The Occupational Community of East Anglian Fishermen: An Historical Dimension Through Oral Evidence

Abstract

This article presents some qualitative evidence for the social perceptions of the East Anglian fishermen. It is an attempt to assess their attitudes to the social structure and to look at one empirical historical community to see to what extent it conforms to the sociological concept of occupational community. It concentrates on the decade and a half from the turn of the century to the outbreak of the First World War. This period is chosen for two reasons: it is as far back into the 'historical dimension' as one can go and still find a substantial number of respondents from one occupational group or community; the period also has an economic unity in that it was a period of continuous prosperity and expansion in the herring fishing industry. In their accounts of their early life and experiences, the respondents show an unexpectedly low perception of class divisions, a sense of class conflict is virtually absent and expressions of industrial or occupational discontent are rare. This evidence conflicts with the popular view of the fishermen as a 'traditional proletarian occupational community', membership of which fosters a dichotomous conflict image of society, wider class affiliations and industrio-political radicalism. The impressions of the respondents stand in such sharp distinction to the record of industrial conflict amongst fishermen on the Humber prior to the First World Warl that the structure of the East Anglian industry and the evidence on social perceptions both deserve some comment, for I will argue that the reported social perceptions are not the result of the respondents seeing their early life as part of 'the good old days' in which social conflict is forgotten or suppressed, but that these perceptions can be seen as arising realistically out of the industrial and community situation of that generation. To this end the article will start with a brief comment on the nature of the evidence used, and also on the structure of the fishing industry in East Anglia. In an article in Oral History,2 Paul Thompson, through reference to various studies on memory, shows that memories of an event fade very quickly within days-but after that the 'memory' stabilizes and there is very little to be gained by interviewing people about the recent past as opposed to the distant past. It can be argued that the oral history