ROGER Tucker (ViewPoints, October 30) advocates “attack being the best form of defence” regarding attacks by French fishermen on scallops taken from UK waters.

He continues with: “We stood up to Iceland in the Cod Wars” – but fails to mention that we lost! Living and working in Grimsby at that time, we were involved with that dispute, having strong connections with Iceland and Icelandic fishermen, so could see both sides of the argument.

Iceland wished to conserve its fish stocks and was willing to discuss a form of quota systems. It would have been on a gradual reducing scale but with some semblance of order and over a period of years, not months, so allowing the UK fishing industry time to adapt to changes.

Sadly the diplomats from the UK, together with many trawler owners, did not wish to discuss this reduction of the fleets and refused the offer and said “we will fish as we always have done”. This caused the Cod Wars and then, of course, the closing of the fishing grounds, followed by mass unemployment and the loss of the UK deep water fishing fleet.

Iceland still continues to govern its fishing grounds and catches and is still highly productive. Icelandic fish is still arriving in the UK on a daily basis but it’s now flown in very fresh instead of arriving in UK trawlers with UK crews. So the big stick approach did not pay for us and a lesson should have been learned about diplomacy. It’s a shame we didn’t protect and govern our waters to the same degree as Iceland.

BERNARD GREENBERG Vicarage Road Oxford