IN last week's Review Malcolm Charnock was right to call for a referendum to enable the people to decide whether or not we continue membership of the European Union.

When Edward Heath booted Britain into the Common Market in 1973 he did so after first telling us he would not do so without the "full-hearted consent of Parliament and the British people." Because of the system of party politics, by which every MP is an item of lobby fodder, consent from Parliament was easy. However, he did not have the consent of the people. He did not hold a referendum, either because he was not interested in how we felt, or he feared that in such a referendum we would vote against joining. But he was fully aware of what he was letting Britain into. He knew he was signing away British fishing rights even in our own waters, he knew he was acting against the interests of British agriculture, and he knew it marked the end of British shipbuilding and heavy engineering. He also knew that the Common Market was only the first stage towards the European dream of a United States of Europe: Common Market, European Economic Community, European Community, Single Market, Single Currency, European Union, eventually the United States of Europe and, finally, world dictatorship.

It was Harold Wilson who held the referendum Malcolm Charnock remembers. That was in 1975, and the question on the ballot paper did not ask if we wanted to join it, but if we wanted to remain in it. The European HQ in Brussels did not want the referendum but because one had been promised as an item in an election manifesto, they had to go along with it. But they told Harold Wilson the result he had to come up with. The British people had to vote in favour. Accordingly, when the first result ame through, from the Scilly Isles, with an anti-Common Market majority, Harold Wilson took fright. We never heard any more results from individual places; all we were told was the final result from London in which Harold Wilson told us 17 million people voted yes and 8 million voted no, leaving 15 million who did not vote.

We all know what the European Commission do whenever a country votes. no: they order a second referendum to ensure they vote yes. They do not take no for an answer. Wales and Scotland voted no to devolution, Denmark voted no to the Treaty of Maastricht, the Irish Republic voted no to the Treaty of Nice then no to the Treaty of Lisbon. Europe ordered all these countries to vote again with instructions to vote yes. And they all fell for it. With the Netherlands and France it was different. They voted no to the European Commission but instead of their voting again, they changed the name from "Constitution" to "Treaty of Lisbon" so they could proceed with it despite the wishes of the Dutch and the French.

On the day the Irish voted no to the Treaty of Lisbon, the BBC2 Newsnight programme (Kirsty Wark) interviewed a diplomat holding the position "European Ambassador to United States of America." Kirsty Wark should have asked him what he thought he was doing there. The concept whereby the European Union has ambassadors to any country is covered by the Treaty of Lisbon. In other words, they were already putting into effect the very treaty which on that very day one of its members had democratically expressed the wish they should not have. And all this from a European Commission whose finances are such that the auditors have not been able to clear their accounts for the last 15 years. no wonder there is a growing tide of public opinion that Britain should quit membership of the European Union.

It is time someone in authority explained why the Common Market and Alternative Vote referendums were not counted, and the results given, by the returning officer in each constituency in the same way election votes are counted. With interested campaigners watching the counting like hawks, as they do at elections, we would then know whether the results were genuine. To take the ballot forms away and count the votes in secret elsewhere is giving the impression that Harold Wilson and David Cameron only announced the results they were hoping for rather than the way the electorate voted. To say counting the election votes and the referendum votes on the same night by the same people would involve too much work and take too long is no excuse because the Alternative Vote referendum could have been counted at leisure any time up to some distant date in 2014, we did not need to know the result before then.

Meanwhile, as Malcolm Charnock says, let us have that referendum on quitting membership of the European Union. All it requires is to repeal the 1972 European Communities Act. That would shove every single European rule, regulation and directive, straight into the rubbish bin. Politicians since Edward Heath have constantly betrayed the people because they either benefit, or hope to benefit personally. It is high time we had politicians who put the country first, not themselves.

– Anthony Reeve, Littledean.