LEAVING the EU provides a huge opportunity to end the race to the bottom on seafarers’ rights, RMT leader Mick Cash told STUC delegates yesterday.

Addressing the Save Our Seafarers (SOS) 2020 fringe meeting in Aviemore, Mr Cash said that of 500,000 mariners working in EU waters, just 40 per cent were EU nationals.

Abuse of flags of convenience to allow unscrupulous employers to replace British seafarers with cheap, super-exploited labour from abroad had decimated the industry since Margaret Thatcher came to power in 1979, delegates heard; in the following decade, the third-largest merchant navy in the world dropped to 27th place.