“THEIR lives were utterly dispensable. This was the most extreme form of capitalism.” As Richard Bean revisits Hull’s “fascinating and esoteric” fishing fraternity in his new play Reykjavik, he is not in two minds about the true source of issues. “They had absolutely no rights whatsoever. They couldn’t go on strike, and they’d be sacked on the spot at the first mention of health and safety.” 

Over six-thousand Hull fishermen have lost their lives at sea since the 1830s, with a particularly rough period during the 1960-70s when several of the port city’s trawlers sank in Atlantic waters, leaving devastation and disillusion back on land. 

As a son of the city Bean feels at home on such ground. “I’d like to be writing about Grenfell, the Post Office or the blood scandal but I don’t have the right to write about those. Fundamentally though, it’s the same thing — money trumping human lives. If you see all of those thousands of fish as ten-pound notes swimming around in the arctic then you really begin to understand the fishing industry.”