I mentioned that the trawler's crew were regarded as casual labour. Even though many men worked for the same firms year in, year out and had good relations with their employers, there was no entitlement to sick pay, holiday pay, unemployment benefit, redundancy pay or any of the other benefits that come with a permanent position.

This went all the way up to the skipper, who could be dropped quick-style if he returned with only a light catch, or hit the market too late with a ship-full of fish that then had to be dumped at rock-bottom prices for fish-meal processing or cat-food. There were always more skippers than ships, and trawler-owners were happy to take advantage of the situation.

De-commissioning grants paid owners to take ships out of fishiong as over-capacity became a problem, but there was no corresponding aid for the hundreds of men thrown out of work. It took years of campaigning before such payments became available, but even then claimants had to go through hoops to prove they had worked distant-water twenty-five or thirty years before, with firms that had disappeared long ago. Often payments came too late for the men involved, and were regarded as small recompense by their surviving families.

Ross