Fake fury?īritish government sources have been whispering that the French fury is faked. The French-British conflict is nastier, wider and personal. And both countries agreed to revised international fishing rules off the coast. Canada returned a $600,000 Cdn bond Spain had posted to free the seized Spanish vessel. The "war" was settled quietly about six weeks later. "I've never had such a glorious reception in all my political life," Tobin told me at the time.īack in the mid-'90s, Canadian fisheries minister Brian Tobin had a row with the Spanish over fishing rights off Canada's east coast. Tobin then travelled to the Cornwall fishing port of Newlyn, where he was greeted as a hero in a sea of Canadian flags by English fishers who loathed the Spanish fishing fleets in their waters as well. The European commissioner for fisheries, Emma Bonino, called the seizure "an act of organized piracy." Threatened European Union sanctions were vetoed by Britain, after intense lobbying by Canada's high commissioner to London, Royce Frith. The Spanish retaliated by sending a military patrol boat to protect its vessels. Tobin later displayed the nets on a barge in the East River, just outside the United Nations headquarters, to show that they infringed international fishing rules. The Coast Guard fired across the fleeing trawler's bow. In 1995, the Canadian fisheries minister, Brian Tobin, ordered the seizure of a large Spanish trawler for overfishing in waters off the Canadian coast.
They allow the French boats, as agreed in the Brexit accord, to fish off the English coast and the coasts of the Channel islands of Jersey and Guernsey - as they have for decades.īut the French say the British are deliberately refusing many licences to their boats. These were introduced after the Brexit vote in 2016, when Britain took back control of its coastal waters. It ended in 1453.Īt stake in the current conflict are - wait for it - a couple hundred fishing licences for small French boats.
Think of the Napoleonic wars in the 1800s, the Seven Years' War in the 1700s (when Canada was a prize) and, of course, the big one: the Hundred Years' War. That was some time ago. This conflict pits France against Britain - and not for the first time.
And like past fish wars, the words are ferocious, the stakes are tiny, gunboats make an appearance, but the shots fired are almost always verbal.
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