Fleetwood and as transport became more efficient, more overnight visitors became day visitors. The Hillhouse plant was heavily cut back, and was finally closed in 1999. Most serious, however, was the collapse of the fishing industry, which was largely destroyed in the late 1960s and early 1970s by the Cod Wars, a dispute over fishing rights between Iceland and the UK. As Fleetwood's trawlers mainly fished the North Atlantic in search of cod, the loss of the fishing grounds hit the town hard. The last deep sea trawler left the town in 1982 and now only inshore fishing boats fish out
Cod Wars passage of Soviet submarines while the Royal Navy was threatened by further serious defence and naval cuts by the Royal Navy's chief "bête noire", the Chancellor of Exchequer and former Minister of Defence, Denis Healey. The Royal Navy saw its strategic aim at the time to be as much as fighting Healey as the Soviet Navy. The Second and Third Cod Wars were necessary wars for the Royal Navy, like the Falklands Operation, six years later. To Crosland, also MP for the trawler port of Grimsby, the third war was a more serious threat to the Western Alliance than the