“Brexit” and Collington

Many at Collington, particularly those who fought in World War II or remember those days, may find this implicit reminder of our stake in Britain’s June 23 referendum on leaving the European Union, relevant.

The headline, on a letter in the Guardian is simple:

Don’t abandon the Europe that I fought for – and my comrades died for

The key paragraphs:

The only stable community in this universal upheaval has been the European Union, formed from the wreckage of a continent for which I and millions of others fought six years of war. I write as a former airman, having flown well over 2,000 hours against three despotic enemy nations. That victory for the democracies has given Europe 70 years of peace and security in a widely unstable world. The “leave” chancers are campaigning to abandon this steady progress, citing values false or irrelevant, while they have no plan of what to do after jumping ship.

If the nation should fall for this deceit I can only conclude that the lives of my comrades – Irish, Scots, Welsh and English – were lost in vain. They will be rattling their bones, wherever in the world they fell, at the loss of the beliefs for which they fought.

Britain in Europe will enhance progress to higher values in the greater world; Britain out means a return to the early-20th-century chaos of warring states against each other.

I am 96. I remember how far we have come. I know what we stand to lose.