I FEEL certain that Owen Kelly would have been sacked from his old teaching post if indeed his history lessons had displayed the albeit tongue-in-cheek one-sided bias his fictional one displays in his missive (Letters, July 12).
The fact remains that a democratic vote by the British public brought about Brexit and the uncertainty is because no one has ever left before. To blame David Cameron is like blaming a husband who asks his wife if she wants a divorce and she suddenly says "yes". Perhaps the classes of Mr Kelly would have benefited from an understanding of the constitutional furore in 1972 when Ted Heath, the then PM, took us into what was fondly and rather innocently called the European Common Market. With this knowledge, the young learners should also know about the subsequent legal turmoil when Harold Wilson who succeeded him called a referendum in 1975 to ask if we should stay in the developing European Community.
Lastly, Mr Kelly's pupils should understand that it was the hugely controversial signing of the far-reaching Maastricht Treaty in 1992 which really put the cat amongst the pigeons. Arguably, the UK should have held a referendum at that time as in fact France, Denmark and Ireland did.
The many misgivings about the potential risks of extending the powers of the community to become the European Union as we now know it were well perceived. It was only when the UK public were asked in 2016 if we were happy to stay within that huge bureaucratic body that the scale of the smouldering disquiet became clear. Or was it just the Leave slogan on the bus and the colourful pranks of Boris Johnson and Nigel Farage that people fell for?
Bill Brown,
46 Breadie Drive, Milngavie.
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