Ed: Many of you put fingers to keyboard when we appealed to let us know of their memories of the day, five years ago, when we voted for Freedom. Here are your voices, from your letters and comment posts:
Paul Rutherford wrote:
“Like other concerned ‘leavers’ I started watching the TV from about 2200 the previous day – fully expecting to see ‘leave’ get hammered into the ground. To my astonishment, it took until 0609 the morning following to realise ‘leave’ had won. I took the following photo:
which had adorned the entrance to my and neighbours properties in the previous weeks. Cordially – Paul Rutherford”
Pat Thomas wrote:
“Walked into the office brimming with joy, wearing a union jack tie, and uttering the immortal lines, based on the film starring Robin Williams: “Good morning, freedom”.
A very satisfactory moment!”
Beth wrote:
“No, I didn’t stay up to watch, thinking that it wouldn’t result in a Leave vote. No, I didn’t cry the following morning when I saw the Dimbleby clip announcing the result and which was shown constantly throughout the rest of the day. Obviously the BBC couldn’t quite believe it so they had to keep playing it over and over so that it would eventually sink into their sneering supercilious psyches.
What did I do? I jumped up and down, punched the air, shouted Yes! Yes! Yes! and absolutely revelled in the forlorn and shell-shocked looks on the faces of Dimbleby and those around him.
‘Take that you smug, arrogant, patronising b******s’ became my catchphrase and I still play Dominic Frisby’s ‘Seventeen Million F***-Offs’ whenever I need a good laugh.
I will have exactly the same reactions and emotions when all the current guidelines, restrictions, rules, pseudo-scientific fetishes and general stupidities are finally banished and gone for good, never to return in any way, shape or form.
Very long prison sentences for all those culpable would be extremely delicious icing on the cake.”
Ceri Jayes wrote:
“Totnes was ‘a difficult gig’ but here we are – Alan, Mike (with campaign dog, Enya), Bob and me (Ceri), campaigning in the sunshine to get our country back.”
Paul M. Calvert wrote:
“We didn’t bother staying up for the count, for we knew Leave would lose. Certain the constant threats, lies and half-truths from the Establishment would prevail, what would be the point of missing a good night’s sleep?
The following morning, imagine our disbelief and joy at the good news. After the initial shock, I must confess to a moments doubt. What if the warnings from Project Fear were true? Would the EU actually allow us to leave, or would they work with our Establishment to thwart the result? After a bit of reflection, I was sure the former wouldn’t happen, bolstered by my understanding of international trade and Finance. It was the latter that worried me.
As the morning progressed, I was heartened by the glum faces of the impartial BBC presenters and commentators. This alone told me I’d made the right decision.
Sadly, as the days and weeks went by, the polarisation of position manifested itself amongst some of whom we had considered reasonable friends. During the Referendum’s run-up, when everyone believed Remain would easily win, our Leave view had been tolerated and gently mocked. Now we had comfortably won the debate, their attitudes hardened. How dare the gammon not do as their betters wanted. The young were robbed of their birthright by the uneducated old, who should move aside. You know the rest, dear reader, and probably experienced it yourselves in varying degrees. I even had to remove one person from my circle of friends after a particularly nasty rant on Facebook, basically calling us all fascists and racists.
A strange day to be sure. What followed over the next few years was even stranger…”
Helena Windsor wrote:
“Oh what a day! “The dawn is breaking…. the people have spoken…..and we’re out” And we were sinking English champers after coming home from our count with a Leave win under our belt, watching his poor contorted Remoaner face; what a dawn it was.
Who else was out putting up posters on roundabouts when that huge thunderstorm started on the eve of the poll? Who would have thought then that it would take sooo long to execute and our treacherous politicians allow such a betrayal of our fishermen and, worst of all the good people of Ulster? And who would have predicted that five years later the party that made it happen would have descended into a hopeless and lawless farce?”
Alan Piper wrote:
“Very boring but I just remember the sense of relief. We just ran the pub as usual and would have mopped up the tears of weeping remainers… But there weren’t any!”
Colin Hussey wrote:
“Some of us, me included, thought that our exit from the European Union would be rapid and final after the 2016 Referendum. I remember being in one of the counting locations in Kent which was then a UKIP stronghold, and being totally elated when that out of touch buffoon David Dimbleby announced on BBC that we were ‘out’. Little did we know then, that the farce of actually getting out would run and run and run. In hindsight perhaps he should have said ‘the people have spoken and we WANT out. What we wanted and what we eventually got courtesy of the ruddy useless Conservative Party were two different things, and here we are 5 years down the road with part of the country (Northern Ireland) being treated differently from the rest of the country, still giving the EU our money, and without full control of our fishing and territorial waters, all because dithering Johnson couldn’t make up his mind and was afraid of his own shadow.”
~~~ ooo ~~~
Thank you all for writing in – and thank all of you for your hard work, campaigning to get us Out. Much has changed in those five years past – but we all have become not simply older (’tis inevitable …) but much wiser in the ways our ‘betters’, the Westminster Bubble Dwellers, are trying to govern us, to nudge us. There were 17 million of us then – I believe there are more than that now. We’ve learned – our politicians and MSM: not so much.
“And who would have predicted that five years later the party that made it happen would have descended into a hopeless and lawless farce?”
