Shelling out; A Fishermen's Society Improved the Lot of Their Crab Processors and Turned the Industry around, as MARJORIE CALDER Reports

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JUST five or six years ago, one group of crab processors were standing with their wellies in buckets of hot water to fend off the cold.

The buildings they were working in at the end of a pier were condemned and partly open to the elements - and cold enough to freeze the barnacles off a dinghy.

The half-dozen full-time employees involved in boiling crabs never stayed long and were regularly paid off in winter.

They only returned next season to their jobs in these Dickensian working practices, in Stromness, Orkney, if their resolutions to find something better had not paid off.

But, in a remarkable turn-around, the Orkney Fishermen's Society is …