The clink of glasses and the lapping of the tide was punctuated by giggling toddlers and the slurp of oysters at tables populated by people gently sizzling on a baking day on the Kent seaside.
But James Green, of the Whitstable Oyster Fishery Company, had the demeanour of a man who had found grit in his mollusc. “I don’t like to use the term but it is nimbyism,” he said. “Why did it become personal? I don’t know really. Because we’re a family business, it’s a relatively small town?”
Green, 58, is the director of the WOFC, a company he inherited from his father and whose roots can be traced back to 1793. He has become embroiled in a battle over his plans for a seafood empire.
The WOFC harvests about 2m oysters a year from Whitstable’s seabeds, half of which stay on the south coast to be sold in the company’s hotel and the four restaurants it runs on the front.
