.THE HOUSE OF LORDS
Fish and widows
HUGH REAY
Last week the House of Lords was enveloped in the rich voice of Lord Booth by announcing the disaster that will overwhelm our inshore fishing industry, if we accept unamended the fishing policy of the Euro- pean Community. He described convincingly the sharp practice of the Six in having formulated a fishing policy far more in their interest than our own, only seven years after Europe had agreed by means of the Euro- pean Fisheries Convention on the national twelve mile limit, and during a time when they had the opportunity, but refused it, of working out a policy jointly with ourselves, Eire and Norway. Clearly the Community wished to establish a policy with which these rich fishing countries would have to com- promise on their way in to Europe.
The debate was dominated by High- landers who spoke with poetic artistry of the communities whose livelihood depends on hunting the wild fish in the Minches and the Western Seas. They drew a vivid picture of huns beyond the gates, who, having ravaged their own territories were now preparing, with no interest in conservation, to ravage ours. It seemed a cruel disturbance of their feudal despair to come to the point, as Lord Thurso did, that there was a distinc- tion between the undeniable requirements of conservation, which the Europeans recog- nised, and the principle of free access by member states. Moreover Lord Thurso pointed out that fishing communities had always been scared of new technologies, and even hinted that the foreigners the Scots were most afraid of were those from Grimsby. Lord Kennet argued that an inter- national regime for the regulation of fishing was at least going to be necessary for the seas beyond national limits. But there was no point of contact between the few who were prepared to make these distinctions, and those who intoned the tragedy that threatens their communities.
As a result there was no discussion on the two points of real diplomatic interest— what priority would speakers recommend for this issue in the Brussels negotiations, and what might be tolerable points of com- promise between us and the Europeans. The debate finally disappeared into the absorbent Lord Lothian. His style is to thank and to compliment, to promise to investigate, to refer, to defer, but never to throw new light on Government policy by an argument or a revelation. So he read out details of the existing European policy, which had at least the useful function of illuminating the freedom allowed by them for national conservation policies. But it didn't deal with the question of access to national shores by member states, and what was the minimum HMG expected to achieve in negotiations with the EEC. To have talked of compromise to the Highland patriarchs would have been to insult their romantic pessimism. On Friday, the law lords were put to flight on the matter of widows damages. Despite a turnout of law lords described by the Lord Chancellor as unique in his experience, their protests against the Law Reform (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill, in which the provision occurs, were unavailing. In-
deed so awed were they by the force of contemporary political demand that they carried none of their amendments to a vote. For the future they will be obliged, in assessing damages due to widows, under the Fatal Accidents Acts, to ignore the fact of a widow's subsequent remarriage, or of her greater or lesser prospects of remarriage.
As Lord Goodman pointed out, injustices are at least as easily imaginable under the future as the present law. For one thing a defendant may be far less able to provide for the surviving victim of his negligence, than her second husband. This difficulty was ignored by the simple device of assum- ing, incorrectly, that all defendants are in- surance companies.
The victorious arguments were paraded by an all-party ' sorority of Lady
Summersk ill and widows Gaitskell, Wootton, Emmet and Elliott, and with the male help of Lord Stow Hill, formerly Sir Frank Soskice. Despite attempts by legal speakers to stick everyone to the point that damages are meant to be a monetary com- pensation for a monetary loss, the widows were too triumphant to disguise their view that compensation was owing to them for the monstrous collapse of the structure to which they had entrusted and dedicated themselves, and that they wanted their com- pensation unprejudiced by any future de- cision of their own—and in cash. As a victory it seemed to belong more to the spirit of the American matriarchy, than to that of Women's Liberation. Anyone who is cynical enough to imagine that all women dream of being widows, would not have found this an occasion on which to shed his unhealthy suspicions,
Lord Reay, 33, sits on the Liberal benches in the House of Lords
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