Paul Boote
No Longer a Member
Someone, it appears, thinks along at least some of the lines that I do (and have often been pilloried for for the past decade) - from the Times' Angling Correspondent, Brian Clarke, yesterday -
The Times, May 3, 2010
Martin Salter’s exit poses questions of Trust
Brian Clarke
Whatever the result of Thursday’s election, angling is going to come out of it the poorer in at least one respect. With the departure from frontline politics of Martin Salter, Labour MP for Reading West, fishing and shooting — but especially fishing — have lost the most committed and effective political campaigner they have had.
Salter, who held the seat since 1997 and who has been his party’s spokesman on both sports for the past eight years, had a better reason than some for deciding to retire. He came out of the expenses scandal squeaky clean. His aim is, he says, simply to find new challenges and “to spend more time with my wife, my camper van and my fish, in that order”. By “his fish” Salter means, in particular, the chub and barbel of the River Kennet in Berkshire and the roach of the Hampshire Avon. He is a formidable performer when pursuing all three — especially when long-trotting a float with the 19ft wrist-breaker of a rod he uses. But it is his performance away from the water that has brought him plaudits and respect from all sides.
A private dinner to mark his contribution was sponsored by the Salmon and Trout Association (S&TA), the British Association for Shooting and Conservation, and the Angling Trust (AT). Labour’s Fisheries Minister was there. So was the Conservatives’ Shadow Fisheries Minister.
Amid other, wide-ranging activities, Salter has made significant contributions to the fights against over-abstraction of groundwater, pollution and habitat degradation. He was key in getting measures to control cormorants into law. He fought for provisions in the Marine and Coastal Access Act that created protection zones for juvenile sport fish such as bass. He pressed for vigorous implementation of the Water Framework Directive. He was a driving force behind the creation of the AT.
As Salter wades into the political sunset, however, the S&TA and the AT still have plenty to do, the AT especially. The trust has a list of challenges as long as a match-angler’s pole. That list includes programmes to promote angling and anglers’ rights, to fight over-abstraction, to prosecute polluters, to reduce predation and — a growing specific concern — to try to ensure that planned hydropower installations are designed in a fish-friendly way.
The AT’s most important challenge, though, is simply to survive. It emerged, overblown and overambitious, from the ruins of the sport’s individual bodies and soon had to shrink to match resource to funding.
By that time, however, it had developed measured responses to the social, political and environmental issues the sport confronts, recognising that the future of angling rests on the support of public opinion, that this support cannot be taken for granted and that the building of alliances in politics and the wider conservation movement are vital.
Then, underfunded and under-resourced, the trust became the target of angling’s “we want action now” lobby — a lobby that, impatient with present leaders and frustrated with the damage otters and cormorants are doing to some fisheries, confuses wish list with practicality and shouting louder with effectiveness.
The recent demand by this group that PR experts be hired to gain access to government and get unspecified “action on predators” is revealing. It is not access that is the problem, as Salter’s dinner showed. The problem is the message.
While something more might be possible on cormorant control, ministers can deliver nothing that will reduce the impact of otters in any significant way. The otter, with the support of the overwhelming majority of anglers, has complete physical protection.
What angling needs is not expensive PR but a greater awareness of the wider world. The sport’s big weakness is not its leadership but the apathy of its millions, only a handful of whom will contribute to anything not immediately under their rod-tops. A second is that whatever urgent problems angling might face, the sport is not the centre of everyone else’s universe. A third is that angling is not the only activity with a claim on the countryside and a willingness to defend it.
A fourth is that if the public were ever pushed to choose between — for example — the welfare of otters and the delirium of fishermen, the result would be a no-brainer.
To make these points is not to suggest that the AT’s presentation could not be improved. Yes, the AT is imperfect and yes, management styles may not always suit everyone. But this trust, seriously and responsibly led by whomever, offers the best chance of progress the sport has had.
To force it to abandon measured response, to nudge it towards anything that might be regarded as the extremes, would be to put naivety into the driving seat, reduce credibility, sever political access and put angling on a collision course with its allies, painstakingly won. And what kind of PR triumph would that be?
