The parable of the Clyde

WHEN Bagehot’s grandfather built a house in Carradale, a village on the Firth of Clyde, around 20 tubby fishing smacks operated from its tiny harbour. It was the 1960s and the fishing had never been so easy. Equipped with diesel engines, sonar fish finders and heavy trawl mesh, the boats were scooping up herring by the shoal. They employed over 100 men, from almost every village household. You would see them from the house, steaming home across the Kilbrannan Sound with a confetti of white seagulls over their bows.

For two decades the bonanza on Scotland’s west coast continued. An occupation that had been seasonal and modestly profitable became year-round and lucrative. Baskets of herring put televisions into fishermen’s cottages and cars outside their doors. But fish, like oil and gas, with which Scotland’s continental shelf is also well-endowed, are not in unlimited supply.