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Fishing for Heritage: Modernity and Loss along the Scottish Coast
Castles, lochs, seascapes. Coastal Scotland is one of the world's most romanticized tourist destinations, yet it is in the midst of severe economic decline. The North Atlantic fisheries crisis has hit Scottish communities hard and local fisherfolk are faced with chronic insecurity, anxiety over the decline of fishing and doubts about their cultural survival. The decline of this traditional industry has been accompanied by growing tourism along Scottish shores. Fishing villages are marketed for tourist consumption and culture has become a commodity. Drawing upon fieldwork, novels, folk music and travel literature, Nadel-Klein explores how these influences have affected locals' sense of identity and presence within a modern European nation. How is identity linked to power? What role do memory and authenticity play in the creation of Scottish heritage? How do locals feel about the onslaught of tourists? The topical nature of these issues and their relevance to other regions facing similar tensions make this book an important contribution to contemporary anthropology.
262 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2003
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May 17, 2021
A study of east coast Scottish fishing villages and the “fisherfolk” who “experienced how capitalism can create then dismiss a way of life.”
It began in the 1970’s in Ferryden when making a living from fishing meant leaving for larger boats elsewhere. Ferryden itself was soon to become a base for servicing the oil industry.
The interviewees recalled the terrible poverty and insecurity of their grandparents', parents' and own fishing lives but also the deep sense of community and a hard life shared.
Women’s work was interminable as they baited the lines with mussels raked from Ferryden sands. They worked all daylight hours shelling and baiting and on til midnight. If bad weather kept boats onshore for a few days they (women and men) would have to undo the now rotting mussels and start again.
The herring industry took off in the 1870s. Being a “herring lassie” meant travelling, south to Yarmouth or Lowestoft, west to the Hebrides or Ireland or north to Lewick in the Shetlands. The herring women worked in teams of three ─ two gutters and one packer for each barrel over long hours, staying in unhealthy, temporary housing with only rags to tie up their fingers against cuts and salt. They could earn a relative fortune in a season, as much as £40, but if cut fingers wouldn’t heal a woman would go home unable to work and unpaid.
There were strikes for better pay. In April 1913 Aberdeen women fishworkers struck for higher pay, “parading the streets, ‘singing and shouting lustily’.” Huge numbers of Scottish women contributed to the doubling of trade union membership between 1914 and 1920. When the herring began to fail there were still some strikes over poor pay and living conditions.
Herring gutters in Yarmouth, Peterhead, Shetland and Stornaway struck for higher pay in 1931. Pay was 10 pence for a barrel among the team of three, four pence an hour for doing other work. They struck for a week and pay went to a shilling a barrel, proving the fish curer skinflints could pay. There were more strikes in 1936, 1946, 1949 and 1953.
Working the fish gave women an independent income and baiting made their work essential. Outsiders called them fishwives, unfeminine, deviant, strident matriarchs. They were physically tough, confident and independent and in their own communities were treated by many, including their own husbands as hardworking, competent, resilient, reliable and the backbone and centre of family and village life.
Male Victorian commentators particularly disliked that women should have heir own means and be arguing with curers and customers to set wages and prices. Such commentators didnt care how dangerous or exhausting fishing was. Women should have stayed home and men should have worked more!
The drive to fish as much as possible was rooted in the uncertainty of a successful catch but these fisherfolk were acutely aware of steam trawlers, the "drifters"that took too much and drove the herring away.
The book ends in the early 2000s and reading this 20 years later we know that the state of British fishing has only got steadily worse.
Yet villages like Ferryden could be part of the future of sustainable fishing in Scotland and the rest of the UK, which needs to radically alter to be truely sustainable. If fishing was nationalised fishers could get a regular, living wage and they would never have to work alone to save money. They could then work with well maintained equipment and safety gear and teach their practical navigation and fishing skills to apprentices and the seas would not stripped.
The EU's common fisheries policy has concentrated capital and quotas in fewer, larger boats and skills are being lost. Brexit hasn't challenged this.
No-one reading this book should want to romanticise the dangerous and physically exhausting work that fishing was and still is. But this isn't just a moving history of a life that's gone. This past could be part of rational planned fisheries that put the needs of people and marine species before profit because then ordinary fishers like many in this book will be part of the solution.
It began in the 1970’s in Ferryden when making a living from fishing meant leaving for larger boats elsewhere. Ferryden itself was soon to become a base for servicing the oil industry.
The interviewees recalled the terrible poverty and insecurity of their grandparents', parents' and own fishing lives but also the deep sense of community and a hard life shared.
Women’s work was interminable as they baited the lines with mussels raked from Ferryden sands. They worked all daylight hours shelling and baiting and on til midnight. If bad weather kept boats onshore for a few days they (women and men) would have to undo the now rotting mussels and start again.
The herring industry took off in the 1870s. Being a “herring lassie” meant travelling, south to Yarmouth or Lowestoft, west to the Hebrides or Ireland or north to Lewick in the Shetlands. The herring women worked in teams of three ─ two gutters and one packer for each barrel over long hours, staying in unhealthy, temporary housing with only rags to tie up their fingers against cuts and salt. They could earn a relative fortune in a season, as much as £40, but if cut fingers wouldn’t heal a woman would go home unable to work and unpaid.
There were strikes for better pay. In April 1913 Aberdeen women fishworkers struck for higher pay, “parading the streets, ‘singing and shouting lustily’.” Huge numbers of Scottish women contributed to the doubling of trade union membership between 1914 and 1920. When the herring began to fail there were still some strikes over poor pay and living conditions.
Herring gutters in Yarmouth, Peterhead, Shetland and Stornaway struck for higher pay in 1931. Pay was 10 pence for a barrel among the team of three, four pence an hour for doing other work. They struck for a week and pay went to a shilling a barrel, proving the fish curer skinflints could pay. There were more strikes in 1936, 1946, 1949 and 1953.
Working the fish gave women an independent income and baiting made their work essential. Outsiders called them fishwives, unfeminine, deviant, strident matriarchs. They were physically tough, confident and independent and in their own communities were treated by many, including their own husbands as hardworking, competent, resilient, reliable and the backbone and centre of family and village life.
Male Victorian commentators particularly disliked that women should have heir own means and be arguing with curers and customers to set wages and prices. Such commentators didnt care how dangerous or exhausting fishing was. Women should have stayed home and men should have worked more!
The drive to fish as much as possible was rooted in the uncertainty of a successful catch but these fisherfolk were acutely aware of steam trawlers, the "drifters"that took too much and drove the herring away.
The book ends in the early 2000s and reading this 20 years later we know that the state of British fishing has only got steadily worse.
Yet villages like Ferryden could be part of the future of sustainable fishing in Scotland and the rest of the UK, which needs to radically alter to be truely sustainable. If fishing was nationalised fishers could get a regular, living wage and they would never have to work alone to save money. They could then work with well maintained equipment and safety gear and teach their practical navigation and fishing skills to apprentices and the seas would not stripped.
The EU's common fisheries policy has concentrated capital and quotas in fewer, larger boats and skills are being lost. Brexit hasn't challenged this.
No-one reading this book should want to romanticise the dangerous and physically exhausting work that fishing was and still is. But this isn't just a moving history of a life that's gone. This past could be part of rational planned fisheries that put the needs of people and marine species before profit because then ordinary fishers like many in this book will be part of the solution.
Displaying 1 - 1 of 1 review