There aren’t a lot of fishermen left in this town in North East England, once home to one of the largest fleet of trawlers in Britain. But nostalgia for the fishing industry permeates the place. So the result seemed inevitable when 70 percent of residents voted to leave the European Union. Britain’s fishermen have complained for years about regulations imposed on all members.
The surprise came later when a local business group began lobbying to avoid tariffs, customs and the other burdens of departing the European Union. Social media scorn ensued. In thousands of tweets across the country, the people of Grimsby were derided as dummies and hypocrites. Either they wanted the upsides of Brexit with none of its costs, or they didn’t grasp the harm that leaving would cause until it was too late. ...
Actually, what happened here is more about hearts than minds. The vote to leave was a vivid demonstration of the way emotions can transform politics and affect the economy. It’s a phenomenon found around the world, including in the United States, where the legacy and the romance of a declining industrial past often eclipse the interests of new and expanding businesses. Time and again, economic facts are no competition for sentiment and history.
“Some industries that are economically insignificant have enormous public resonance,” said Bronwen Maddox, director of the Institute for Government, an independent think tank in London. “And because of that, they have political influence that is way out of proportion.” ...
The once-bustling docks here would be pretty desolate were it not for 70 processing warehouses with some 5,000 employees, about one-third of whom are foreign nationals, mostly Poles and Lithuanians. To stay competitive, these companies want the kind of frictionless trade and immigration policy that they currently enjoy, and will probably lose, after Brexit.
The goal of fishermen, on the other hand, is regaining full control of British waters so that they aren’t forced to compete with trawlers from other countries.
The first problem with this dream is the scarcity of local fishermen. Today, there are not enough here to fill a service elevator. ...
So how did the interests of a tiny, shrinking industry defeat a larger, thriving one at the polls? While active fisherman here are nearly extinct, the job maintains an almost folkloric hold throughout Britain. ...
A similar calculus is evident in the United States, where President Trump has promised to resuscitate coal mining. It’s an industry that now employs roughly 55,000 people, a figure that has been trending downward for years. If economic agendas were driven strictly by data, a lot more would be heard about solar power, which employs about five times the number of people.
In Grimsby, the fishing past is very much alive. Pubs are filled with sepia-toned photographs of the town in its 1950s heyday, when 500 boats were crammed into what was then one of the largest ports in the world. Locals speak wistfully about the work of their fathers, taking an almost perverse pleasure in underscoring the hardships that were part of their lives. ...
Were the manpower problem solved, others would persist. The species in Britain’s waters are scallops, crab, lobsters and other delicacies that have never been popular in this country. The fish of choice here are cod and haddock, staples of fish-and-chip shops. Those species are found closer to Norway and Iceland.
In other words, Britain exports most of what it catches and imports most of what it eats. Either the country will need to change its appetite or it will need to trade. ...
Make a note to remind yourself that behavior is guided by more than economic self-interest.
