The recent brouhaha over French fishermen blockading Jersey in a dispute over fishing rights called to mind the “cod wars” of the 1950s and 1970s. Then it was Iceland that took a stance against Great Britain over territorial fishing waters. In this piece from 1973, Richard West showed that media reports of the nautical ill-will were being filtered by a PR company. Indeed, he said, a whole series of international stand-offs, wars, and indeed countries had a PR firm attached. The British Trawlers Federation had joined the likes of Biafra, the Angolan railway system, the Greek colonels and Milton Obote of Uganda and hired a PR company to put across their perspective in the best possible light. West looked at how these companies operated and the merry-go-round of contracts and clients that changed hands between them. Here was an unexpected aspect of geopolitics.
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