though Ritchie insists that Fraserburgh's problem is no worse than that in other small towns.

The real tragedy is that traditions are being lost, she said. 'Boys who thought they would skipper their father's boat are now looking elsewhere for jobs, many of them on the oil [rigs]. Families are moving out, and in Fraserburgh we are getting a lot of immigrants, people from eastern Europe. Things are changing.'