It wouldn’t IMHO have been a lawless farce if Richard Braine had been left in peace to get on with leading the party. He promised to be a good leader.
Colin Hussey – our exit would be rapid and final – I seem to be the only person on here that remembers Gerard Batten warning us Article 50 was a trap. He told us we should simply repeal the 1972/3 Act, signing up to the Treaty of Rome that had taken us in.
He said by doing that we would nullify in one go, all the legislation imposed on us since.
Does anyone else have any comments on that?
Pauline B; That is correct. Gerard Batten did say that ,and he wrote a book “The Road to Freedom” expounding this which I read at the time. . I understand Article 50 is not an exit device but a trap to keep us in EU, set up in the Lisbon Treaty. There is-or was- a downloadable updated version of the Road to Freedom on the internet, called “EU Exit Plan” but I can’t find it at present. GB predicted the present mess as a result of electing a parliament of people who really did not want Brexit, ie mainstream parties including Tories, who would invoke art 50.
I got very frustrated around 2016 knowing that the quick fix of a referendum, with its implementation put in treacherous Tory hands, wouldn’t achieve Brexit except in name only. But it was the best we could do since voters always insisted on voting mainstream and they kept trusting the Tories. It was a step in the right direction however , and there’s always hope provided we’re not checkmated by the Great Reset, which will create One World Currency and Government, end of nation states. The Great Reset must not be allowed to succeed, starting with the vaccine passport. Pity so many have so eagerly collaborated by getting jabbed and wearing muzzles.
Pauline…And yes I also agree that he said this, but then so did Nigel Farage say the same thing time and time again. However UKIP were never going to be the governing party of this country, and neither Nigel Farage or Gerard Batten were ever going to be the prime minister, so it didn’t really matter what they said because all three mainstream parties were really committed to keeping us in the European Union.
I suppose it’s one of the penalties of antiquity ( personal), but I cannot remember a thing about that day, the 24th June, yes, the night before polling day, putting up banners and placards in my front garden ( main r iAd next door to a polling station almost, there was a telephone exchange in a wooden hut intervening )
About 8.30pm a car pulled up, out jumped a couple of lively lads, they told me they had been going around all the road junctions putting out Vote Leave signs. They helped me to put up flying banners T high level from the telegraph poll and lamp post, tied back to the eaves of the house (bungalow) and then left after nailing one of their placards to the telegraph pole.
I remember clearly (well most of it) the campaign itself, the wonderful individual conversations with a few people I met when pushing leaflets, I also remember the couple who wordlessly pointed me in the direction of the blue bin.
But most of all I remember being out in the market place with our wonderful UKIP leader and his wife (sadly no longer with us), noting down all the many “positives” and few “negatives”, the people that crowded around and had those wonderful stickers pressed on them, not just their bodies, but their handbags ,their scooter buggies, their books.
There was a wonderful spirit abroad, even those we didn’t get a word with, passed by and showed their interest with a “thumbs up ” gesture and a cheer..
We did have one agitator, well spoken older “gentleman” who exchanged a few Bon mots, his main criticism was that he informed us we were “all stark staring mad”
Eventually we did ask him for the basis of expressing this opinion, “what do you do we asked him”?
“Oh! I’m a retired GP”
Which only goes to prove many a doctor can make a wrong diagnosis.
We went to the count in Bury Sports Hall without much enthusiasm – we’d been told so often that we were going to lose. The LibLabConners were bouncing around, sure they were onto a winner and we all had a moan about how the organisation that had won the right to organise the leave campaign was useless – was it Vote Leave? One forgets. That massive brain by his own assessment, Mekon Cummings, had run it in the same way that Cons do by-elections, saturating the ground with leaflet-delivering manpower, not realising we were spread much thinner and had had to walk our legs off delivering the flood of stuff they kept sending us.
It was all laughy laughy, back-slapping and taking the mick. Grinning Remainers and silent Leavers. Then… Sunderland. The Hall suddenly went quiet. Little knots of previously merry revellers gathered, muttering, looking over their shoulders as grinning Leavers sauntered by, still not sure we’d win but knowing that we’d done well enough that whatever the result this time we’d be triumphant in the end.
I watched until it was obvious that we’d won, even if the BBC and the pundits on TV were still whistling in the dark. I got into the Transit van in the Council car park, drove to the gate that operated electronically to let out those with a pass and,,, They had it turned off at midnight until 8 o’clock. So while the sun came up and the country rejoiced I dozed uncomfortably in my battered old peat dusty van, trapped, missing all the excuses, the tears, the laughter. An early workman let me out and I drove home through the pearly morning, everything new, a world full of hope and possibility.
And watched the Dimbleby tears. Best laugh I’d had for years.
JF
Julian…….I think it unfair to classify Vote Leave as ‘useless’ I was a Vote Leave Area Coordinator and found it to be highly organised and they always supplied us with the leaflets and other literature that we required, no matter how many and no matter what the cost was. Before that I was involved with Leave.eu as a constituency organiser and the organisational set up was truly awful, and they had no money and it was nigh on impossible to get them to provide anywhere near enough leaflets. If they had won the nomination to run the ‘Leave’ campaign I dread to think what the eventual outcome would have been.
Maybe Leave.eu was a stalking horse? Only since the successful vote and the “pandemic” have we seen the lengths that government will go to in oppressing us.