The Secret Angler

Anyone who has witnessed the stomach-turning abhorrence of direct racism — anyone but a racist, that is — will have a good idea of the nastiness BAME citizens put up with throughout their lives. Yet more pernicious is the covert racism in society, which though perhaps less commonplace than in years past, is still prevalent in many quarters. The recent Black Lives Matter protests have highlighted this once more.

There is little diversity in angling. In all my years fishing I have met only one angler from a minority ethnic background. Unsettling for me is the realisation that many anglers harbour racist views. A look through some of the online forums reveals a dismissive or hostile view to these protests. Not much sign of the contemplative man here.

Perhaps one should take some comfort that only a relatively small number of individuals express these views. The worst site of those I look at is flyfishing.co.uk. I have previously written about the members there who hold and express reactionary views, supporters of the likes of Trump and abusers of moderates; like Trump himself, they are fond of accusing others of their own corrupt outlook. It is no surprise that these same individuals have been forthright in their condemnation of the BLM protests. Naturally they don’t make overt racist comments — most racists will claim they are not racist. Instead they seek to deny the existence of racism, search the net for obscure (and usually unreliable) sources that claim it’s all the imagination of the BAME community. They jeer at anyone who voices support for the BLM movement.

I do not believe the owner of the site condones such attitudes, and lately a couple of threads started by these racists has been taken down. But its willingness (or financial need) to allow so-called political discussion offers a platform for such odious views, and those who take advantage seem to be there solely for that purpose. The moderation is too tolerant; it may not support racism but it does, I believe, have sympathy for some of the right wing propaganda. Fish and Fly does have a policy against hate speech, and deletes such posts when they are drawn to moderators’ attention, although on occasions is slow to act. The problem is that the bigots who use the site believe free speech is a licence to make offensive postings and try to get round the rules as above. They should be stopped.

The Government has a National Angling Strategy, launched last year. One of its objectives is “An increase in angling participation by 2024 and increases in females, young people and BAME communities taking part.” This worthy aim reflects the shrinking and ageing demographic of anglers. The majority are old white men, and it is these who are most likely to hold bigoted views. As this generation dies off, a younger, better educated, more open-minded society will take their place. Whether or not angling survives as more than a quirky interest for a few, at least the evil of racism will move further on towards eradication.

Follow @secretangler

Postscript

This site has recently had an uptick in readers following a link from a forum called pikers-pit. I’ve no particular interest in pike fishing but I took a look at the source, which not surprisingly comes from a thread on BLM. The posts there emphasise the points I make above, with considerably more force than their equivalents on flyfishing.co.uk. Here is a small selection from the many in similar vein:

This stream of hate-filled invective is partly comic in the outpourings of misspelled words to beat the language-checker. Note how a black racing driver is singled out for no particular reason, and note also the familiar inversions – left wing becomes white supremacist, Hamilton is held responsible for events long before he was born. The racism motivating this nasty rant is plain.

A responder is briefer but no more articulate:

There is plenty more of the same from several posters. One individual who understandably finds this kind of talk offensive pointed out that it contravenes the T&C of the site (no abuse, hate-speech, etc). This is part of the reply from the moderator, who clearly finds moderating rather tiresome:

Unambiguously racist language does not require moderator attention? Racism is clearly thriving in the fishing fraternity and forum terms and conditions are mere window dressing.

When the pandemic is over and when we are free to go out and about once more, things, we are told, will be different. The economy will change; well it’s certainly running down, the Government paying the wages of some 9 million furloughed workers, businesses including fisheries shut down with support available for those that qualify. Will the effects be permanent or will everything bounce back in Boris-bouncing fashion?

Will behaviour change? Will we be cycling more and abandoning the tank-sized four-by-fours that hog two spaces in the supermarket car park? Will the relative quiet on the roads persist when the lockdown’s over? Or will everyone leap from their homes straight into their cars and head down the shops, parks, rivers, beauty spots?

What of global warming? If Covid-19 doesn’t get us climate change certainly will, unless we do something about it. Now that we have seen how easily we can be wiped out, will we wake up and do something about the wellbeing of our world? Will we take the prospect of future pandemics seriously? Are we prepared to demand of our inept government, so heedless, so slow to react to the danger, that the country prepares properly for the next epidemic? And there will be a next.

And what of anglers and angling? I’ve already noted the politics of too many fishermen — the politics that insists the climate is not warming, that environmentalism is a left-wing plot, that they are blameless freedom lovers who do no harm. The sea anglers who think it’s fine to kill species of diminishing stocks; the coarse fishermen who use pellets made from sea fish to catch farmed carp in large stock ponds; the fly anglers who catch trout fed on the same pellets, who demand salmon rivers are restocked in disregard of the research that says this is not the answer. And will those same fly anglers continue to consume large quantities of aviation fuel through long-haul flights to cast a line in far-flung countries? The new edition of Salmo Trutta, the magazine of the Wild Trout Trust, has no fewer than three articles on foreign destinations: Charles Rangeley-Wilson, WTT founder and globe trotter, goes to New Zealand, 23 hours flight time away; Theo Pike, another WTT man, has an all-expenses-paid jolly to America; while Adrian Latimer, who has clocked up more air miles than a shoal of flying fish, ends up in Iceland, coincidentally the country whose volcano cleared the British skies in 2010 even more effectively than the coronavirus in 2020.

The way things are looking for the airlines, such trips may at least be a lot more expensive in future. Paying the true cost of pollution? But will the WTT continue to encourage activity that speeds global warming and ultimately damages the trout’s habitat, a cold-water fish? Or will it become truly a conservation outfit?

Interesting questions. Will we be doing anything different?

Follow @secretangler