Nick Griffin praises Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's Fish Fight. 

"Common sense, a very important subject, and easily the most emails of any lobbying campaign." That's Nick Griffin's assessment of Fight Fight, the online campaign for reform of the EU's badly flawed Common Fisheries Policy.

Fish Fight is run by celebrity chef Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall of TV's River Cottage. Its aim is to pressure EU policy makers into reversing decades of disastrously counter-productive fisheries policy, which have brought once-teeming fishing grounds around our coast to the brink of ecological disaster.

Two key problems lie at the rotten core of the failed EU system: First, the declaration that fishing grounds are a 'common European resource'; second, the discards rules, which results in half of all fish caught in the North Sea being thrown back dead.

Former British waters now controlled by the European Union as a 'common resource' are estimated to contain around 70% of entire EU fish stocks. Since Ted Heath handed them over to Europe in 1972, this economically and environmentally vital part of our national heritage has been plundered.

The British fishing fleet that used to operate from ports such as Yarmouth, Grimsby, Hull and Peterhead has been broken up, while countries such as Spain and even Luxembourg - which doesn't have an inch of coastline - help themselves to Britain's fish.

Tragedy of the commons

 The well-known phenomenon of 'the tragedy of the commons' is that any resource that belongs to everyone, automatically belongs to no-one when it comes to looking after it for the long-term. In the case of fish, if the fishermen of any one country exercise restrain then there'll simply be more fish for other people to hoover up, so everyone grabs as much as they can.

In an attempt to stop this, naive EU bureaucrats introduced policies such as a ban on landing fish below a certain size for each species. Unfortunately, sub-sized fish are still caught in the nets of fishermen trying desperately to catch their full quota of mature fish, but as they are not allowed to land them vast numbers each year are thrown back dead.

Discarding also results when a boat with a good haul of landable fish strikes lucky with a big catch of a more valuable species; if the new catch would take them over their quota, the less valuable ones are dragged up from the hold and dumped overboard. The whole system is a disaster.

In the long-run, the only real answer to the whole sorry mess is for Britain to withdraw from the EU and take back - among other things - control of our own national waters and fisheries. A long-term plan to revive Britain's fishing industry on a sustainable, environmentally responsible basis could then be drawn up by our own fishing industry, environmental experts and government.

In the meantime, while it doesn't look at this 'big picture', Hugh's Fish Fight is pressing for reform of the EU's Common Fisheries Policy. The main demands are the setting of fishing levels to achieve sustainable stocks; the banning of discards and eradicating all illegal fishing.

750,000 supporters so far

So far, a staggering 750,000 people have signed the Fish Fight petition. "I'm pleased to say that my email in-box has been virtually clogged by Fish Fighters," says Mr. Griffin. Such weight of public opinion has to have an impact on even the dullest MEP. Whether the Commission will take any notice is another matter, but at least it's a start.

"So even though Hugh F-W has in the past attacked the British National Party, I urge everyone reading this to log on to his fishfight.net website and sign up to his campaign.

Yes, he needs a haircut and his politics are a bit fuzzy, but when it comes to fishing policies, as well as issues like organic farming, decent treatment for livestock and the need to encourage local production and consumption, Hugh Fearnley-Whitingstall articulates our nationalist position every time. He's one of us; he just doesn't know it yet!"