Brian Clarke’s angling column appears on the first Monday of each month.
The Times, May 3, 2010
Martin Salter’s exit poses questions of Trust
Brian Clarke
Whatever the result of Thursday’s election, angling is going to come out of it the poorer in at least one respect. With the departure from frontline politics of Martin Salter, Labour MP for Reading West, fishing and shooting — but especially fishing — have lost the most committed and effective political campaigner they have had.
Salter, who held the seat since 1997 and who has been his party’s spokesman on both sports for the past eight years, had a better reason than some for deciding to retire. He came out of the expenses scandal squeaky clean. His aim is, he says, simply to find new challenges and “to spend more time with my wife, my camper van and my fish, in that order”. By “his fish” Salter means, in particular, the chub and barbel of the River Kennet in Berkshire and the roach of the Hampshire Avon. He is a formidable performer when pursuing all three — especially when long-trotting a float with the 19ft wrist-breaker of a rod he uses. But it is his performance away from the water that has brought him plaudits and respect from all sides.
A private dinner to mark his contribution was sponsored by the Salmon and Trout Association (S&TA), the British Association for Shooting and Conservation, and the Angling Trust (AT). Labour’s Fisheries Minister was there. So was the Conservatives’ Shadow Fisheries Minister.
Amid other, wide-ranging activities, Salter has made significant contributions to the fights against over-abstraction of groundwater, pollution and habitat degradation. He was key in getting measures to control cormorants into law. He fought for provisions in the Marine and Coastal Access Act that created protection zones for juvenile sport fish such as bass. He pressed for vigorous implementation of the Water Framework Directive. He was a driving force behind the creation of the AT.
As Salter wades into the political sunset, however, the S&TA and the AT still have plenty to do, the AT especially. The trust has a list of challenges as long as a match-angler’s pole. That list includes programmes to promote angling and anglers’ rights, to fight over-abstraction, to prosecute polluters, to reduce predation and — a growing specific concern — to try to ensure that planned hydropower installations are designed in a fish-friendly way.
The AT’s most important challenge, though, is simply to survive. It emerged, overblown and overambitious, from the ruins of the sport’s individual bodies and soon had to shrink to match resource to funding.
By that time, however, it had developed measured responses to the social, political and environmental issues the sport confronts, recognising that the future of angling rests on the support of public opinion, that this support cannot be taken for granted and that the building of alliances in politics and the wider conservation movement are vital.
Then, underfunded and under-resourced, the trust became the target of angling’s “we want action now” lobby — a lobby that, impatient with present leaders and frustrated with the damage otters and cormorants are doing to some fisheries, confuses wish list with practicality and shouting louder with effectiveness.
The recent demand by this group that PR experts be hired to gain access to government and get unspecified “action on predators” is revealing. It is not access that is the problem, as Salter’s dinner showed. The problem is the message.
While something more might be possible on cormorant control, ministers can deliver nothing that will reduce the impact of otters in any significant way. The otter, with the support of the overwhelming majority of anglers, has complete physical protection.
What angling needs is not expensive PR but a greater awareness of the wider world. The sport’s big weakness is not its leadership but the apathy of its millions, only a handful of whom will contribute to anything not immediately under their rod-tops. A second is that whatever urgent problems angling might face, the sport is not the centre of everyone else’s universe. A third is that angling is not the only activity with a claim on the countryside and a willingness to defend it.
A fourth is that if the public were ever pushed to choose between — for example — the welfare of otters and the delirium of fishermen, the result would be a no-brainer.
To make these points is not to suggest that the AT’s presentation could not be improved. Yes, the AT is imperfect and yes, management styles may not always suit everyone. But this trust, seriously and responsibly led by whomever, offers the best chance of progress the sport has had.
To force it to abandon measured response, to nudge it towards anything that might be regarded as the extremes, would be to put naivety into the driving seat, reduce credibility, sever political access and put angling on a collision course with its allies, painstakingly won. And what kind of PR triumph would that be?
Brian Clarke’s angling column appears on the first Monday of each month.
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