Yesterday's News

 
Twenty five years ago yesterday Labour MP Tom Torney denounced in the House of Commons an  EEC directive to ban the sale of fish and chips in newspapers as ''a load of cods wollop''. He later wrote to the Minister of Agriculture urging him to 'stand firm and ignore the Brussels bureaucrats who seem hell-bent on changing our traditional eating habits'.

The MP commented to the Hartlepool Mail at the time that '' I would kindly advise them to keep their  melding hands off our fish and chips.''

Tom Torney was unaware that there was nothing that the Minister could do to over ride the EEC regulation, the leavers of power had been reconnected to Brussels seven years previously.  As is now well known thanks to the EU's Common Fisheries Policy Brussels 'meddling hands' have wrecked not only the wrappers but also the entire British fishing industry.

Until  Britains off shore fisheries are repatriated we will have to put up with '' a lot of cods wollop'' 

I am grateful  to the Hartlepool Mail of 29 July 1979